Democracy for Arabs? Not in the Murdoch world. Here’s a senior Australian editor, Alan Howe – the man has form – writing today on Egypt in Melbourne’s Herald Sun. It’s all about Israel, screw freedom or rights. The Zionist state has corrupted our souls:
Sayyid Qutb. Remember that name. You’ll hear it often in coming months and years. Indeed, he may end up being the most influential person of the 21st century.
He’s been dead 46 years. But Karl Marx was the person who most influenced the 20th century he did not live to see.
Marx’s writings inspired the communism and socialism that spread throughout large parts of the world after the Russian Revolution. The internal contradictions of communism eventually caused its collapse, as surely as China has turned away from it and the command economy.
Qutb’s influence is more menacing than Marx. The radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood that are these days inspired by his manifesto, In The Shade of The Koran, will be central to the riots and violent chaos in Cairo.
It has always been the ultimate aim of the likes of Qutb and the Koran-quoting assassins he inspires to die advancing the cause of Islam. It goes without saying that an Egypt led by Islamic theocrats would attack Israel, unleashing god knows what.
The world understands Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak corruptly keeps government and that some of his people are illegally repressed. But that draconian rule has kept Egypt stable and its Islamic core under control. After losing wars with Israel, it decided to join the modern world in accepting that country’s right to exist, even if Egyptian Muslims still see it as an enemy.