CAIRO — Egypt’s state prosecutor on Thursday ordered imprisoned former dictator Hosni Mubarak to be transferred to a military hospital after his health deteriorated, a source at the prosecutor’s office said. Mubarak, serving a life sentence over the killings of protesters, was briefly…
Fierce fighting outside Egypt presidential palace
CAIRO (AP) — Supporters and opponents of Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi fought with rocks, firebombs and sticks outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Wednesday, as a new round of protests deepened the country’s political crisis.Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition advocate of reform and democracy, said Morsi’s rule was “no different” from that of former President Hosni Mubarak, whose authoritarian regime was toppled in an uprising nearly two years ago.”In fact, it is perhaps even worse,” the Nobel Peace Laureate told a news conference after he accused the president’s supporters of a “vicious and deliberate” attack on peaceful demonstrators.The opposition is demanding Morsi rescind decrees giving him near unrestricted powers and shelve a disputed draft constitution that the president’s Islamist allies passed hurriedly last week.The dueling demonstrations and violence are part of a political crisis that has left the country divided into two camps: Islamists versus an opposition made up of youth groups, liberal parties and large sectors of the public. Both sides have dug in their heels, signaling a protracted standoff.Continue Reading… … Read More
Jihadist Calls for the Destruction of Egypt’s Pyramids and the Sphinx
Earlier this summer, reports circulated
that radical islamic clerics had called for the destruction of
Egypt’s Great Pyramids and the Sphinx as “idols.” Bloomsberg
News somewhat gleefully declared the whole event a “hoax” and
made fun of various pundits for handwringing over it. With that
as background, consider that today Al Arabiya News
reports:
Egypt is taking a jihadist’s calls to destroy the Giza Pyramids
and Sphinx “seriously,” an Egyptian interior ministry source has
said, according to reports.
The source, who was not named, spoke to the London-based Asharq
al-Awsat newspaper late Monday in response to Sheikh Murgan Salem
al-Gohary’s television interview earlier this week.
Gohary, a jihadist with self-professed links to the Taliban,
called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in
Egypt,” drawing ties between the Egyptian relics and Buddha
statues.
The Islamist, previously twice-sentenced under former President
Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove
such “idols.”
“All Muslims are charged with applying the teachings of Islam to
remove such idols, as we did in Afghanistan when we destroyed the
Buddha statues,” he said on Saturday during a television interview
on an Egyptian private channel, widely watched by Egyptian and Arab
audiences.
“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he added. “When
I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something
the government failed to do.”
On the plus side, the news agency further reported:
But in retaliation to Gohary’s remarks, the vice president of
Tunisia’s Ennahda party, Sheikh Abdel Fattah Moro, called the live
program and told Gohary that famous historic military commander Amr
ibn al-Aas did not destroy statues when he conquered Egypt.
“So who are you to do it?” he wondered. “The Prophet destroyed
the idols because people worshiped them, but the Sphinx and the
Pyramids are not worshiped.”
Let’s hope it’s another hoax.
