Egyptian constitutional referendum to go forward in a week, Morsi withdraws controversial decree
Muslim Brotherhood keeps its eye on the prize
It was just announced that the December 15 referendum on the controversial new Islamic Constitution will go forward as planned reports Ahram Online:
Islamic scholar Selim El-Awa, a member of Egypt’s National Dialogue, announced that president Mohamed Morsi had called off the controversial constitutional declaration he issued last month.
El-Awa, who was among more than 40 national figures attending a lengthy meeting with Morsi on Saturday in a bid to ease growing tensions between the president and opposition, revealed that a new constitutional declaration will replace the 22 November decree, which sparked deadly clashes in front of the presidential palace the past few days.
The announcement heeds one of two key demands of the anti-Morsi protesters.
However, El-Awa said the referendum on the new draft constitution, slated for 15 December, will go ahead as scheduled, defying the demonstrators who believe the proposed national chart does not fulfill the aspirations of Egyptians.
The withdrawal of the declaration, which put Morsi above the judiciary, will placate Western headline writers, but doesn’t change the big prize, which is the constitution. That referendum will go forward, with Morsi suggesting some form of martial law might be declared to ensure the vote takes place, via WaPo:
It remains unclear whether the new moves will be enough to ease a political crisis that had degenerated in recent days into unprecedented scenes of division, with Morsi’s Islamist backers and his secular and liberal opponents hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails and beating each other bloody with sticks.
Tanks were deployed to the streets around the palace where those clashes took place.
Earlier Saturday, as the national dialogue began, Morsi appeared to be preparing to grant the military broad powers to arrest civilians and keep public order until a new constitution is approved and parliamentary elections held, according to a report Saturday in the state-run newspaper al-Ahram. The move was approved by Morsi’s cabinet, the newspaper said, and would require him to issue a new decree for it to take effect, which Morsi had not done by late Saturday night.
The new Constitution will change Egypt into an Islamist state, via Times of Israel:
One of Egypt’s most prominent ultraconservative Muslim clerics had high praise for the country’s draft constitution. Speaking to fellow clerics, he said this was the charter they had long wanted, ensuring that laws and rights would be strictly subordinated to Islamic law.
“This constitution has more complete restraints on rights than ever existed before in any Egyptian constitution,” Sheik Yasser Borhami assured the clerics. “This will not be a democracy that can allow what God forbids or forbid what God allows.”
The draft constitution that is now at the center of worsening political turmoil would empower Islamists to carry out the most widespread and strictest implementation of Islamic law that modern Egypt has seen. That authority rests on the three articles that explicitly mention Shariah, as well as obscure legal language buried in a number of other articles that few noticed during the charter’s drafting but that Islamists insisted on including.
According to both supporters and opponents of the draft, the charter not only makes Muslim clerics the arbiters for many civil rights, it also could give a constitutional basis for citizens to set up Saudi-style “religious police” to monitor morals and enforce segregation of the sexes, imposition of Islamic dress codes and even harsh punishments for adultery and theft — regardless of what laws on the books say.
The Islamist clerics who run Morsi were not going to let Morsi’s judicial decree get in the way (via Instapundit):
I expected the worst as I watched on television one day the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Badie, who was not elected by anyone, walking in front of President Mohammed Mursi.
The president is the first Egyptian, and must walk in front of everyone. But it is clear that Dr. Mursi continues to consider himself a member of the Guidance Bureau of the group, before being the president of Egypt. Therefore, he is attempting to impose on half of the Egyptians who did not vote for him his religious convictions, rather than a national policy that would accommodate all Egyptians.
The prize is just a week away.
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Comments
How do you say, “LULZ” in Arabic (or as Prez-O-Bama would say, ‘in Egyptian’)?
Sounds like? Sounds like? Prez-O-Bama and the way he dictates to those who lost in his inimitable, “Elections have consequences” meme.
Yeah, Bozo… 1.2% is a helluva mandate.
I recommend Andrew Bostom’s book, Sharia vs Freedom, to really appreciate what that Egyptian Constitution will mean.
I read it and it was like an epiphany on why the UN pushes many of the policies it does that seem to make no sense.
Largest voting block in the UN. Use education to shut down the primacy of reason in the West and what historically gave their economies their vibrancy.
Wide Open for a Power Play.
That’s not all that’s going on but it fits too well not to be part of it.
Put an end to their shenanigans by giving the OIC one vote in the UN. They like to talk about ummah? Treat them like an ummah and given them only one vote so they’ll stop corrupting everything and spreading their vicious hatred.
Morsi has stepped in the proverbial camel dung, and is attempting to walkback his brazen grab at power. The Egyptian people aren’t buying it. I don’t see the unrest tapering off until they get a government that is responsive to the needs of their citizens: Safety, economic growth and stability in the region. Kind of a cart pushes horse analogy, as citizens demand what the government ought to be providing in the first place.
Once I walked past a spiritual renaissance cafe where people were wearing pyramid hats .
These hats were to let thesun shine in on an angle direct to a higher primeval thought process.
I thnk you need to sit near a window. yours is not working.
A government responsive to the needs of the people? That is not Islam. The Koran is their manual. Sharia is their law. Jihad in the path of allah is their way. All of that means that secular law which espouses the values you are articulating is dismissed and the individual must submit to whatever because he is submitting to allah. Brutality is the way of things and a man can only endure, inshallah, so they say. These people who are roiling in Egypt and crying out for freedom are viciously attacking Islam which allows of no freedom for anyone. If they believe that having tasted the sweet wine of freedom they can go back to the vile bondage of Islam with quiet minds, they need their heads examined.
Shameless plug: we’re following this closely at Rantburg (where I am a moderator). Thanks to Bill on the story above; we’re citing it at the Burg. We roll over the blog every night at midnight ET, and we’ll have commentary then.
We know why the democrat fascist movement gives the Muslim Brotherhood a pass for murder and oppression. But I’m curious why they gave them a pass for sexism. Shouldn’t it be the “Muslim Siblinghood?”
Democratic leverage. Democracy is not the objective.
Pakistan – a bombing a day, muslims killing muslims, Christians, anyone else in the way.
Iran – totalitarian religious intolerance, persecution.
Saudi Arabia – ditto.
Egypt
Libya
Syria
Yemen
Sudan
Uganda
Nigeria
Mali – all with horror stories of beheadings, crucifixions, rapes…
Qatar, Dubai…Vegas on steroids.
Islam, the black plague of misery and death of this century.
Islamic countries fraught with violence, injustice, misogyny, pedophilia, with economies built on female and child labor, slavery, drug trade.
Nevertheless, they believe they are the righteous ones. That means that they have the right to kill us. We have no rights except to allow ourselves to get dead. If we kill them back in return, then they must kill more of us because we did not appreciate our place in the order of things, so we did not respond with appropriate submissiveness by asking to have more of us killed.
Morsi is engaging in what Muslims call a ‘hudna’. As any Israeli can tell you, that means he is throttling back to recoup so he can launch another attack. The ‘hudna’ sounds like a ceasefire, but is essentially deceptive. Osama bin Ladin escaped Tora Bora because somebody in command didn’t understand the ‘hudna’.
[…] past weekend Morsi tried an Obama style flim-flam by announcing his dictatorial decree is now muoot even as he issued a replacement decree which […]