Walid Phares: Other Groups Need to Speak Out in Egypt

Walid Phares, a Fox News terrorism analyst and author of The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East, reappeared with Imus today to assess the latest developments in Egypt, where, despite days of protests that have at times been violent, President Hosni Mubarak remains in office.
 
Though Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years, has agreed not to run for reelection in September, Egyptians want action sooner. In the meantime, Phares told Imus, “The Muslim Brotherhood are increasingly in control of the microphones.”
 
Meaning, essentially, that the banned political organization is setting the agenda. “They want to establish, in Egypt, an Islamic state, which could be somewhere between what’s in Saudi Arabia or Sudan, and not as far as the Taliban,” Phares said. Sharia law can be interpreted broadly, to include considerations for modernity, or tightly, based on precise restrictions from the 7^th century. The Muslims Brotherhood, Phares noted, favors the narrow interpretation.
 
Furthermore, the Muslims Brotherhood’s position on Israel is, well, that it does not exist. “They do want the Arab world and all other countries to basically boycott Israel, and they have, in the past, called for war against Israel,” Phares said. “I don’t think that tomorrow they’re going to be calling for it, but if they are part of the government, if they are a majority in the government, or if they control the regime, they’re going to first of all cancel the Camp David agreements. That, they’ve said.”
 
The Muslim Brotherhood represents only around 15 percent of Egyptians’ beliefs, according to Phares, but that number feels much higher when other groups remain silent.
 
“For example, if the Muslim Brotherhood say, ‘Israel is the enemy,’ even if a majority of Egyptians do not want to go to war, you would find very few who would say, ‘Israel is not the enemy,’” Phares explained. Likewise anti-American sentiments.
 
“The Muslim Brotherhood might not have a lot of membership, or influence many people directly, ideologically,” he continued. “But they control the public space, the public debate.”
 
Not waging “a war of ideas” against the Muslim Brotherhood has, in his view, been one of Mubarak’s biggest mistakes. Phares believes the original organizers of the recent demonstrations, which he described as a group of disparate bloggers called The April 6 Youth Movement, must make themselves heard.
 
“They were the ones who encouraged many people in the middle class and even labor—secular people—to take to the streets, the 100 or 200,000 in the beginning,” he said, and called on those so far nameless people to come forward. “They should be brought to the forefront of negotiations with the government.”
 
With heretofore far-flung notions—like the merging of the Muslim Brotherhood with Marxist forces to create one world order and destroy the West— gaining traction, Phares insisted the United States tread lightly.
 
“We really need to have good crafting here in Washington, so that we will have an alliance between the military and the seculars,” he said. “That’s the only way to block the fundamentalists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and even the other radicals.”
 
Sounds like a real hoot.
 
-Julie Kanfer