By Lewis Loflin
Lewis Loflin here. Raymond Ibrahim’s 2012 piece for FrontPageMagazine, below, digs into a chilling claim: Egypt’s then-President Muhammad Morsi allegedly called in 3,000 foreign jihadis to crush opposition to his Islamist agenda. It’s a stark look at how ideology can trump national interest, a theme I’ve explored in my own work—like Immigration Policy and Identity Politics, where I tackle cultural clashes, or Hispanic Anti-Semitism, on rising tensions. Ibrahim’s report spotlights the Muslim Brotherhood’s push for Sharia over Egypt’s well-being, a move that sparked revolts and echoes the identity struggles we’re still wrestling with today. Here’s his take.
By Raymond Ibrahim
FrontPageMagazine.com, December 11, 2012
http://www.meforum.org/3396/egypt-foreign-jihadis
A recent Al Khabar News report claims: “Morsi summons 3,000 jihadis from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Somalia, and Iran to be an Islamic army to strike the police and army forces” of Egypt.
Ibrahim Ali, a lawyer for various Islamic groups, stated that 3,000 leaders and members of Jihad Groups and the Islamic Group—including the brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, who assassinated President Anwar Sadat—are set to arrive in Egypt soon. Ali said these fighters hail from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia, Kenya, Iran, and London. Similar reports surfaced in November 2012, suggesting some may already be there. Earlier, in August, shortly after taking office, Morsi freed jihadi convicts from Egypt’s notorious Islamic Jihad and Islamic Group, including some on death row for major terror acts.
Morsi himself was once a convict, jailed for plotting to impose Sharia—exactly what he’s doing now, unchecked, by summoning and releasing jihadis to quash Egyptians opposing Islamization, a group that includes millions of Christians and liberal Muslims. During the elections, the vote split evenly between Morsi and secularist Ahmed Shafiq—some say Shafiq won—showing half the nation rejected Islamization. Now, widespread revolts signal even broader dissent.
A talk show on El Balad TV captured this frustration when a Muslim woman called in, telling a Brotherhood official:
You people [Muslim Brotherhood] must give people and their ideas some room; you can’t always get angry and fight—it’s unacceptable... What’s the deal? We’ve come to hate the world. I swear, if there were an empty mountain to escape to, I’d take my kids and go! You’ve made us hate our lives. I voted for Morsi—may God have paralyzed my hand! May a car have run me over on the way to vote!
Morsi’s need for support makes summoning foreign jihadis plausible. The jihadi group Ansar Al Sharia tweeted a hit list—including Coptic Pope Tawadros—of targets if Morsi falters. Violence against protesters has been brutal, often terrorist-like, with deaths, beatings, and torture. Many victims report being forced to claim “outside” agitators paid them to protest, under threat of worse.
In classic Islamist projection, the Brotherhood—enlisting foreign jihadis—frames these grassroots revolts as a foreign plot. Their priority has always been empowering Islam, not Egypt. Safwat Hegazy, a Brotherhood figure who foresaw them as “masters of the world,” wants Jerusalem as the Islamic caliphate’s capital, not Cairo’s prosperity. Former General Guide Muhammad Akef once snapped, “The hell with Egypt,” when pressed to focus on the nation over Islam.
The current General Guide, Muhammad Badie, aims to enforce Sharia, and recent evidence shows Morsi as his tool. Despite Morsi’s claims of independence, a Brotherhood official on Egyptian TV admitted, “Yes, the General Guide rules Muhammad Morsi.” The stunned host replied, “Well, that’s it; it’s over. What else is there to say?”
What more can be said about a president terrorizing citizens into accepting Sharia?
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me draft and refine this article. The final edits and perspective are my own.
