Eric Trager gets scared after interviewing a number of Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarians:
[P]erhaps the most telling indicator of the Brotherhood’s theocratic outlook were the future parliamentarians’ comments on whether they would permit those who do not believe in the sharia to criticize or challenge it. The answer was, without exception, no. “It’s not allowed for Christians to come and say that the sharia is wrong,” said Abouel Fotouh. “They are not specialists.” Mukhtar agreed. “There is no ultimate freedom, because your freedom ends at the freedom of other people,” he told me. “And if I humiliate things that you respect, I violate your freedom.” When I told Mukhtar about a video that a friend had sent me depicting Salafists calling for holy war against the Jews, he laughed and suddenly transformed into a civil libertarian. “People are free to say what they want,” he said. He proceeded to rant against Israel.
Mara Revkin explains the electoral success of the even more extreme Salafis.
(Photo: A Egyptian man throws back a teargas canister fired by policement as hundreds of Coptic Christians marching in Cairo on November 17, 2011 came under attack by assailants throwing stones and bottles at them. Security officials said 25 people were lightly injured in subsequent clashes that took place when Coptic protesters were marching to demand justice for the Christian victims of a clash with soldiers in October that left at least 25 people dead, most of them Christian Copts. By STR/AFP/Getty Images.)
