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The Death of Egypt's First Muslim Brotherhood President, Mohammed Morsi

(Jerusalem Post) Zvi Mazel - Former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood died suddenly on June 17. The former president was buried in the middle of the night in a cemetery east of Cairo, with the briefest notice buried in the back pages of most Egyptian dailies. Amr Moussa, the former foreign minister and secretary general of the Arab League, said Morsi was not the leader of all the Egyptians and history will judge his regime harshly. In 2012 Morsi won the presidential election with 51.7% in a low turnout, the first Muslim Brother to become president. Ecstatic with finding them themselves in power after 80 years of repression, the Muslim Brothers could not wait to promote their ideological agenda and soon took over all government institutions. Instead of tackling the sorry state of the economy, the new Islamist-dominated parliament discussed imposing harsher corporal punishment as prescribed by Sharia (Islamic law). Within two months of Morsi's inauguration, demonstrations started, evolving into outright rebellion against the path taken. Suddenly there was a political front uniting all opposition parties, with even the army urging Morsi to change tack. He paid no heed, firing thousands of civil servants and appointing new ones from the ranks of the Brotherhood. Morsi then issued a presidential decree granting him control of the judiciary. According to the draft of a new constitution he promoted, the country would become an Islamic state on the basis of Sharia. Public outcry was immediate and demonstrations swept the country. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, appointed Minister of Defense by Morsi, who thought that he was a Brotherhood sympathizer, vainly attempted to warn him that the army would not let the country sink into anarchy. Millions took to the streets in June 2013, demanding Morsi's resignation. On July 3, the army took over and arrested him together with the leaders of the Brotherhood. The writer is former Ambassador of Israel to Egypt.
2019-06-28 00:00:00
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