SNAP ANALYSIS: Elbaradei, The Muslim Brotherhood, and a Cautionary Note

Mohamed Elbaradi

[Originally posted in: Live-blog: The Egyptian Revolt – Day 6 – Beginning of the End?]

Al Jazeera English has reported that the Muslim Brotherhood has confirmed that Elbaradei is considered by opposition groups to be the head of a coalition of the opposition groups.

While there are some saying that it is not necessarily a bad thing to have the Muslim Brotherhood involved in a new government, it remains to be seen what kind of influence they will have in a post-Mubarak Egypt.

I would like to remind people that after the 1979 revolution in Iran, the secularists and the various religious groups united to form a coalition government. Within a year, the Islamic Republic party (two of the members of which were Rafsanjani and Khamenei) completely took control and turned Iran into a totalitarian state in the guise of a so-called “Islamic” republic that took away many of the hard-earned rights that Iranians had gained in the last century. This regime is still in power in Iran today, executing opposition members and Iranian citizens who dare oppose them.

I would like to remind people that when Khomeini came to Iran he promised freedom, democracy and human rights. As we are seeing today — with people telling us not to worry about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — in Iran in the early days of the revolution people said the same about Khomeini and his minions. Western media and even western leaders, including former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, tried to deal with the government of Khomeini, only to see radical so-called “students” who called themselves “Followers of the Imam’s Line” occupy the U.S. embassy in Tehran and take its employees hostage for 444 days, only to release them on the day that Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President, humiliating Carter and releasing a new meme–the idea that Islamic revolution could spread throughout the world. Radical Islam has been with us since.

In fact, one of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, involved in the assassination of former liberal Egyptian President Anwar Saddat, is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, one of the leaders of Al Qaeda. Remember them?

I definitely don’t mean to be an alarmist, but I am saying that if Egyptians are not careful to make sure that the religious zealots in their country don’t try to sabotage their revolution, they may be in for a nasty surprise.

The Islamists have shown over and over again that they are willing to use extreme violence and terror to gain power. They have learned in recent years that they can also gain power through subverting the political systems of the countries in which they are active (case in point Hezbullah in Lebanon).

During the height of the revolution in Iran in 79, the Islamists burned a cinema Tehran full of people, massacring the people in side (The Rex Cinema Massacre). They were able to successfully blame the government of the Shah for this, and they leveraged the anger of the people to further their own position.

Yesterday, during the height of the protests in Egypt the hypocritical Iranian government issued a statement basically trying to imply that what is happening in Egypt is an Islamic uprising.

All I am saying is, watch out:

Learn from what happened in Iran. If and when Mubarak leaves, don’t let what happened to Iran happen to Egypt.