# Is Islamism in Egypt really worth worrying about? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 15, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453 "2011-02-15T15:50:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/81 "2011-02-18T15:16:46Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I think it’s more that the government just views transgendered people differently than gays and lesbians. They see transgendered people as ill and curable (by sex reassignment surgery), and see gays and lesbians as sinners and criminals. There’s no real reason that a group that tolerates transgendered people has to tolerate gays and lesbians or vice versa. The more so, as the transgendered are so much fewer. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/82 "2011-02-19T03:21:46Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That is exactly what the American religious right wants. That, and all Jews to Israel – see [Christian Zionism.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism) (Though sometimes I suspect the real thinking there is to herd all the world’s Jews into one easy kill-zone.) > > [shrug] Why should Gazans have to go hungry because some of their neighbors are violent assholes? You’ve got to be kidding me and you’re pretty much libeling the Republican party if you are saying that they want all the Jews to die. Yeah and I thought the liberals always talked about how “severe” the rhetoric of the Republicans are. :rolleyes: > [@YogSosoth](#): > > It is not. And I’m not even sure about the “peaceful” part anymore. For decades, the US religious right has been getting more and more extreme. Listen to their rhetoric and watch their leaders bray about using 2nd Amendment solutions and targeting those who defeat them in elections. Plus, the US religious right has always been about trying to get their religious influences into government to make this a theocracy. All social issues including abortion, sex, gay marriage, and creationism is their attempt to force everyone to adhere to their religious values. For better or for worse they nominally do adhere to the Constitution and what they’re advocating, really, is America 1950 (minus the Segregation) not John Calvin’s Geneva or Puritan Massachusetts. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/83 "2011-02-19T03:50:42Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Egyptian women gained the vote with the constitution of 1956. Also the right to stand for election. This put them, I believe, slightly ahead of Canadian, Australian and Swiss women. Canadian women obviously had the right to vote prior to 1956, unless somehow 1919 came after 1956. Austraian women had the right to vote in 1902. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/84 "2011-02-19T04:09:52Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Canadian women obviously had the right to vote prior to 1956, unless somehow 1919 came after 1956. Austraian women had the right to vote in 1902. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Canadian women did not have equal right to _stand for election_ until 1960. The last gender-specific limits on suffrage in Australia were only eliminated by the Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1962. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/85 "2011-02-19T15:48:34Z")
That would be news to [Agnes McPhail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Macphail), were she still alive. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/86 "2011-02-19T16:03:32Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > You’ve got to be kidding me Consider the source. Rather than calling for the blockade of Gaza to be reworked so that civilians don’t suffer undue hardship but Hamas still can’t rearm, he supports ending it and calls a situation that would lead to full fledged war (if not ‘just’ constant rocketing of Israel), “all to the good”. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/87 "2011-02-19T16:45:06Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Canadian women did not have equal right to _stand for election_ until 1960. No. Until 1960, First Nations people, men and women, didn’t have the right to vote in federal elections unless they were “enfranchised”, meaning they, among other things, surrendered their Indian identity and any rights they had under various treaties. This was part of a century long policy by the Canadian government to assimilate the First Nations and wipe out their culture. In 1956, all Indians in Canada were recognized as Canadian citizens, and in 1960, they all got the right to vote and stand for election. So it’s true that not all women could vote in Canada until 1960, but the reason they couldn’t vote wasn’t because they were women. It’s because they were First Nation. A similar thing happened in Australia. The Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1962 didn’t have anything to do specifically with women voting. It let Aboriginals, some of whom, of course, were women, vote in federal elections. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/88 "2011-02-19T21:47:12Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > You’ve got to be kidding me and you’re pretty much libeling the Republican party if you are saying that they want all the Jews to die. No, not the GOP; but I have my suspicions as to certain segments of the RR. I feel more confident in saying that there are those who care more about getting the Jews **out** of America than **into** Israel. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/89 "2011-02-19T21:58:54Z")
Let’s put this another way: Are Islamists in Egypt **strong** enough to worry about? Are they positioned to take over the government any time soon? What kind of showing will the MB, if it forms a new political party, make in the September elections? ---
**Author:** ![NCDane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecccb3/32.png) [@NCDane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NCDane)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/90 "2011-02-19T22:02:34Z")
[QUOTE=spark240] Egyptian women gained the vote with the constitution of 1956. Also the right to stand for election. This put them, I believe, slightly ahead of Canadian, Australian and Swiss women. [/QUOTE] This is a distortion regarding Canada and Australia. [Women’s suffrage Canada](http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0008687) (from link): > [@](#): > > On 24 May 1918 all female citizens aged 21 and over became eligible to vote in federal elections, regardless of whether they had yet attained the provincial franchise. In July 1919 they gained the complementary right to stand for the House of Commons, although appointment to the Senate remained out of reach until after the PERSONS CASE of 1929. [Women’s suffrage Australia](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gBJ-9_Nxc-8J:www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/pol/women/women.htm+women's+suffrage+australia&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com) (from link): > [@](#): > > On 12 June 2002 it will be a hundred years since Australia became the first country in the world to give most women the right to vote and the right to stand for the Commonwealth Parliament. New Zealand was the first nation to give women the right to vote, but not to stand, in 1893. In Australia only South Australia had any restriction past 1956 (see link to “Table”). Information is less incomplete at the Canadian site. As I read it Ontario and the Eastern Maritimes enacted full equality by 1934. Quebec appears not to have, and the provinces west of Ontario are not discussed. The last restrictions natuionwide were eliminated in 1960. ---
**Author:** ![NCDane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecccb3/32.png) [@NCDane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NCDane)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/91 "2011-02-19T22:13:30Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > …I don’t think we have much to worry about guys who worked for Siemens, get sent to Europe on business trips, and seek to expand diversity while being Islamic at heart. However, at issue is how representative these guys are of the average Egyptian “Islamicist”. **It could easily be that they are far more representative than the West gives credit (a recent survey supports this view)**… Can you please provide a citation with link to the “recent survey”? If you are speaking of Pew polls indicating 20% or less support for AQ/OBL bear in mind that that translates to several million adults in a country the size of Egypt, and that removal of the secular goverment can only add strength to such a faction. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/92 "2011-02-19T22:21:32Z")
> [@NCDane](#): > > Can you please provide a citation with link to the “recent survey”? > > If you are speaking of Pew polls indicating 20% or less support > for AQ/OBL bear in mind that that translates to several million > adults in a country the size of Egypt, and that removal of the > secular goverment can only add strength to such a faction. But the most it can win them is 20% of the seats in the new parliament. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/93 "2011-02-19T22:46:45Z")
> [@NCDane](#): > > This is a distortion regarding Canada and Australia. Well, my interpretation came from the IPU, and I don’t know why they should be interested in painting Canada and Australia other than as they are on this score. However, I’m not sure it’s worth scouring the documents to find the precise gender-specific clauses they were looking at, since the comment was something of a joke to begin with. Egyptians regardless of gender have _yet_ to vote meaningfully at a national level. ---
**Author:** ![NCDane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecccb3/32.png) [@NCDane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NCDane)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/94 "2011-02-19T22:48:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But the most it can win them is 20% of the seats in the new parliament. That is not true. A party may win a much higher percentage of seats that its percentage of the popular vote, particularly in plurality-winner sytems. Reative voter turnout may also lead to the greater relative success of one faction over all others. Then add AQ numbers to other religious factions far more radical than, say, the Moral Majority, and we have the makings of a real problem. ---
**Author:** ![NCDane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecccb3/32.png) [@NCDane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NCDane)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/95 "2011-02-19T23:08:29Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Well, my interpretation came from the IPU, and I don’t know why they should be interested in painting Canada and Australia other than as they are on this score. I know nothing of IPU. I do have the distinct impression that there are numerous organizations who for reasons unknown do all they can to paint western coutires in as poor a light as possbile while suggesting that miscreants such as Egypt might be little worse, or even not as bad. For example AI, venerated by so many is the one the most worst offenders. During debate on another board I found that AI cited the US more often than China even after subtraction of counterterror related incidents. > [@spark240](#): > > However, I’m not sure it’s worth scouring the documents to find the precise gender-specific clauses they were looking at, since the comment was something of a joke to begin with. Egyptians regardless of gender have _yet_ to vote meaningfully at a national level. So why bring Egypt up to begin with? ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/96 "2011-02-19T23:20:50Z")
> [@NCDane](#): > > So why bring Egypt up to begin with? What? This thread is about Egypt. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/97 "2011-02-19T23:22:39Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > However, I’m not sure it’s worth scouring the documents to find the precise gender-specific clauses they were looking at, since the comment was something of a joke to begin with. They’re not gender specific clauses. Like I pointed out, they’re racially specific clauses. Most First Nations people in Canada couldn’t vote until 1960, and Australian Aboriginines couldn’t vote until 1962. ---
**Author:** ![NCDane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecccb3/32.png) [@NCDane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NCDane)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/98 "2011-02-20T00:57:50Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > What? This thread is about Egypt. Why bring up Egypt as an example of advanced voting rights when voting there is a sham compared to Canada and Australia, which really are advanced. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2011, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/99 "2011-02-20T18:46:42Z")
Watching Fareed Zakaria on CNN interviewing Harvard Prof Tariq Massoud, who is writing a book about the MB in Egypt. Points he makes: These are not Egypt’s poor – the MB is full of well-educated, upwardly mobile professionals. Their “relationship to the modern world is complicated.” “They want to turn Egypt back, but not the way the Taliban wants to turn it back.” They are not at all hostile to Western culture or science; they see no contradictions with their social views. They want Egypt and Islam all as modern as possible. They do want a “Caliphate,” but their idea of it is “a kind of United States of Islam, or European Union for the Islamic states, the head of which would be called the ‘Caliph.’” They have been reluctantly liberalizing their views on women. They accept women should vote. The majority have not come around to the view that a woman could be president of Egypt. Many younger members have broken with the movement over this. Massoud is convinced that the MB’s commitment to democracy as such is sincere, and, in any case, everyone accepts that autocracy has no future in Egypt. al-Qaeda views the MB as sellouts who have abandoned the idea of jihad. The MB has “an extremism of ends but not means.” They are entirely opposed to violent tactics. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2011, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453/100 "2011-02-22T15:07:25Z")
Fascinating article from _The Nation:_ [“The Muslim Brotherhood in Transition.”](http://www.thenation.com/article/158716/muslim-brotherhood-transition) > [@](#): > > The Muslim Brotherhood, the Cairo-based Islamist group that consumes the minds of American neoconservatives but rates hardly a second thought in Egypt, is in many ways like an ancient papyrus roll displayed in an airtight case lest it crumble when exposed to the elements. > > The oxygen and light now leavening Egyptian politics is apparently doing just that. On Monday, the Financial Times reported that the Muslim Brotherhood’s youth branch was appealing to group elders for “an affiliated political party based on the values of the Muslim Brotherhood but not strictly religious.” Forming such a group, one youth leader told the FT, “would prove that we are peaceful, want to work in an institutional framework and are seeking to reform society in all its aspects.” > > The fragmentation of Egypt’s largest and most influential Islamist movement should surprise no one who has spent time listening to its members. Far from being a monolith, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Ikhwan, as it is known in Arabic, is well scored by demographic and ideological fault lines. Its diversified ranks—young and old, blue-collar and bourgeoisie, worldly and parochial—shared above all else a hatred of the despot who tormented it. Assuming Egypt will reap the bounty of its democratic revolution—and there are indications that the military authority that now controls the nation may obstruct such a harvest—the elimination of Hosni Mubarak could mean the end of the Ikhwan as we know it. > > \ > > Ahmed Salah is a young dissident and secularist who has spent years in Egypt’s political opposition. (In the revolution’s formative hours in Tahrir Square, he was arrested by security agents, beaten and released back into the crowd, only to take a rubber bullet it the head three days later.) On Thursday, he told me by phone that the Muslim Brotherhood had been a marginal player in the upheaval except for its young leaders, who were exploiting a leadership vacuum for the sake of aggrandizing power. The real menace to the revolution, he said, was the military council that has installed itself as a provisional government. Rather than convening talks with a wide array of opposition leaders, Salah told me, it is soft-stalling secularists’ demand for constitutional reform while “negotiating” with an inchoate opposition that includes members of the Ikhwan’s youth branch. (The Financial Times seemed to corroborate Salah’s account, reporting in its Wednesday edition that some thirty human rights groups have criticized the military for excluding secular groups from the constitutional reform panel, which they said was dominated “either by Islamists or legal experts who had helped draw up laws that restricted democracy under Hosni Mubarak.”) > > The implication is that Brotherhood upstarts will barter away the soul of the revolution in return for a slice of power in the new regime, in which the generals preserve de facto, if not de jure, control of the country. Such a deal would be similar to the one their fathers kept with Mubarak—accommodation for the sake of autonomy, suggesting what may be a cross-generational fear of having to compete with secularists in a free marketplace of ideas. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-islamism-in-egypt-really-worth-worrying-about/571453.md?page=6)