Egypt cracks down on Islamists

Egypt’s military government this week intensified its brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, charging ousted President Mohammed Morsi and 14 other leaders of the Islamist group with inciting the murder of protesters last December. Morsi, Egypt’s first elected president, has been held incommunicado since he was ousted by the army at the beginning of July, amid massive demonstrations against his one-year rule. Since then, almost the entire leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood—-including its spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie—has been apprehended, and this week 11 of its supporters were sentenced to life in prison for attacking the army. The military government of Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has barred pro-Morsi television networks and excluded Islamists from a new 50-member panel in charge of amending the country’s constitution.

Since Morsi’s ouster, the military government has gone “out of its way” to insist that the Muslim Brotherhood has a place at the political table, said James Dorsey in HuffingtonPost.com. But it’s also done everything it could to exclude them: imprisoning their leaders and killing hundreds of members while breaking up pro-Morsi protests. El-Sissi’s agenda is now clear: to “cut the Brotherhood down to size, if not destroy it.”

Who would mourn its passing? asked the Financial Times in an editorial. Banned in Egypt for most of its 85-year history, the organization was hardly a model of democracy when it finally gained power. During Morsi’s short presidency, he enthusiastically targeted critical media, tried to enshrine strident Islamic law in the constitution, and granted himself unlimited powers. No wonder “there’s little popular sympathy for the Brotherhood’s plight.”

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Meanwhile, the military is pushing ahead with its transition plans, said Matt Bradley in WSJ.com, ordering that a constitution be produced in the next 60 days, to be followed by elections. Let’s hope Islamists are given at least a minor role within “Egypt’s nascent democracy.” Because if not, they may see only one alternative: to “resort to violence to defend their once dominant political position.”