Egypt's Revolt: The Greatest Story Never Told

Over the last 18 months we have heard a lot about the “Arab Spring” and the com­ing of “Democ­racy” to places that have not seen it.

Many around the world cel­e­brated these changes. When you con­sid­er­ing how hor­ri­ble some of those deposed were, that’s to be expected.

The media and the left par­tic­u­larly where flush, espe­cially when the pro-​US Mubarak was removed. I sus­pect his hard-​line on Hamas and the Mus­lim broth­er­hood com­bined with the Amer­i­can alliance caused him to be par­tic­u­larly hated by right­eous left­ists every­where. For them his removal was a moment of true joy and ful­fill­ment, and if the odd female reporter had to suf­fer rape assault (along with plenty of other women who you will never see on a TV) well, that was the price of free­dom and still worth a huz­zah.

Fast for­ward a bit and we are more than two weeks into a sec­ond upris­ing in Egypt after the newly elected Mus­lim Broth­er­hood pres­i­dent Morsi took dic­ta­to­r­ial pow­ers for him­self less than 24 hours after he won praise for tak­ing the heat off the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood for not fight­ing Israel bro­ker­ing a cease-​fire between Israel & Hamas.

There are not only no cheers this time but it seems the west­ern media in gen­eral and the US media in par­tic­u­lar find this rev­o­lu­tion unim­por­tant and those fight­ing it not worth the trou­ble to cover.

For­get­ting all the moral ques­tions in terms of sup­port­ing self-​determination, kow­tow­ing to Islamists out of fear and cov­er­ing the rear ends of peo­ple like Obama & Clin­ton who helped these thugs in the first place, This is a crime against the news indus­try because in my opin­ion this revolt is the sin­gle most sig­nif­i­cant event so far of the 21^st cen­tury pos­si­bil­ity includ­ing ⁹⁄₁₁.

If Sep­tem­ber 11^th was the high water mark show­cas­ing the power of Islamists to the world this 2^nd revolt in Egypt could be the cat­a­lyst of their ulti­mate destruction.

Con­sider: One of the rea­sons why Islamists are so suc­cess­ful is the Mafia like old world fam­ily con­nec­tion. Think about it.

Lets say you are a Mus­lim who got sick of the rules, the repres­sion and the life and decided to go west. Sud­denly after you’ve finally estab­lished a life away from all of that you find a Saudi funded Mosque push­ing the very thing you are try­ing to escape in your area. What do you do? You were already a part of a small minor­ity in the west before ⁹⁄₁₁ and after­wards a dis­trusted one. If you don’t tow the line word gets back to the old coun­try, cousins, uncles and fam­ily have trou­ble, maybe fatal trou­ble, and that’s assum­ing they aren’t the ones out­raged at you.

On top of that you add the the hyper­sen­si­tiv­ity of the media to any cri­tique of Mus­lims. The per­son who doesn’t want to go along with pres­sure from the local mosque and com­mu­nity knows that they are not going to get any sym­pa­thy from The media. If the honor killings, the ston­ing of Amer­i­cans in Amer­ica and Molly Nor­ris can’t get press, threats, intim­i­da­tion and worse from rad­i­cal Islamists in the com­mu­nity won’t, par­tic­u­larly when there are orga­ni­za­tions like CAIR keep­ing the pres­sure on.

Now take that and mul­ti­ply it by 1,000,000 and you have the sit­u­a­tion in Egypt, in Gaza, in Saudi Ara­bia and elsewhere.

If with the pro­tec­tions that the laws of United States and West­ern Nations pro­vide, fol­lows of Islam feel intim­i­dated, how must worse must it be is when you live in a nation where a per­son can dis­ap­pear with­out effort, where the author­i­ties are used to being obeyed, where the press isn’t free, where you find your­self mon­i­tored and where the reli­gious, social and cul­tural norms are against you to the point where even if peo­ple don’t take part in acts against you, they either approve or understand?

This is the true rea­son for the stag­na­tion in the Arab World, it’s why the entire area has been one a giant feu­dal enclave for decades.

None if this is pos­si­ble with­out the fear and the belief that things will never change and unless you give in, you will be crushed.

Ter­ror­ism is a real threat in the west but total­i­tar­ian ter­ror is some­thing these peo­ple have lived with for their entire lives as a mat­ter of rou­tine.

Now pic­ture, just for a moment, the image of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood being stopped, suc­cess­fully defied by the peo­ple of Egypt, a peo­ple who have said enough, a peo­ple so angry and fed up that the nor­mal ter­ror, the nor­mal fear and the nor­mal intim­i­da­tion and some­how even blam­ing it on the Jews or Chris­tians doesn’t work?

Sud­denly the wall comes down, the per­cep­tion of invin­ci­bil­ity is gone and worst of all this hap­pens in the sin­gle most impor­tant Islamic coun­try in the world fueled by the acts of ordi­nary Egyptians.

If this rev­o­lu­tion suc­ceeds even slightly, say with the mean­ing­less replace­ment of Morsi with another Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hack, that suc­cess will be an earth­quake equiv­a­lent to Lech Walesa first day in the ship­yard in Poland stand­ing up and fighting.

It took a decade for Walesa’s activism to bear fruit and another decade for the free­dom of Poland and the nations behind the Iron cur­tain to fol­low. It might take ten times that in a cul­ture that doesn’t have the same his­tory for this to bear fruit.

But if it does it will do so for fol­low­ers of Islam far beyond the bor­ders of Egypt. It has the poten­tial to change the world.

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood under­stand this. It’s why they’re fight­ing so hard and using all of their influ­ence to keep this a non story in the west. They don’t want to risk the pro­tes­tors on the streets of Cairo and else­where to get the same inspi­ra­tion that Soviet refusenik Natan Sha­ran­sky and other got when their sto­ries were told in the west.

If they lose this fight it could be the begin­ning of the end and the Islamic world will never be the same.

How can any per­son who seri­ously gives them­selves the title of “jour­nal­ist” let this story go?