The Massacres in Egypt Are Precursor to a Wider Global Conflict Between the Elites and World’s Poor

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/world/massacres-egypt-are-precursor-wider-global-conflict-between-worlds-elites-and-worlds-poor

Radical Islam is the last refuge of the Muslim poor. The mandated five prayers a day give the only real structure to the lives of impoverished believers. The careful rituals of washing before prayers in the mosque, the strict moral code that prohibits alcohol, along with the understanding that life has an ultimate purpose and meaning, keep hundreds of millions of destitute Muslims from despair. The fundamentalist ideology that rises from oppression is rigid and unforgiving. It radically splits the world into black and white, good and evil, apostates and believers. It is bigoted and cruel to women, Jews, Christians and secularists along with gays and lesbians. But at the same time it offers to those on the very bottom of society a final refuge and hope. The massacres of hundreds of believers in the streets of Cairo signal not only an assault against a religious ideology, not only a return to the brutal police state of Hosni Mubarak, but the start of a holy war that will turn Egypt and other poor regions of the globe into a cauldron of blood and suffering.

The only way to break the hold of radical Islam is to give followers of the movement a stake in the wider economy, the possibility of a life where the future is not dominated by grinding poverty, repression and hopelessness. If you live in the sprawling slums of Cairo or the refugee camps in Gaza or the concrete hovels in New Delhi, every avenue of escape is closed. You cannot get an education. You cannot get a job. You cannot get married. You cannot challenge the domination of the economy by the oligarchs and the generals. The only way left for you to affirm yourself is to become a martyr or shahid. Then you will get what you cannot get in life—a brief moment of fame and glory. And while what will take place in Egypt will be defined as a religious war, and the acts of violence by the insurgents who will rise from the bloodied squares of Cairo will be defined as terrorism, the engine for this chaos is not religion but the collapsing global economy, a world where the wretched of the Earth are to be subjugated and starved or shot. The lines of battle are being drawn in Egypt and across the globe. Adli Mansour, the titular president appointed by the military dictator of Egypt, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, has imposed a military-led government, a curfew and a state of emergency. It will not be lifted soon.

The lifeblood of radical movements is martyrdom. The Egyptian military has provided an ample supply. The faces and the names of the sanctified dead will be used by enraged clerics to call for holy vengeance. And as violence grows and the lists of martyrs expand it will ignite a war that will tear Egypt apart. Police, Coptic Christians, secularists, westerners, businesses, banks, the tourism industry and the military will become targets. Those radical Islamists who were convinced by the Muslim Brotherhood that electoral politics could work and brought into the system will go back underground, and many of the rank-and-file of the Muslim Brotherhood will join them. Crude bombs and explosive devices will be set off. Random attacks and assassinations by gunmen will puncture daily life in Egypt as it did in the 1990s when I was in Cairo for the New York Times, although this time the scale of the attacks will become fiercer and wider, far harder to control or ultimately crush.

[cali]

1. thanks for posting this. It touches on an ignored

and important aspect to what's going on in Egypt. k&r

[DetlefK]

2. Just because poor muslims are fanatic, that doesn't mean that...

all muslim fanatics are in it for the money.

[busterbrown]

4. Don’t get what you mean..

“in it for the money” is not the same as in it for survival.. I mean are not many of these fanatics just desperate to find a job in order to house and feed their families?

[dipsydoodle]

3. K & R

.

[WCLinolVir]

5. It's a "religion". It is no accident it oppresses women.

I could make an argument that it is all about suppressing women and giving fear based men a way to feel powerful. The clerics are always enraged or angry. If it is only about poverty then tell me why they need to suppress other religions. The rituals are all about brainwashing. And that strict moral code?? Give me a break. These are some of the most violent people on the planet, thanks to their "religion". Wife beaters, misogynists, and apparently they have a real problem with raping young boys as well. It isn't about poverty as much as it is power. Otherwise they would find another way to work toward a solution.

[Civilization2]

8. Lessening poverty, diminishes the strength of religion. This is the point of the article.

People turn to ANY support group in a bad situation,. remove the worst of the crushing poverty and the worst of the religious fundamentalism goes away with it. All religion works this way and all is negatively impacting humanity.

[WCLinolVir]

12. The article ignores the reality of this religion.

Even if they all became rich overnight, women would still be second class, or is that third?
Violence against women is prevalent in all economic levels. And it's about control, not money. People don't rape because they don't have money, they rape because it makes them feel powerful and in control.
Yes, money gives people options. But there are plenty of poor people who don't use poverty or religion as an excuse. I'd just as soon attribute it to brain washing.
When this article goes on to mention "moral code", it's just hyperbole. And untrue.

[Civilization2]

13. No it does not,. did you even read it? It specifically states this!

Last edited Fri Aug 16, 2013, 11:11 PM - Edit history (1)

The fundamentalist ideology that rises from oppression is rigid and unforgiving. It radically splits the world into black and white, good and evil, apostates and believers. It is bigoted and cruel to women, Jews, Christians and secularists along with gays and lesbians. But at the same time it offers to those on the very bottom of society a final refuge and hope.

Lessening poverty, diminishes the strength of religion (all of it). All religion divides, all religion excludes all is based on lies,. and all is destructive. You keep saying "this religion" like others are any "better",. don't just fall for the my god is bigger than you god bullsht.

"But there are plenty of poor people who don't use poverty or religion as an excuse."

You terribly miss the point; it is not that poor people use anything as an 'excuse', it is that they are rightfully hopeless that the economic system they find themselves in offers ANY aid to them,. so they turn to the free and prevalent religious movements,. I argue making the silly faith based cults marginal by pointing out the lies they tell and are based on is the best way forward for all.

[WCLinolVir]

19. Oh no, please don't tell me poverty made the Islamic religion oppressive.

Cause I keep hearing about all that good stuff written in the Koran. Kinda like all that violent good shit in the bible. I think most religions suck and this one is particularly bad. Yeah, I think it is worse than some. And stop blaming poverty for what these people choose to believe and take part in. I don't give anybody a free pass on human rights violations because they are feeling powerless and abuse others. With that kind of logic I could defend child abusers. There is no defense.
And really, stop trying to put words in my mouth and talk down to me. You are just not that smart. "Rightfully hopeless" doesn't mean they get to victimize people. And who said my god is better? Who said I believe in one? I miss the point? The Islamic religion is bigoted and cruel to women, like many others.

[Civilization2]

21. There you go blaming Islam when ALL religion is the same sht. The corporate banksters are the issue,

and the source of the poverty, and the oppression of people world wide. This poverty causes people to take up religion,. when they grasp at ANYTHING to provide hope. None will suffice, since all religions empower the few over the many.

Why you choose to blame just Islam when Hindus and Christians, and all the rest of "gods children" are all just the same,. religion in general is a dangerous meme of terrible lies, that leads to terrible actions.

I have no need to "put words in your mouth" you eat feet all on your own. Do not presume to know the level of my intellect, as you no nothing about me. Debate the issue not the individual.

Lets get back to the article you so easily dismiss. I showed that your attack was unfounded; of Islam, the author states; "It is bigoted and cruel to women", . and yet you cry it is some how omitted. Can you justify your baseless attacks or not?

You seem to hate Islam, and I would agree, if you would only expand your hate to ALL faith based cults, as all are cruel and based on lies and power taken from the people and transferred to the few. I merely pointed out that you missed the point of the article, in your furor to attack one religion over all others,. while none are clean. The point of the article remains; lessens the grinding poverty, and we lessen the power of silly faith based cults of cruelty.

[WCLinolVir]

24. You seem to have an investment in seeing me in a particular light as you

keep ignoring what I've actually written. I blame people who are responsible for abuse in the name of any religion, in this case the article referred to Islam. Did I dismiss this article easily? No i pointed out what I perceived were flaws. You did not show my"attack" as unfounded, but by all means stick to your fantasy.
I am only too happy to acknowledge the ramifications of poverty. They are real, brutal, intentional, I feel, and leave a pervasive sense of powerlessness. But at some point we have to acknowledge that money does not take away the pervasive power of religion so the attraction must be attributable to other psychological factors. Education, which is related to poverty, is also a factor. But we have to acknowledgment that some educated men seem to see a benefit from social organizations that keep women at a disadvantage as well. Oh, it's about power. Or fear. And almost all religions do their best to milk it.

[busterbrown]

6. Please keep us updated...Unfortunately our reporters on the ground tell us of the deaths and

destruction, but do not have to capacity to break it down as well as you do..

Isn't it always about who has control over the military and for the fact that if I’m a soldier in the military my life and family is taken care of to a basic degree,( food and housing }and I want to protect what I have got.. These insurgents will eventually track us down and severely punish us for slaughtering thousands of our fellow citizens So everyone in the military is all in on suppressing the dis en franchised

Do you see this kind of scenario evntually playing out in our country?

Please kee yout commentary going.. Its really desperately needed!!

[Civilization2]

7. Here is the last paragraph,. most important imho;

"What is happening in Egypt is a precursor to a wider global war between the world’s elites and the world’s poor, a war caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment and underemployment, declining crop yields caused by climate change, overpopulation and rising food prices. Nearly half of Egypt’s 80 million people—33 percent—are 14 or younger and live under or just above the poverty line, which the World Bank sets at $2.00 a day. The poor in Egypt spend more than half their income on food, and often food that has little nutritional value. An estimated 13.7 million Egyptians or 17 percent of the population suffered from food insecurity in 2011, compared to 14 percent in 2009, according to the report by U.N. World Food Program (WFP) and the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Malnutrition is endemic among poor children with 31 percent of children under 5 being stunted in growth. Illiteracy runs at over 70 percent."

[Demeter]

9. And won't the 1% be unpleasantly surprised

when the 99% get it together and go after their REAL oppressors, with or without the blessing of the priests, imams, etc., (who can be listed in the ranks of the oppressors, by the way...).

Wake me when it's revolution.

[Igel]

16. And won't the 99% be stunned to realize that

while the 1% had lots of money, they didn't each consume a million calories a day. You kill 100 of them and perhaps you have "released" enough food for 105 or 110 others.

That sounds like a noble thing, but it's really just a hungry person killing somebody and taking away their food.

Even a lot of the 1%'s wealth is illusory, only realized as money when they cash out. And in a revolution--like in a depression--one of the first things to lose value are paper assets. All that's left is real property.

In the Russian Revolution a lot of people in cramped housing thought that when they divvied up the vast amount of housing occupied by the rich there'd be a lot to go around. The cramping eased up very little. All that was left was glee at seeing others' suffering--a very peasantish thing to revel in, inflicting pain, esp. on the children of your enemy. And the enemy of humanism and the kind of empathy that a lot of progressives claim is the essence of progressivism.

A decade or two later there was a famine in Russia. And the reports were that if all the food were redistributed there'd be plenty to go around. The government seized food and the result was a lot of starving farmers. The cities--the power base of the revolution--were left intact, but millions of "worthless" farmers and villagers died. The calories weren't there, and politicians sacrificed millions of rural people, less dependent on the government, for their dependent urban supporters. Gotta love human sacrifice. It's not just for the insanely religious anymore.

[Dustlawyer]

10. The elite in Egypt ought to give the poor a couch, TV, and Fox News and most will not riot or

protest! Our rights are disappearing very fast; voting, tort reform, protesting, medical care... yet we do very little, or nothing about it!
PUBLICLY FUNDED ELECTIONS should be the ONLY thing we fight for b/c it means the difference between getting our Representative Democracy back, and the 1% having total control over our government, judicial branch, and the media!

[Igel]

17. Strange shift in topic.

However, they're not Americans with America's religion of materialism and consumerism.

A lot of the young have a serious problem: To get married, they need to have an apt., furnish it, be able to support a wife and kids. They're largely unemployed, the young males that would marry. They can't. In a conservative society, no wife = no sex.

Those older have a problem. They have to support their families, but with electricity shortages and food price increases they are having trouble doing so. Mubarak was ousted less than a year after the first food subsidy reduction. (Mozambique had the same issue a few years ago.) Morsi was unpopular because electricity shortages and fuel shortages increased; food shortages started to appear.

But the liberals had billed "democracy" = "prosperity." It hasn't happened anywhere. It doesn't happen. Prosperity takes time, it is not the natural state of a society. Penury is the natural state of society. Prosperity takes work, planning, and infrastructure, a lot of cooperation.

Note that the shortages vanished two days after. There wasn't time to import gasoline, food, or oil for electricity generation on that scale in two days. Then a huge bail out from anti-MB gropus came to Egypt's rescue. Revolution = prosperity. But the equivalence won't hold because prosperity still takes a while to build and Egypt can't stay on international SNAP.

[DetlefK]

11. I doubt that the level of religious adherence depends on that strong on money.

For example: The US is well off compared to many countries. And yet a sizable part of the population is as extremist as the Vatican or islamic theocracies.

[Igel]

18. It takes generations.

You have a generation relatively independent of government, often rural, with little education. They tend to be religious. My great-grandparents.

You take their kids and educate them in the basics. They now expect a better standard of living. Raised religious, they tend to stay religious in outlook. They lose the unifying core of their religion. My grand-parents.

You take their kids and educate them, usually in more than the basics. They expect a better standard of living. Raised with the forms of religion but no real reason to hold on to the forms since there's no real core to it, they keep many of the values but are iffy on the forms. My parents.

You take their kids and educate them. They expect a better standard of living and don't see where the values come from. The forms are meaningless rites. There is no core. They see no reason not to markedly shift their values. My generation. Those still at step 1 or 2 might resist social change. Religious Right, 1970s.

Society isn't in lockstep. I know parents who are still very religious and poorly educated. I know people who are at step 2 and whose kids are at step 3. It's possible to skip a step. But, generally, that's how American society has gone.

Egypt and the ME has a huge wave of radicalization because in the last 40 years a lot of uneducated Muslims learned to read. They read the Qur'aan and Ahadith and saw what they says. They believed their eyes and not fataawa. A naive reading gives you extremism, or opens you up to tolerating it.

The urban kids in the ME are often at step 3 or 4. Rural people are at step 1 or 2. This leads to a serious clash. It was already a clash: The urban dialects of Arabic are relatively widespread, but are urban. The rural dialects divide up differently and are usually smaller. If you move from village to town, 40 miles away, you might have a larger dialect difference than if you moved from one city to another 400 miles away.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. Nope. There may yet be increased 1% v 99% conflict, but this is not the precursor. nt

[School Teacher]

15. Islamophobia is Inappropriate on the Issue of Egypt

Save the Islamophobia for another rant. What we are seeing in Egypt is that "Democracy" is okay in the minds of the ruling class as long as the results are to their liking. As we saw in Palestine, when the people vote for the wrong candidate or party, then something has to be done with force. Your tax dollars are paying for those bullets. Obama is not withdrawing military aid. What is happening in Egypt will mean that for the poor in the Arab World, democracy doesn't work. So they express their desires in other ways. The writer does us a great service and I hope we hear from her/him again and again.

[WCLinolVir]

20. What we are seeing in Egypt is a country very divided as well.

I don't see how you can talk about the situation in Egypt without talking about Islam and or the Muslim Brotherhood. It's part of the dynamic that Egyptians deal with. The military looks like it has every intention of shutting down the MB, who they may see as having made a power grab by Morsi giving himself special powers. Powers of a dictator. Simply saying that democracy doesn't work for the poor doesn't do people justice or tell the truth.

[liberal_at_heart]

22. wow. very poignant. good post xchrom.

[hrmjustin]

23. The whole thing is very sad.

I heard from my neighbors who are in Egypt for the summer that their Church was desecrated.