Muslim Brotherhood “Reprisals” and “Enemies of Islam.” By Andrew C. McCarthy.

Muslim Brotherhood “Reprisals” and “Enemies of Islam.” By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, August 14, 2013.

McCarthy:

More on what Nina Shea and yours truly noted earlier today: The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic supremacist allies – portrayed in the mainstream media as “peaceful protesters” subjected to unprovoked violence by Egyptian security forces – continue their jihad against Christians. And that jihad continues to be portrayed in the mainstream media as “reprisal” attacks, as if it were the Copts rather than the armed forces who had ousted the Brotherhood from power.

 

The Asia News (h/t Robert Spencer) describes a “reprisal [that] occurred immediately after last night’s clashes” in which security forces bulldozed camps that the Brotherhood refused evacuate:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s anger for the forced evacuation of the pro-Mohamed Morsi sit-ins has been unleashed against Christians. In the last few hours, the Islamists have attacked seven Catholic churches and afull fifteen religious structures of the Coptic-Orthodox Church and the Protestant church. The attacks took place in Cairo and in the governorate of Sohag (Upper Egypt). The news was announced by Fr. Rafic Greiche, spokesperson for the Egyptian Catholic Church, who underlined the fact that the Western media has remained silent about the attacks. At the moment it is unclear whether any persons have been injured or killed.

It is worth noting, for the bipartisan Beltway clerisy that thinks the solution here is to move immediately to elections (i.e., the “democracy” approach — democratic process without democratic culture — that has gotten us to this point), that the reason for the Brotherhood’s smashing electoral successes after Mubarak’s ouster was its savvy in portraying all contests as “Islam versus the enemies of Islam.” As much as we wish to imagine the Egyptian population as secular and democratic, it is today exactly the same population that only eight months ago voted overwhelmingly for a sharia constitution (after overwhelming voting Islamic supremacists into control of parliament and electing Morsi president). The attacks on the Copts are not just a continuation of jihad as usual. They are a strategic effort to link the Copts in the public mind with the armed forces that carried out the coup (as well as the minority secularists who took to the streets to demand it). The military is a revered institution, but the most significant fact of life in Egypt is Islam. If the generals are seen as partners of the Copts, they end up on the “enemies of Islam” side of the narrative spun by Islamic supremacists. As we’ve seen again and again since 2011, that is the wrong side to be on in Egypt’s “democracy.”

 

And isn’t it just ducky that the Obama administration, instead of discrediting the toxic “enemies of Islam” narrative, has now adopted it in State Department pronouncements.