Should Americans fear an Islamist takeover in Egypt?

The Muslim Brotherhood is poised to grab a powerful role if Egypt's Hosni Mubarak falls. Would that be disastrous for the U.S.?

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood rallied with other Egyptian opposition groups in Cairo last December.
(Image credit: Corbis)

With a popular uprising threatening to topple Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israel is warning that the country could be taken over by Islamic extremists. "It has happened," says Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. "It happened in Iran." But leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian opposition group, insist they merely want to be part of the "fabric of society." Will Islamists win control of Egypt's government — and would that spell disaster for U.S. interests in the Middle East? (Watch an Al Jazeera report about the protests)

Anti-Western Islamists will soon control Egypt: This is a disaster in the making, says Ron Leshem in Israel's Haaretz. Egyptians will rally behind the Muslim Brotherhood because it is the only group organized enough to deliver "rapid change" — then radical Islamists will "be in control of the best-trained and best-equipped army in the Middle East." The "proponents of sane and secular freedom will wake up too late," just like in Iran, where they fought to kick out the Shah only to be "hanged in the city squares" when the mullahs took over.

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