Muslim American stand-up comedy is a relatively new phenomenon, the domain of second-generation immigrants who are American enough to satirize the Muslim American experience, said Obeidallah, who lives in New York City.“We’re confident enough to do this,” he said. “An immigrant would be less confident to use comedy to try to challenge perceptions of who we are. We’re confident enough in being Americans and knowing what that means, that we can push against those who are exhibiting behavior which is less than consistent with the values of this nation.”

Note that in Obeidallah’s world, the people who are “exhibiting behavior which is less than consistent with the values of this nation” are those fighting for freedom and Constitutional rights, not Brotherhood-related groups dedicated to bringing to the U.S. elements of a legal system that denies freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women and non-Muslims.

A major factor driving Muslim Americans toward comedy was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “There were no Middle Eastern comics before 9/11 that anyone knew about,” Obeidallah said. “The phenomenon really grew in the last 10 years, because of the [anti-Muslim] backlash.

There was no backlash, of course. Innocent Muslims are not being victimized in the U.S. Muslims live better here than in many Muslim countries. Obeidallah — clueless or complicit? You be the judge.

I think a lot of people in our community started doing it as a form of political activism.” As they started appearing on national television, he said, “it spurred other Middle Eastern comedians to get involved.” Now, he said, there are about 10 full-time professinals and a growing number of aspiring professionals.Going to the South, where anti-mosque demonstrations and anti-immigrant sentiment has made some Muslims feel unwelcome, the comedians hoped to break through some of the cultural walls that have arisen since Sept. 11.

The point was to see “how would people in the heartland take to us?” Obeidallah said. “Would we encounter angry people going, ‘Get out of here, you Muslims,’ or would they understand?”

Traveling through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, they gave free performances in cafes, community centers and theaters. They set up tables in public places, with scripture-related guessing games and the opportunity for people to “Ask a Muslim” anything they wanted.

“I could kind of like Muslims, but why do you guys like terrorism so much?” some asked. “What do you think of 9/11?” was another common question.

How horrible! They got asked uncomfortable questions! Oh, the “Islamophobia”!

On the whole, the public response was encouraging. While a few people drove by and yelled, “Go back to your country!” the one-on-one encounters tended to be positive.

Oh, the horror! They encountered some rude jerks! Almost as bad as being Christians in Nigeria, eh?

“Most people are more open-minded and not that concerned about Muslims,” Obeidallah said. “It’s really the fringe that’s driving that narrative.”Maysoon Zayid, one of the comics on the tour, said people were surprised to see that “I’m such a Jersey girl, I’m so accessible. . . . I think they are really surprised that I wasn’t this oppressed woman trying to convert people.”

The comedians acknowledged that they were unlikely to win the hearts of the most fervent anti-Muslim types.

“A show called ‘The Muslims Are Coming’ — people self-select to come see it,” Farsad said. “We’re never going to be able to touch the extreme haters. . . . We’re trying to affect the people in the middle, people with questions, the ‘persuadables.’ ”

Do Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah really want to eradicate “Islamophobia”? As long as Islamic jihad and supremacism continue, a comedy tour will never do the trick. But here is an easy way. They can call on Muslims in the U.S. to do these things:

1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.

2. Renounce definitively, sincerely, honestly, and in deeds, not just in comforting words, not just “terrorism,” but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means. In line with this, clarify what is meant by their condemnations of the killing of innocent people by stating unequivocally that American and Israeli civilians are innocent people, teaching accordingly in mosques and Islamic schools, and behaving in accord with these new teachings.

3. Teach, again sincerely and honestly, in transparent and verifiable ways in mosques and Islamic schools, the imperative of Muslims coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis, and act accordingly.

4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach sincerely against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.

5. Actively and honestly work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

If Muslims do those five things, voila! “Islamophobia” will evanesce!

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About Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (Regnery), and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon and Schuster).

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In a world paralyzed by political correctness and warped philosophies, attention is proving to be one of the greatest enemies of Islamist encroachment.

Consider the difference between pre- and post-September 11: A decade after the 9/11 jihad got the West’s attention, many people — perhaps not unlike yourself — have become aware of Islam and its doctrines, especially the “anti-infidel” ones, certainly many more people than before Sept. 11, 2001.

The result is that today, even nonviolent effronteries like the Ground Zero mosque – called by Newt Gingrich “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization” — create a stir, though they once would have passed unnoticed.

Here’s another, more personal, anecdote of how attention can backfire on Islamists (complete details here). After Seattle’s Everett Community College invited me to come and speak on May 5, one Jaffar (“Jeff”) Siddiqui, who has a long history of trying to quash free speech on Islam, began pressuring the college to cancel my talk, including by writing a letter — titled “Don’t Invite Bigots!” — to its president.

Likewise, the director of the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations Washington chapter, Arsalan Bukhari, asserted that “[i]nviting Raymond Ibrahim to give an alternative viewpoint on being Muslim is like inviting the KKK to speak about African American history.”

Then, the day before my talk, this same Bukhari wrote an op-ed in Seattle’s Herald arguing that “by inviting a known conspiracy theorist with a history of making unfounded claims about Islam, the college is doing a disservice to the public and risks creating a hostile learning environment for its students.”  Also the day before the talk CAIR’s main headquarters issued a particularly nasty and accusatory press release that culminated as follows:

By issuing Mr. Ibrahim an invitation, giving him an audience, and in any way providing him a platform, Everett Community College is complicit in inflaming a tinder box of hate and violence against Islam and Muslims, and is abusing its public trust as a federally funded educational institution. Therefore, we urge the College to cease its promotion of bigotry and hate speech by rescinding its invitation to Raymond Ibrahim to speak on campus.

To CAIR’S chagrin, the college refused to cave in, pointing out that my appearance was “consistent with the belief that students be exposed to a variety of views.”

Now, consider how CAIR caused an otherwise local event to snowball into something detrimental to its cause — simply by complaining about it, that is, drawing attention to it:

For starters, much media attention followed — attention that would never have been if not for CAIR’s howling — including a featured story for MSNBC on whether Islam is a “Terror threat or peaceful religion?” The over 3,000 comments on this report alone reveal that, as “leftist” as MSNBC is, many of its readers are aware of the Islamist agenda; others wonder why CAIR is so scared of free speech.

Moreover, that CAIR cried wolf yet again — and was ignored — not only embarrassed but publicly belittled CAIR’s influence. A community college defying Islamist threats and intimidation must surely shine as an example for other institutions that may actually be interested in promoting diversity of views —institutions that would never have even known that bullies like CAIR could be so easily ignored, if not for all the attention CAIR itself created.

In short, politically active Islamists must walk a fine line, must choose their fights carefully: if they scream bloody murder to silence free speech — scream “racist,” “hater,” “Islamophobe” — they risk bringing unwanted attention that backfires on them; yet if they sit back and do nothing, they risk having more and more people speak up and expose them.

Either way — whether CAIR or its un-stifled opponents make the noise — the result is the same: Americans, wondering why Islam is always in the spotlight, begin inquiring; some become acquainted with reality, and go on to discuss it with friends and family.

The cycle of slow but steady awareness that first began when 9/11 got the world’s attention continues.

Last August, on the first day of Ramadan, the largest clock in the world began ticking for the first time. The Mecca Clock, designed to serve as the authoritative timepiece for the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims and positioned at the top of the world’s largest clock tower, poses not only an architectural challenge to England’s iconic Big Ben, but a political one as well. Defying the global agreement to consider Greenwich, England, the zero-point for measuring time and space — based on when the sun crosses over that meridian — the clock was constructed to run not on Greenwich Mean Time but on Mecca Time, with Mecca as prime meridian. This means that the Mecca Clock, and anyone who sets a watch by it, deviates from standard time by roughly 21 minutes.

The military officer who believed in a Muslim empire

Though not of Arab origin, Aziz Ali Al Masri worked towards winning Arab autonomy within Ottoman unity, but refused to play the wily politician to achieve that end

• By Joseph A. Kéchichian, Special to Weekend Review
• Published: 00:00 June 17, 2011
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In the words of Majid Khadduri (1909-2007), the Iraqi-born professor of Islamic Studies and Contemporary Middle East History and Politics at Johns Hopkins University, Aziz Ali Al Masri (1879-1965) came "to the conclusion that in so composite a society as the Ottoman Empire, the best way to maintain its integrity was not by attempting to suppress nationalities but by recognising them each as an autonomous unit within the Ottoman superstructure". His was the world of a military officer who believed in the values of a Muslim empire, in this instance, the Ottoman, which ruled over much of the Arab world throughout Al Masri's lifetime. Yet the idealist executive was no opportunist, neither seeking power and prestige, nor accolades that placed him at the pinnacle of authority.

Formative years

Because Al Masri's formative years were spent in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, he strongly believed in the intrinsic "values" of the empire. An advocate of Ottoman unity, he was a political moderate who wanted Ottomanism, pan-Islamism and nationalism to exist in cooperation under the authority of the Sublime Porte.

His father, Zakaria Chahlpe, took him from his birthplace, Cairo, to Constantinople in search of fortune. Although of Circassian ancestry, neither Chahlpe nor his son suffered an inferiority complex. Though not an Arab by "origin", Aziz Ali appended the name Al Masri (the Egyptian) while studying in Constantinople, precisely to distinguish himself from his Ottoman friends, even though he wholeheartedly supported the sultan.

Reportedly, throughout his life he was conscious of the fact that he was not a pure Arab, although his services to Egypt and Arabism were genuine. A solid cadet, Al Masri earned his commission in the Ottoman army and was dispatched to Macedonia, where the Porte was engaged in one of its perpetual confrontations with Greek, Bulgarian and Albanian subjects. It was during his service in the Balkans that Al Masri was introduced to a secret organisation that changed his life.

Committee of Union and Progress

Infiltrated throughout the ranks of the mighty Ottoman army, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) rebels, who were also known as the "Young Turks", gradually recruited the best and brightest officers to their cause. What the CUP intelligentsia advocated was a coup against Sultan Abdul Hamid II, a universally hated ruler whose obtuse views bordered on paranoia and, equally important, whose dislike of reforms was legendary. As one of the officers who led the 1908 military revolution, Al Masri took part in the march on Constantinople in April 1909 to instal Mehmed V on the throne, to better apply the long-promised constitutional monarchy.

Al Masri's adherence to the CUP was prompted as much by Arab national ideals as by a devotion to the welfare of the Ottoman Empire. Still, in the words of Khadduri, Al Masri "saw grave danger in the policy of Turkification and counselled moderation". Yet when he realised that the CUP's policies were not what its leaders advocated, he looked for more worthwhile allies. The latter were members of national communities, mostly Greeks and Armenians, who welcomed his help to forge a rapprochement with CUP officials.

Due to his background as a brilliant and decorated Ottoman officer, Al Masri's influence was far greater than his rank implied. He founded the Al Qahtaniyyah movement to answer many CUP critics with the sole aim of creating a dual monarchy where Arab aspirations were to be reconciled with loyalty to the Ottoman Empire.

Al Qahtaniyyah and Al Ahd

As George Antonius wrote in his majestic opus The Arab Awakening, the Al Qahtaniyyah secret society was established to grapple with, and possibly reverse, the problem created by the CUP centralisation policy. For Al Masri, the Arab provinces "were to form a single kingdom with its own parliament and local government and with Arabic as the language of its institutions.

The kingdom was to be part of a Turco-Arab empire, similar in architecture to the Austro-Hungarian edifice. The Ottoman sultan in Constantinople would wear, in addition to his own Ottoman crown, the crown of the Arab kingdom, as the Hapsburg emperor in Vienna wore the crown of Hungary. Thus unity would be reached through separation."

In addition to Al Masri, several Arab officers serving in the Ottoman army, and two of the founders of Al Muntada Al Adabi, the Amirs Adel and Ameen Arslan, participated. Not surprisingly, CUP officers rejected this proposal, and on the charge of treasonable activities promptly arrested, tried and hanged several Arabs who advocated a dual monarchy.

Early in 1914, Al Masri attempted to carry out his plan but was forced to abandon his move after he discovered that CUP minions had infiltrated the movement. He founded a separate organisation, the Al Ahd, which sent several CUP operatives into trances. Al Masri was arrested and while the charges against him were fabricated, there was no mention of his connection with secret societies.

A hurried trial was held in camera on March 25, 1914, before a military court of discipline, which was comical, at best. Not only was Al Masri "accused of having committed the wildly improbable crimes of embezzling army funds, [and] of surrendering Cyrenaica to the Italians in return for a bribe", his major offence was allegedly to set up an Arab kingdom in north Africa — inimical to CUP ideas.

Still, word leaked that Al Masri was under trial, as the commotion roused by his treatment reached the land of his birth. Egyptians vented their displeasure, which prompted Ahmad Jamal Pasha, the "Young Turk" commander of the 4th Army then in charge of the Levant, to complain to none other than Enver Pasha — the minister of war. Mass meetings were held in Cairo, where a press campaign supported Al Masri and where even the Rector of the Al Azhar Seminary sought British diplomatic assistance. Enver Pasha listened to Jamal Pasha's pleas and issued a full pardon as Al Masri was expelled from Constantinople.

The Hijaz and Egypt

Though Al Masri left the Ottoman Empire in 1914, he was not in favour of a full separation from Ottoman unity. Even his participation in the 1916 Arab Revolt, whose aim was to end all colonial influence in the Levant and the Hijaz, was problematic for he wished to simply "prevent the spread of hostility between Great Britain and Turkey and achieve Arab autonomy within Ottoman unity".

Still, as he began working under the Sharif of Makkah, Hussain, he added significant military skills to the battles. In fact, he played a prominent role in the early stages of the Arab Revolt between 1916 and 1918, when Sharif Hussain wished to create an independent Arab kingdom.

Regrettably, and because of his dislike of the British, Al Masri encouraged the Sharif to ally with Germany. To some extent, his pro-Axis preferences were due to his admiration of German military ethics, which he picked up in the Ottoman Military Academy. He also believed that an independent Arab kingdom would be so much closer to reality in the case of German victory, concluding that an Allied triumph would perpetuate colonialism.

In the event, Sharif Hussain was too steeped in international affairs to better appreciate which powers would win the war and, towards that end, clashed with his military adviser. The Arab Revolt's military chief of staff served briefly but was dismissed by the shrewder Sharif, as Al Masri returned to Cairo.

Towards the end of 1916, he was deported to Spain by British authorities, who could not reconcile with his uncompromising position against them.

He spent the last two years of the war in Spain but returned to Egypt, where he dabbled in various positions until he hooked up with the Free Officers in the army.

It was his clandestine contacts with Nasser, Naguib, Sadat and other officers that kept him in the loop, since all respected his innate military capabilities even if everyone acknowledged his limited political savvy. A puritan at heart, Al Masri was seldom ready to compromise, preferring to hold sound principles of politics as if they were moral imperatives.

Legacy

 

From the Khedive Abbas Hilmi II (1892-1914) to Field Marshal Mohammad Hussain Tantawi (2011-), Egypt was ruled by ten (11, if one counts the nine days in 1981 when Sufi Abu Taleb presided after Anwar Sadat was assassinated) strong military officers. Whether Hussain Kamal (1914-1917), Fouad I (1917-1936), Farouk I (1936-1952), Fouad II (1952-1953), Mohammad Naguib (1953-1954), Jamal Abdul Nasser (1954-1970), Sadat (1970-1981) or Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011), all ruled with iron fists, men who could seldom live up to the grandeur of pharaohs. None of these rulers could dream of matching the power and prowess of Ramses II, probably the greatest Egyptian who ever lived, though all pretended to.

At a time when Egypt was once again faced with epochal changes, the paradigm represented by Al Masri, a mere officer who failed to play the wily politician, was worth remembering. While Al Masri's participation in the founding of both the Al Ahd (The Covenant) secret society in Constantinople led to his expulsion from the Ottoman capital, his trial transformed him into a hero for Arab soldiers. Even Lawrence of Arabia acknowledged that this experience made him "an idol of the Arab officers", at a time when opportunities existed for him to grab power. Instead, Al Masri detached himself from petty machinations, refused to compromise his ideals, kept alive his revolutionary dreams and cherished loyalty, above all else.

Though he came close to authority, Al Masri carried with utmost dignity various burdens that shaped his cantankerous personality, long before military dictators honed the skill into an art form. What he wanted above all else was for Egypt, and through it the vast majority of Arab countries, to introduce gradual social reforms to free them from colonial hegemony.

 

***********************

A life lived by ideals

Aziz Ali Al Masri was born in Cairo in either 1879 or 1880, of both Egyptian and Circassian ancestry. While his father, Zakaria, was also born in Egypt, his grandfather was not, which led many to highlight the family's non-Arab origins. The family's Circassian name was Chahlpe, which was not an uncommon name in Egypt, although it was Aziz Ali who appended the name Al Masri (the Egyptian) while studying in Constantinople. Impressionable, and barely 20 years old when he graduated from the Ottoman Military Academy in 1901, Al Masri enrolled at the Staff College of the Ottoman army.

Shortly thereafter, either in 1903 or 1904, when he became 24 years old, the young Al Masri earned his commission in the Ottoman army. His first assignment as a member of the military was to the staff of the Third Army in Macedonia, where he joined the clandestine Committee for Union and Progress, a nationalist organisation that was also known as the "Young Turks" and which deposed Sultan Abdul Hamid II in favour of Mehmed V the following year.

Arrested a year before the onset of the First World War, ironically by CUP operatives who suspected he might orchestrate a coup, the young Ottoman soldier was tried in March 1914 before a military court of discipline. A few weeks after he was convicted of improbable crimes against the empire, Al Masri received the sultan's pardon and was set free. A day later, he set sail for Egypt and received an enthusiastic welcome upon his arrival.

Cairo Police Academy

Al Masri served briefly as Sharif Hussain's chief of staff during the 1916 Arab Revolt but returned to Cairo a few months later under dubious circumstances. He directed the Cairo Police Academy from 1927 to 1936 and was inspector-general of the Egyptian army in 1938.

A year later, and just as the Second World War mobilised major powers, he was named chief of staff of the British-controlled Egyptian army. A visceral dislike of colonial occupiers probably led to serious clashes with foreign officers seconded to Cairo.

Whether he was dismissed from that post in 1940 at Britain's insistence or whether he deserted to reach the Axis forces in the Libyan desert are controversial points. In the event, he was caught and court-martialled in 1941 but freed a few months later. From 1940 until the 1952 military coup d'état, Al Masri secretly advised the "Free Officers", counselling them to pursue revolutionary activities. Nasser offered him to lead the revolution but he declined, pleading ill health, but more likely because he did not wish to play a secondary role to the Ra'is. Instead, he accepted the post of ambassador to Moscow in 1953, and retired in 1954. He died in Cairo in 1965.

Dr Joseph A. Kéchichian is an author, most recently of Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons (2008).

 

Published on the third Friday of each month, this article is part of a series on Arab leaders who greatly influenced political affairs in the Middle East.

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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A part-time fry cook and would-be terrorist admitted plotting to blow up a federal courthouse in the Illinois capital city and was sentenced Monday to 28 years in prison.

Michael Finton, 31, pleaded guilty to one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against a federal building in downtown Springfield in September 2009. The blast also was supposed to destroy the nearby office of U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock.

Although Finton thought he was planning the attack with a member of al-Qaida, he was actually talking to an undercover government agent.

Finton, who also went by the name Talib Islam, parked a van in front of the courthouse, believing the van was packed with explosives. Then he made a cellphone call that he thought would trigger the blast.

But the explosives were fake and the phone call did nothing.

"In pleading guilty, the defendant acknowledges that he attempted to detonate what he believed was an actual bomb with the intent to destroy the Federal Building," said Finton's plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

The body which claims to be the voice of Britain's Muslims has told women that wearing the veil is "not open to debate".
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said that not covering the face is a "shortcoming" and suggested that any Muslims who advocate being uncovered could be guilty of rejecting Islam.
In a statement published on its website the MCB, warns: "We advise all Muslims to exercise extreme caution on this issue, since denying any part of Islam may lead to disbelief.
"Not practising something enjoined by Allah and his Messenger… is a shortcoming. Denying it is much more serious."
The statement quotes from the Koran: "It is not for a believer, man or woman, that they should have any option in their decision when Allah and his Messenger have decreed a matter."

Grand Mufti claims Egypt’s Islam is moderate

 

By Barry Rubin

Barry Rubin

HERZLIYA, Israel — Ali Gomaa, grand mufti of Egypt, writes in the New York Times:

“Egypt’s religious tradition is anchored in a moderate, tolerant view of Islam. We believe that Islamic law guarantees freedom of conscience and expression (within the bounds of common decency) and equal rights for women. And as head of Egypt’s agency of Islamic jurisprudence, I can assure you that the religious establishment is committed to the belief that government must be based on popular sovereignty.”

Well, without getting into things like official clerics endorsing suicide bombings, here’s what they don’t tell you: Gomaa is a Mubarak appointee. He is regarded as a “parrot” for the fallen regime. The Muslim Brotherhood is already demanding his resignation.

Either he will quit, be forced out, or eventually be replaced by someone whose view of Islam is closer to that of the Brotherhood than his. And they don’t believe Islamic law guarantees freedom of conscience and expression or equal rights for women.

And note that last phrase. He’s saying, after supporting the Mubarak dictatorship for decades, that he now is supporting democracy. But if government is based on popular sovereignty doesn’t that mean that the grand mufti should reflect prevailing views of Islam, which includes–according to reliable polls–overwhelming support for Koranic amputation and stoning punishments, killing anyone who converts to another religion, and other things that don’t seem to moderate and tolerant?

The entire religious establishment in Egypt has been organized to fight Islamism and the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that will probably control about one-third of the next parliament. And many Egyptians who don’t like the Brotherhood will also see Gomaa as a remnant of the dictatorship they want to eliminate.

All mosques must be government approved; mosque leaders are controlled by the government; religious education is controlled by the government; the head of the al-Azhar mosque-university and the grand mufti (Gomaa) are appointed by the government; clerics are allotted television time and media space by the government.

Guess what? There’s a new government and thus a “new” Islam.

Incidentally, the Brotherhood is now calling for a Saudi-style morality police with the powers of arrest. Is that the moderate, tolerant style Gomaa is advocating?

There are three points many are missing on the issue of Islam in Egypt:

1. Many who don’t like the Brotherhood and will vote for other candidates want stricter social controls. Will the revolution ultimately bring Egyptians more freedom or less freedom?

2. The Brotherhood will be a political power and other parties will make deals with it in which they give the Brotherhood what it wants on religious-related, social matters, and even foreign policy issues in exchange for Brotherhood support for their own priorities.

3. Beyond the Brotherhood there are (and will be more) radical violent Islamists who will carry out terrorism against uppity women, secularists, Christians, and Israeli or Western targets. Many of them were radicalized by being in the Brotherhood. With the Brotherhood legalized and growing there will be many more such people. The government will not crack down on their base-building and propaganda activities. How tough will it be on their terrorism?
Who Will Be Egypt’s Next President? Find Out Here Five Months Ahead of Time

There are twenty candidates running for Egypt’s presidency. Most are not serious candidates but can split the vote for various blocs. I think the winner will be the radical nationalist Amr Moussa, which isn’t great but is better than an Islamist regime.

Moussa, former Egyptian foreign minister and then secretary-general of the Arab League, has lots of advantages. He has more name recognition by far than any opponent. As a veteran of the old regime he has the votes of Mubarak supporters. As a radical nationalist, Moussa appeals to many Egyptians. He is not an Islamist in any way, which will appeal to the majority of Egyptians who don’t want the Muslim Brotherhood to rule. And he knows how to be a demagogue. .

The twenty candidates include two women, a Christian, two retired generals, and a couple of journalists. But there are no Islamists, or at least no Muslim Brotherhood representatives, among them. The Brotherhood won’t run a candidate and will have to decide who to vote for.

Now, here’s what I want to tell you. There is only one other candidate from the old establishment so that vote—perhaps one-quarter of the electorate?—will go to Moussa.

But, there are five leftists and six liberals who will split those two blocs to smithereens, if I can coin a phrase. The leftist bloc is relatively small but the following are all running:

Abdallah al-Ash’al, pan-Arab nationalist.

Hamadein Sabahi, Al-Karama (Dignity) party.

Hussein Abd al-Razeq, neo-Communist Al-Taggam’u Party.

Magdi Hussein, Al-’Amal Party

Sameh ‘Ashour, Nasserist Party.

Incidentally, several of these people—notably al-Ash’al and Hussein, get along very nicely with the Brotherhood. How can Marxists, radical nationalists, and Islamists all work together? Well, that’s Egyptian politics.

Yet that’s not the key problem. Remember those young pro-democratic Facebook liberals who supposedly were going to rule Egypt? Well, they are all running against each other, splitting an already small voting bloc into a microscopic one. The six rivals are:

Mohamed ElBaradei, who is more popular and better-known by far with Western journalists than with Egyptians.

Hisham Al-Bastawisi, a judge who was one of the first to come out against Mubarak.

Ayman Nour, al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, who ran against Mubarak in the previous election and spent four years in prison.

Midhat Khafaji, deputy head of the al-Ghad party who is running against Nour, the party’s leader!

Buthaina Kamel, a tv host who is from the Kefaya movement, another early anti-Mubarak group.

Wissam Abd al-Gawwad, a teacher who founded the Egyptians for Change association and the al-Nahhar party.

While only the first four are more important, that’s still a pretty big field. Remember also that when it comes time to assemble lists for the parliamentary election such splits will be even more damaging.

Here are the two interesting questions:

–Who will the Brotherhood back with its twenty to thirty percent base? They were supporting ElBaradei (yes, Islamists backing a liberal because he isn’t so liberal) but have quarreled with him lately.

–Will Moussa organize his own party which, if successful, could come in first in the parliamentary election.

But one thing isn’t in much doubt: President Amr Moussa sounds likely.

*

*
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. GLORIA Center site: http://www.gloria-center.org  He may be contacted at barry.rubin@sdjewishworld.com.  Material for this column was excerpted from Rubin’s previous columns in the Jerusalem Post

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Avignon, France: A young woman left the southern French city of Avignon for Paris Monday wearing a niqab to defy a ban on full-face veils in public places on the first day it came into force.
"I had been invited to take part in a television programme which I am going for and I find that today is April 11, the first day of the application of the ban," Kenza Drider, 32, told reporters before boarding a train for Paris.
"This law infringes my European rights, I cannot but defend them that is to say my freedom to come and go and my religious freedom," the voluntary worker said. "This law breaches these rights," the mother of four said.
France - home to Europe's biggest Muslim population - is the first European country to risk stirring social tensions by putting a ban on the burqa and the niqab.
Drider's husband Allal said: "According to this law, my wife would have to remain cloistered at home, do you find that normal?
"She has been wearing a veil for 13 years and it has not shocked anyone," he added.

The controversial French ban on wearing a full veil in public comes into force on April 11. The law, which forbids the wearing of full face coverings, would affect an estimated 2,000 Muslim women in France who wear the "niqab".

For weeks as international pressure built against him, Muammar al-Gaddafi insisted again and again that the rebel forces that he was fighting in eastern Libya were linked to al-Qaeda. The mere fact that Gaddafi said it was seemingly enough for virtually all commentators to dismiss the claim out of hand. And in case doubts about the source were not enough, then we had the New York Times to send a reporter to Darnah, one of the eastern Libyan towns at the heart of the supposed Islamist uprising, and to assure us that there was nothing to see there, “move along.”

But the problem is that it is not only Muammar al-Gaddafi who has identified the coastal cities of Libya’s eastern Cyrenaica region as al-Qaeda strongholds. The analysts of the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy at West Point have as well. The findings of the latter are based on the so-called Sinjar Records: captured personnel records identifying foreign combatants who joined al-Qaeda in Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007. (The full study is available online here. The relevance of the study to the current situation in Libya was first pointed out by Andrew Exum in a blog post here.)

The West Point analysts’ statistical study of the al-Qaeda personnel records comes to the conclusion that one country provided “far more” foreign fighters in per capita terms than any other: namely, Libya. Furthermore, the records show that the “vast majority of Libyan fighters that included their hometown in the Sinjar Records resided in the country’s Northeast.”

The contributions of two cities in particular stand out. One of these has in the last month become a household name: Benghazi. The second is precisely Darnah: the city in which, according to Libyan government sources, an Islamic emirate was declared when the unrest started in February and that thereby earned a visit from the New York Times to prove that it was not so. Darnah lies to the east of Benghazi, behind the battle lines created by the furthest advance of Libyan government forces prior to the announcement of Thursday’s UN Security Council resolution.

While in Darnah, New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid even spoke with Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi: the man who, according to Libyan government sources, had declared the Islamic emirate. Shadid found al-Hasadi “running Darnah’s defenses.” According to Shadid’s would-be reassuring account of their conversation, al-Hasadi “praises Osama bin Laden’s ‘good points,’ but denounces the 9/11 attacks on the United States.” (One must read backwards from the introduction of al-Hasadi’s name into Shadid’s narrative to realize that these quotes come from him.)