'17 June 2019
It is eight years now since the failure of the Arab Spring in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak was ousted of course, but the main objective was not acheived: the emergence for the first time of a healthy democracy based on decency and the ethic of 'love thy neighbour' - one compatible with the basic virtues and principles of Islam. The rapidly deposed elected president, Mohammed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood died today in court in Cairo. Poor man. He didn't deserve that. Held in captivity for years by a vengeful President Sisi of the Egyptian Army. No mercy there. Trumped up charges. God, obviously, did not protect Mr Morsi. Now Morsi will see the reality of what happens after death.
The failure of the Arab Spring meant that once again it all went wrong for the Egyptians. God did not help them and God continues to ignore them. They pray, they fast in Ramadan, they do the pilgrimage to Mecca, they have faith, they strive. And they leave Egypt if they can - to a better life elsewhere in 'infidel' lands. God is not helping them at all. We wonder why.
In the 1950's and 60's the Muslim Brotherhood had a very popular leader called Sayyid Qutb who President Nasser executed in 1966 for subversion. One of the first things that Qutb asked of Gamal Abdel Nasser, when he returned to Egypt from his life-changing stay in America, was that he impose the headscarf on Muslim women in Egypt. Nasser, rightly, refused. All that seemed to matter to Qutb was that Muslim women did not look like floozies. No hair must be shown: only loose women show their hair. Qutb was convicted of plotting to kill Nasser and paid the ultimate price.
One essential element of the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology was the mistaken belief that God instructs Muslim women to cover their hair because showing it will inflame the passions of men and create possible immediate disorder. Of course, the fact that every day Western women, who never cover their hair, are left alone to go about their business seems to be lost on these Muslims. The Brotherhood believe that the hair of a woman is a 'charm' like her breasts: a sexual appendage in other words. It does not say anywhere in the Holy Quran that a woman must cover her hair. It says hide 'your charms'. The Brotherhood consider the hair of a woman - her crowning glory - a charm that must be hidden. The Brotherhood's close spiritual associates, the Salafis, go further: they believe that the face of every woman is a charm too. So the face of every Salafi woman is covered in a niqab. They go round all day looking like letter boxes or bank robbers or as if they are shrouded in funeral wear ready for burial. The Salafi women wear gloves to stop men looking at those sleek, sexy hands. Many of them flatter themselves: they would not be looked at twice in the street even if they showed their hair. These fanatics cannot get it into their heads that dressing in garments up to the neck and down below the knee, as happened in Victorian times, is enough to conform with the Islamic ideal of modesty. They cannot understand that to many people going round all one 's life never being able to show one's hair (or face) in public is seen as completely abnormal. A sign of instability. The men in authority have persuaded these pitiful women that God will punish them severely if they do not cover up. The religious teachers at Al Azhar, the highest Islamic teaching institution in the Muslim world, who subscribe to this view of head covering once also firmly believed (as do many of them still) that it was God 's will to circumcise women: remove the clitoris and labia to reduce sexual pleasure. Female genital mutiliation (FGM) is still widely practised in Egypt today. So this utterly perverse interpretation of the need to 'remove sin' from a woman is one of the beliefs of those same men who think the headscarf is a mandatory requirement in Islam. In 1970's Egypt few wore the headscarf. Over the centuries it went in and out of fashion. The Wahhabi fanatics of Saudi Arabia enforce the wearing of the headscarf on Saudi women. These same people think that music in all its' forms is a sin. That democracy is against God's law. That celebrating birthdays is a sin. That for women to shake the hand of a man is a sin because it can lead to fornication. Interpretations of Islam like these put non-Muslims off Islam altogether. They put off moderate Muslims in Egypt as well. That is why the Arab Spring failed: those millions of Egyptians whose protests helped overthrow Hosni Mubarak did not trust the Freedom and Justice Party of President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood to properly interpret the rules of Islam to fit in with the sort of democracy that they so dearly craved. Tensions and mistrust ensued. Those opposed to the Brotherhood and its affiliate, the Freedom and Justice Party, came onto the streets in their hundreds of thousands and begged the Army to rid the country of President Morsi. The Egyptian military took their chance to re-establish their authoritarian stranglehold on society and, in the name of law and order, stage a coup. The hapless President Morsi was deposed in 2013 and spent the rest of his life in solitary confinement. Some reward eh for a lifetime's service to Allah.
The cult of the headscarf has helped ruin a country's path to democracy. These so called Muslims of the hijab and niqab deliberately misinterpret the Holy Quran to suit their misplaced impressions of God's will. The headscarf revolution in the 1980's brought Egypt nothing but misery.
Younger members of the Muslim Brotherhood protested that the Brotherhood was now in favour of democracy. That indeed the headscarf may not be mandated by Allah after all. That FGM was in fact a perversion. That the old guard was in decline. Too late! The moderates in Egypt did not believe them. They did not trust them. They revolted against Morsi and took to the streets until the army intervened.
These same 'Islamist' idiots now infect the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. 'Islam is the Solution' they say. Yes, but not your brand thank you. If you hijabis don't want men to approach you in the street then wear a badge saying 'F*** off!' or 'I'm a devout Muslim' or 'Leave me alone'. Don't besmirch the religion of Islam by perpetuating the myth that God instructs Muslim women to cover their hair and faces. No wonder God has, it seems, abandoned the Muslims!'