Egypt Still Burning

Protestors riot when Egyptian court sentences 21 previous rioters to death, January 26 2013.

It has been almost exactly 2 years since the "Arab Spring" ousted President Mubarak from power, and Egypt is still burning.

The Mainstream Media in the Western World showered the Muslim Brotherhood with heaps of praise leading up to (and after) its landslide victory in the national elections. Countless big name reporters talked about how the moderate, freedom loving, hardly religious anymore, modern Muslim Brotherhood was going to lead Egypt into an era of prosperity and peace. Major newspapers and networks had many special reports on how the Muslim Brotherhood was a force of peace and moderation and that it was going to help build Egypt into a nation comparable to many in the west. Meanwhile, many conservative writers who know the reality of the Middle East worried that Egypt would end up just like Iran with an all powerful theocracy ruling the nation with a Sharia-based iron fist. In that case, freedom, civil rights and peace would be destroyed, the exact opposite of what the Mainstream Media glowingly expected.

Sure enough, Egypt's President Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood quickly went down the road of hardlined extremism, as I noted in a previous blog post (Arab Spring Backfires In Egypt). He basically made him and his government immune to all judicial and lawful checks and balances. Whatever the Muslim Brotherhood wanted would be law, with no need for the messiness of democratic councils or regulation. This move prompted riots and protests throughout Egypt as people compared Morsi to the ousted former President Mubarak. Meanwhile, Egypt voted on and widely accepted a new constitution that was entirely based upon Muslim Sharia law and in no way comparable to the constitutions of western nations when it comes to freedom and justice.

This past week (January 26, 2013) Egypt's federal court decided what it was going to do about the people that rioted last year at an Egyptian soccer game (which was partly based on discontent with President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood). 21 of the 73 people charged have now been sentenced to death (usually done by hanging). The rest of the rioters still await their sentences.

The Blaze:  Egyptian Court Sentences Nearly 2 Dozen to Death For Soccer Violence
 
In response to this shocking news, MORE riots broke out across Egypt and resulted in another 50 deaths. Meanwhile, Morsi went on television practically screaming his rage at the protestors and is threatening to do everything in his power to stop and crush them. He has since announced a State of Emergency over the newest riots, which allows him to bring in the Egyptian military. Martial law for the Muslim Brotherhood win!...

The Blaze:  Egypt's President Declares State of Emergency As Violence Intensifies

This is "democracy", "freedom", and "moderation", Middle Eastern style, exactly as conservative bloggers and news reporters expected and dreaded. Meanwhile, the Mainstream Media in the west is doing its very best to stick to its original angle on Egypt and the Arab Spring by painting the new batch of rioters as a small group of anarchists who aren't happy no matter what happens. Amazing isn't it? Rioting Egyptians were praised and honoured by the media in the Arab Spring to throw out the harsh dictator Mubarak, but now under the harsh tyranny of the Muslim Brotherhood, the media vilifies the protestors. Of course this makes the protestors all the more furious. They never got the freedom they hoped for and to top it all off, their biggest ally, the western media, is now against them.


Quick Addition to Original Blog Post...

Canada Free Press:  Egypt Erupts Against The Islamist Regime Favored By Obama

Last Sunday Obama said these shockingly self congratulatory words in a Sixty Minutes interview.

“You know, when it comes to Egypt, I think, had it not been for the leadership we showed, you might have seen a different outcome there.”

Keep deluding yourself there President Obama. You created a monster. Unless that was the plan all along, Egypt's "Arab Spring" (so far) is an absolute disaster.


Related Blog Posts:
Arab Spring Backfires In Egypt
Offend Islam, Cause Riots And Violence
Innocence of Muslims?

Innocence of Muslims?

The riots in the Muslim world in the past couple of weeks, besides being tragic for the damage and harm they've caused, have been a very interesting peek into social, psychological, and political study.

I do a LOT of current events reading, and I do a LOT of study usually before I end up writing any of my blog posts, in order to make sure I get the facts right. I have always believed that you cannot have a solid position on something unless you've actually taken the time to study it. If you have not studied something, then making any sort of claim about it is akin to a blind man trying to explain the colours of a rainbow. Political issues are rife with such blind "prophets" telling other people what to believe and why, but the true test of accuracy is not found in belief, but rather, in hard facts and actual truth.

Attack On US Embassy Pre-Planned

Muslims have been rioting across the globe since September 11 when a group of Muslims (evidence strongly suggests that these were mostly militia terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda) attacked the US embassy in Libya, killing 4 people and injuring dozens others. One of the people killed was the US ambassador to the region. The attack included the use of mortars and rocket propelled grenades and many witnesses and high ranking officials within and around the area have made it very clear that the bulk of the people involved in the attack were linked to terrorist groups. What's unsettling is that evidence also strongly suggests that the US government had plenty of warning in advance that this attack was coming. This entire incident was a pre-planned terrorist attack purposely intended to coincide with the September 11 date of the World Trade Center terrorist attack in the USA that killed 3000 people in September 11 2001.

I had a person respond to a previous blog post I made about this stuff telling me that the attack in Libya and the riots had nothing at all to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks. Sorry, that's definitely wrong. The attacks were well planned in advance and purposely carried out on September 11.

USA Today: Deadly Embassy Attacks Were Days In The Making

Days of planning and online promotion by hard-line Islamist leaders helped whip up the mobs that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and launched a deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya that killed an ambassador and three others.

 Anderson Cooper, CNN: US Warned of Threats

Libyan officials say they warned the U.S. about the growing extremist presence three days before the U.S. Consulate attack that killed four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. CNN's Arwa Damon reports.

 Libyan President: No Doubt Attack Planned

Libya President Mohamed Yousef El-Magariaf said Sunday that 50 arrests have been made in connection with last week's "preplanned" attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead.

CBN News: Preplanned Attack Or Spontaneous Riot?

The president of Libya said he believes al Qaeda is responsible for the deadly attack at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

The USA has from the beginning officially stated that this was a random riot instigated by a film trailer that insulted Islam, however a huge bulk of evidence that has been piling up since the original attacks on September 11 have made it pretty clear that this was all planned well in advance of September 11 by terrorists. In fact, the personal journal of the US Ambassador to Libya even makes it clear that he was getting very concerned with the recent increases in threats and was asking for more security because he feared something might be coming in connection to September 11. Currently, the US government still says it believes the attacks were spontaneous but at the same time it has said that clearly this was a terrorist attack, and they're still investigating.

Not All Muslims Riot, But All The Riots ARE Muslim

Since September 11 2012 when the attack in Libya took place, Muslims all over the world have been rioting and protesting in connection to a film trailer called "Innocence of Muslims" that insults Islam. Some people out there have been saying that the riots have nothing to do with Islam, or Muslims, and that to label these rioters as such is wrong because it paints a bad (politically incorrect picture) of what's really going on.

But here's the thing. ALL of these attacks, riots, and protests, are being carried out by Muslims and they are doing it because of a video on YouTube that insulted Islam. They're not rioting because of taxes, high gas prices, not having the latest iPhone, or because Britney Spears is a new judge on the talent TV show "X Factor"... They're rioting over a movie that insulted Islam. Islam is the key, the factor, the core of this whole mess.

Is it all Islam? All Muslims? Absolutely not! Islam is the second largest religion in the world (a close second to Christianity). There are literally billions of Muslims across the globe and only a miniscule minority are the ones rioting. But it cannot be forgotten that the ONLY people rioting about all this ARE Muslims. It's all about the insult to Islam. That's the cause, the trigger, the reason. Not the religion itself, but the insult to that religion. That means that the riots are religiously motivated and the religion is Islam.

If this were just a small localized thing you could brush it off and say that it was a bunch of hyper sensitive bad apples in one area. But it's NOT just one little area. It's world wide!

Wikipedia: Protests Against "Innocence of Muslims"

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(UPDATE: I originally wrote the rough draft of this article late September 24. The Wikipedia page listing the summary information that I partly used for the following lists of riot locations and casualties has since been removed by a Muslim Wikipedia group as it obviously looked bad for them. Thankfully, I had a feeling something like this might happen, so I screen grabbed the website yesterday before this change took place.)

The Wikipedia group that has modified the article:

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Islam, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Islam-related articles on Wikipedia.

Here's the original Screen Capture, before the information was removed (September 24). The webpage was saved in an internet archive format. I made a screenshot of that saved page this morning so I could post it here for you all to see. The summary box on the right hand side has since been removed.

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The above link to a Wikipedia page has been tracking the incidents around the world. It does not list all of them, but it's a good place to start so you can see just how widespread and violent this whole explosion has been.

These are the places where violent protests and full fledged riots of Muslims have broken out since September 11.

Libya
Yemen
Tunisia
Sudan
Egypt
India
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Lebanon
Israel

France
Germany
Belgium
United Kingdom
Denmark
Greece
Australia

And the list continues to grow every few days.

79 deaths, 687 injuries, and thousands of arrests.

Folks, this is NO minor incident. This is a global crises. A world wide violent uprising and it's been going strong for two weeks. Greece was just added to the list a couple of days ago. The US has closed its embassies in many Muslim countries to try and protect its citizens that are working there.

In most places these violent attacks have been small, consisting of fifty to a few hundred rioters. People have been injured, killed, and have destroyed buildings and cars. The harm and damage has been substantial, far worse than other riots in recent years that have taken place in western countries over the economy (as in Europe) or the riot in Vancouver Canada because the Vancouver Canucks hockey team lost against the Boston Bruins in the NHL hockey playoffs a couple years ago. This is much bigger and much uglier because people are being killed and it's happening all over the world at the same time.

This does NOT represent all of Islam, not by a long shot. But it DOES represent SOME of the people that follow it as their religion and belief system. The whole upheaval is because of an insult to Islam, and these are Muslim people (Muslim people only) committing the mass violence and crimes on behalf of their religion. There is NO getting around that fact. That this has happened in so many countries and so many cities should be a wake up call to anyone that thinks "Islam is the religion of peace". It's got a nasty violent underbelly that though a minority, still packs a heck of a bloody punch (or sword), and it's global.

Offend Islam, Cause Riots And Violence

YouTube: Egypt And Libya Riot Over US Film

"... It [the video] was produced by a real-estate developer from California who put its trailer on YouTube, something that very few people saw before a preacher from Florida, Terry Jones, started promoting it. The same preacher who's burning of a Koran last year triggered riots in Afghanistan. This latest film obviously caught fire with Islamists, with people in the part of the world where they don't just let things like that go, as they didn't with the caricatures of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005. That triggered a lot of riots, as we remember. Also as they didn't let go with a number of other incidents."

A couple weeks ago, on September 11 (the anniversary of the horrible Muslim extremist terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York that killed over 3000 people), Muslims across the globe showed their solidarity to combat terrorism by rioting and attacking US embassies, injuring many, ruining property, and even killing a US ambassador inside one of those embassies (in Libya). The entire eruption is being blamed on a short little video online that insults Islam, though the video has actually been around since 2009.

Islam's response to insult is drastically different from the response of Christians. Christians will say how offended they are about something, but won't riot and physically attack people over it. Because of this, we get all kinds of blatant over the top crude and truely horrible insults against Christianity, God and Jesus Christ constantly. By and large, we get upset, but don't attack. We turn the other cheek. In fact, if we DO make much of a fuss about such things, we're told to shut up because it's all a matter of "free speech". Blasphemy is protected under "Free Speech" and the courts will side against the offended Christians on that basis. So we get absolutely heinous blasphemies all over the place, even in museums and universities and it's all labeled "art" and "free speech".

For example, I read a while back about a big name university (sorry, I forget which one and don't have the link) in the United States banning a small Christian group from showing Passion of The Christ on campus, meanwhile, that same university a few months later put on a production of "F***ing for Jesus", a play ridiculing and insulting Christianity, God, and especially Jesus. "F***ing for Jesus" is art protected by free speech...The list of examples likes this is endless and disgusting. But Christians, even if we make a bit of a fuss (noise) about something, are told to shut up.

Islam, on the other hand, goes into a violent rage whenever the religion is insulted, even a little. Muslims riot, protest, damage property, attack and kill people, threaten death on the blaspheming infidels, and pretty much go mad with exacting retribution. Don't get me wrong, this is by far a minority. For every 1 Muslim in the world that reacts violently to perceived insult, there are hundreds more that respond peacefully (if at all) much like Christians do. A classic example of this is if a Bible is burned by someone in a show of hatred towards the Bible or Christianity, Christians go, "That's not very nice. Now back to our lives we go." When the Koran gets burned you get riots, violence, injuries and death in the streets of Muslim nations. Death to the infidel!

Appeasement And Double Standard

What's shocking is how the Western World is responding to this sort of over reaction. Property is damaged, people are injured and even killed, and the media and government goes, "The violence is the fault of the people who insulted Islam, not the Muslims and their religion of peace..."

Everyone is blaming an anti-Islam short video for the latest rash of violence, but the truth is that there's always something. Cartoonists who make a joke about anything related to Islam get death threats, their houses are fire bombed, their families threatened, and some even flee for their lives. And that's in Western countries! In some Muslim countries if you dared say anything bad about Islam, there's a good chance you'll end up dead. Heck, just being a Christian in many of these countries is qualification for being attacked, raped or killed (your family included). Yet the bulk of the blame always seems to be pointed at the person "igniting" the flare up, the person who somehow insulted Islam, and not the people actually committing the atrocious crimes.

You know how I mentioned that Christianity has to take insult and blasphemy as "free speech" and not make a big deal out of it? Islam seems to get the opposite treatment. The White House actually told YouTube and Google to take the offending anti-Islam video down. That's right! The US government is actively trying to block content that might offend Muslims online... Government law enforcement officials even hunted down the makers of the movie to intimidate and "re-educate" them so that they won't produce such things again. Politicians are apologizing for the video's existence and saying how terrible it is that someone would make such a thing. Meanwhile, Muslims riot for justice and vengeance... Even more shocking is that Hollywood, the bastion of "freedom of speech" excuses for content that ridicules Christianity on a VERY regular basis, is in agreement with the government and mainstream media! Block the content! Stop the insults to Islam!... Talk about being monumentally hypocritical!

Conservative commentators have been talking about all this and through interviews with "people in the know" and from the words that Muslims across the world are saying every day, it's becoming clear that such angry violent responses are done with the full intention of making it illegal to insult Islam on a global scale. The idea is to scare and terrorize the world into submission. It's a coordinated strategy, and it's working.

Christians get "F***ing for Jesus" and told to shut up when we complain about it. Islam gets protection from insult under the law... That's right! Many Western countries have adopted or have been slowly adopting (or currently calling for the adoption of) laws that block free speech with regards to Islam, making it illegal to insult the religion or Muslims in any way. Even just the perception of insult or offense will get you in trouble with the law. It's been pushed forward under the banner of respect for religion, culture and people, and it trumps freedom of expression and free speech, just like how homosexuality trumps freedom of religion (or Christianity anyways) and free speech.

Maybe Muslims have their strategy right. Maybe it takes violence to stop people from insulting your religion of choice... No, probably not. If it was Christians behaving this childishly and violently, it would be the Christians that get squashed by the law, not the people insulting them in the first place. It really wouldn't matter what we do. Somehow Christianity is absolutely free game and Islam is off limits, and both stances are protected under law.