Muslim Brotherhood has taken over, say Egyptian liberals

[Chris]

Muslim Brotherhood has taken over, say Egyptian liberals

Muslim Brotherhood has taken over, say Egyptian liberals
By Ryan Jones

The Muslim Brotherhood's exploitation of Egypt's pro-democracy revolution is nearly complete, leading Egyptian liberals complained to one of Egypt's top newspapers on Sunday.

Members of various secular parties told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Egypt's temporary ruling military regime has now allied itself with the Muslim Brotherhood after the Islamist group scored a big victory in the first round of voting for Egypt's parliament.

Estimates are that the Muslim Brotherhood won control of 40 percent of the parliament when voters from Egypt's largest districts went to the polls earlier this month. Other Islamist groups allied with the Brotherhood won another 20 percent of the vote, while various secular and liberal parties combined took the remaining 40 percent.

With those results in hand, the ruling military council is allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to control the writing of Egypt's new constitution, Mohammed Abul Ghar, leader of the Egyptian Democratic Party, told the newspaper.

"The council has ignored calls by the majority for a balanced civil constitution that protects the country's future," said Abul Ghar. "The military council is now weaker than the Brotherhood."

Abul Ghar said that because of the way things are going, he refused to even sit on the advisory committee that will supposedly be in charge of writing the new constitution. Other liberal leaders say they weren't even invited to take part.

In possibly related news, The Jerusalem Post claimed on Sunday that Hamas had established missile production facilities in the Egyptian Sinai in order to protect its arsenal from Israeli air strikes. Hamas was birthed from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and the two groups share an ideology concerning Israel and future Islamic domination of not only the Middle East, but the whole world.

An Egyptian military official later denied that Hamas had been allowed to operate in an organized manner in Sinai, but many of this year's Hamas attacks on southern Israel have emanated or been facilitated from Sinai.

[mattfivefour]

And the pieces continue to fall into place.