Islamists secure lead in Egypt’s parliamentary elections

By Leila Fadel, Saturday, January 7, 6:27 PM

CAIRO — Islamist parties, as expected, secured Saturday a majority of seats in the lower house of Egypt’s first post-revolution parliament, setting the stage for intensive political dealmaking before the legislature meets at the end of the month.

According to party projections, Islamists won about 62 percent of the popular vote in the final round of the multi­phased elections, although the final result will not be known until after runoffs for individual seats are held this week.

The Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, is now clearly the most powerful political force in the first elected body since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February, with no one party winning an outright majority.

Freedom and Justice said in a statement on its Web site that it appears to have won 41 percent of the seats in the lower house, followed by 21 percent for the ultraconservative Salafist Nour Party. Whatever alliance the relatively moderate Islamist party cobbles together is likely to control both the legislature’s agenda and the makeup of a body that will write the country’s constitution, analysts say.

The lower house, known as the People’s Assembly, is the most important body in Egypt’s bicameral system. It includes 498 seats chosen by voters and an additional 10 to be chosen by the country’s interim military rulers in their capacity as Egypt’s de facto presidential authority.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST 

A Lebanese-American Journalist Reflects on the Arab Spring: Anthony Shadid

Veteran war correspondent Anthony Shadid spent much of the past decade in Baghdad covering the Iraq war, first for The Washington Post and then for The New York Times. Last December, Shadid left Baghdad for his home in Beirut, Lebanon, where he’s been based for more than a decade.

“It was amazing to me how many conversations I was having with people about how dejected they were, how disappointed, how pessimistic they were about where the Arab world was,” he tellsFresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “… And so remarkably, just a week or two later, the uprising began in Tunisia.”

Shadid reported from Tunisia and then from the uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Bahrain. He says 2011 has been one of the most unbelievable years he ever could have imagined experiencing in the Middle East region.

“I think back to this idea that a generation ago, the Iranian revolution was this event that changed the Middle East,” he says. “And we’re [talking about] six revolts or revolutions or uprisings all happening, in a lot of respects, at the very same time.”

Shadid says the euphoria felt in places like Tunisia and Egypt throughout the spring has now passed.

“I think there’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty of where we’re headed,” he says. “I guess after being a pessimist in Baghdad for so long, I remain an optimist. I think that optimism comes from this idea that these societies — that have been moribund for so long — have been revived or rejuvenated. … And that very dynamism of those societies leaves hope for the future.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM NPR 

Rival Islamist blocs leading in Egyptian vote

It’s been a historic week for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the prime beneficiary in the first round of voting for the country’s new parliament. Fully 62 per cent of eligible Egyptians cast ballots this week, and more of them voted for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party than for any other party or alliance.

 

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VIDEO

While election officials declined Friday evening to reveal returns until all three rounds of voting have been completed in early January, leaks from the organization and from judges overseeing the process indicate that about 40 per cent of the ballots were cast for the Islamist FJP.

For them, that’s the good news.

However, the last thing the Brotherhood wanted was to have its upstart Islamist rivals, the Salafists, running in second place in the voting, with as much as 25 per cent of the vote.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE GLOBE AND MAIL 

Egypt’s Doomed Election

EGYPT, the largest and most important country to overthrow its government during the Arab Spring, is careening toward a disastrous parliamentary election that begins on Nov. 28 and could bring the country to the brink of civil war.

As protesters fill Tahrir Square once again and violence spreads throughout Cairo, the military government’s legitimacy is becoming even more tenuous. The announcement Tuesday of a “National Salvation Government” may stem the violence for now, but the coming vote will not lead to a stable democracy.

The election is likely to fail, not because of vote-stealing or violence, but because the rules cobbled together by Egypt’s military leaders virtually guarantee that the Parliament elected will not reflect the votes of the Egyptian people.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

Church Protests in Cairo Turn Deadly

CAIRO — A demonstration by Christians angry about a recent attack on a church touched off a night of violent protests here against the military council now ruling Egypt, leaving 24 people dead and more than 200 wounded in the worst spasm of violence since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February.

The sectarian protest appeared to catch fire because it was aimed squarely at the military council that has ruled Egypt since the revolution, at a moment when the military’s latest delay in turning over power has led to a spike in public distrust of its authority.

When the clashes broke out, some Muslims ran into the streets to help defend the Christians against the police, while others said they had come out to help the army quell the protests in the name of stability, turning what started as a march about a church into a chaotic battle over military rule and Egypt’s future.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Islam Debate Egypt Needs

Six months after a coalition of activist groups in Egypt toppled Hosni Mubarak from power, many in the West are once again raising alarms that the so-called Arab Spring is merely the harbinger of an Islamist takeover of the Middle East.

The latest salvo comes in response to a rally held in Tahrir Square last Friday that was dominated by Islamist and Salafist (ultra-conservative Muslim) groups, many of them associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The sheer size and strength of the demonstration was, for many, a sign that the dream of democracy in Egypt may be giving way to the reality of theocracy. The Washington Post wrote that the Islamists’ presence at the rally “was a stunning show of force that left the liberal pioneers of Egypt’s revolution reeling.”

It is true that Islamists comprised the largest and most vocal of the more than 25 different Egyptian organizations, most of them labor and youth groups, who organized last week’s mass show of unity against the country’s military rulers. But that is a reflection of their superior organizational skills and their ability to mobilize their members, and not of their political clout or their national support.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST 

Arab Youth Step in Where Islamism Failed

By David Gardner in London

Only six months on and the metaphors are already starting to grate. The Arab spring has entered a long, hot summer and, in the view of some commentators, is headed for the deep freeze of winter. There is something unexamined about this view, which appears to hanker after the old order in the Middle East, and perhaps wants it replaced with some sort of status quo-lite.

But has the pent-up yearning for change across the Arab world really gone so wrong?

There was never even a remote possibility that the transition from entrenched, often western-backed autocracies could be anything other than messy and prolonged, and often violent. The successful topplings of the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes in Tunisia and Egypt are seen as peaceful – which they were in comparison to the present conflicts in Syria and Libya. Yet, in Egypt, for example, while the tactics of the Tahrir Square revolutionaries were for the most part non-violent, 850 people were still killed by regime forces, according to official figures.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON

US Reaches out to Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

CAIRO, Egypt — The U.S. government announced today it was opening a dialogue with Islamist political parties amid sweeping changes brought on by the Arab Spring and announced it was seeking “limited contacts” with members of Egypt’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who recently visited Egypt, said, “It is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence. We welcome therefore dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us.”

Clinton made the comments to reporters while traveling in Budapest, according to the Associated Press.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE GLOBAL POST 

A Coptic Evangelical’s Reason for Backing the Muslim Brotherhood

CAIRO // Rafik Habib likes to finish his days at a Costa Coffee shop near his home in Rehab City on the outskirts of Cairo. He drinks an espresso, reads the newspapers … and defends the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamist organisation needs little help from one man: surveys show it has support from at least 15 per cent of Egyptians. But Dr Habib is an exception. He is a Coptic Christian intellectual who crossed sectarian lines to join the Brotherhood’s newly established Freedom and Justice Party as third-in-command.

“A large segment of Muslims think it was a good step, except some Salafis,” he says in his sparse office dotted with 1970s furniture.

“But the Christian community in general has refused my choice, and especially my decision to join as a founder.”

Some of his detractors have said his position in the group is merely cosmetic, but Christians have been more vitriolic, calling it an act of treason.

For Dr Habib, 52, it was one of the most difficult political decisions of his life.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NATIONAL

Egypt: Thousands March in Tahrir Square, Christians Maintain Sit in

Thousands of protesters marched in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday to stress the unity between Egypt’s Muslims and Christian Copts following sectarian clashes that ended with a dozen dead and more than 200 injured last week.

The march, which coincided with a rally in the square in solidarity with Palestinians, began with a Christian Mass followed by Friday prayers.

Cleric Mazhar Shahin, who delivered the Friday prayer speech, said Islam and Christianity do not teach hatred or incitement of violence.

Timeline: Revolution in Egypt

“Such strife is intended by a group of people who are neither Muslims nor Christians,” Shahin said as he warned Egyptians not to let extremists divide them.

Both Muslim and Coptic Christian protesters joined the demonstration, chanting, “Muslims and Copts are one hand” and carrying banners that said, “Egypt is for all Egyptians.”

“We need to have constitutional guarantees securing equal citizenship rights and respecting all religions without discrimination between Muslims and Copts,” Adel Mahmoud, who is Muslim, told Babylon and Beyond.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE LA TIMES