Three More Sobering Observations About Egypt's Elites and Masses

The “authoritatively” Jew-hating late Muslim Pope, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, with the witless Karen Hughes

Female genital mutilation–sanctioned by Shafiite Islamic Law–remains rampant (97% of women thus mutilated) in Egypt

In follow-up to my earlier posting about widespread Egyptian Muslim support for the strict application of the Sharia (74%), and the re-establishment of a trans-national Islamic Caliphate (67%), here are three additional sobering observations about Egypt’s elites and masses:

1) The Anti- Human Rights, Sharia Supremacist Cairo Declaration which abrogates the US Bill of Rights, and Universal Declaration of Human Rights placing them and all “man made” human rights constructs under the Sharia–was as its name implies–drafted and ratified in Cairo.

2) Historian David Littman reported to the UN Human Rights Commission on April 23, 2010, “The FGM (female genital mutilation) figure for Egypt… remains today a deadly 97%” This barbaric practice is sanctioned by the Shafiite school of Sunni Islamic Law that predominates in Egypt. The predictable medical complications of this barbarity–acute (“severe pain, shock, infection, bleeding, acute urinary infection, tetanus, and death”) and chronic (“chronic pain, difficulties with micturition and menstruation, pelvic infection leading to infertility, and prolonged and obstructed labor during childbirth”)–are described in this 1993 British Medical Journal report.

3) The late Muslim Pope Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Grand Imam of Cairo’s Al Azhar University from 1996 till his death last March 2010, wrote a 700 pp. treatise rationalizing traditional Islamic Jew hatred, past and present, sanctioned homicide bombings against Israeli non-combatants, and supported “martyrdom” attacks on US troops in Iraq–although under pressure he eventually equivocated on this latter justification,

Tantawi’s academic magnum opus, Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, included these words rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred (translated, here):

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word {Koranic citations here]….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims {Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

Sheikh Tantawi never mollified such hatemongering beliefs while Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on “dialogue” (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs” (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear. Tantawi’s statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis:

…anyone who avoids meeting with the enemies in order to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes, is a coward. My stance stems from Allah’s book [the Koran], more than one-third of which deals with the Jews…[I] wrote a dissertation dealing with them [the Jews], all their false claims and their punishment by Allah. I still believe in everything written in that dissertation. [i.e., Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, cited above]