Egyptian paper compares Islamists, unfavorably, with Jews

An article in al-Mogaz looks at the supposed similarities between Islamists and Israel.

After a brief history of how Arabs grabbed Jewish-controlled cities in Arabia ( if I am reading it correctly, he seems to imply that their actions were illegitimate!) he discusses how Israel exists, in his mind, by using religious justification and a feeling of superiority to justify its creation.

He then says that the Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, have the exact same mindset of being always right and relying on their interpretation of religion to justify the creation of Islamist states.

However, there the comparison ends. Because, he says, Israel is a democracy, with among the best educational system in the world, a leader in information technology and in weapons development, and in agriculture. It is a society that does not interfere with people's faiths, and the State does not impose the lifestyle of "certain ideological members." It is also a free society for its citizens, all equal before the law.

The Islamists' idea of nationalism includes none of these.

It has really been amusing over the past few months to see how many articles discuss how the authors' ideological enemies are "even worse than the Jews." Here we have one of the biggest backhanded compliments I've ever seen in Arabic media towards Israel.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)