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Sunday, February 20, 2011

"Ayatollah Qaradawi"

An article in Saudi Arabia's Okaz News Agency discusses how Sheikh Qaradawi's bodyguards forcibly stopped Google executive Wael Ghonem from speaking at the massive Tahrir Square rally on Friday.

It finds a direct link between Qaradawi showing up in Tahrir Square and Ayatollah Khomeini coming to Iran in 1979 from Paris "to steal the people's revolution of Iran."

The author is saying what Western conservative writers have been warning since the beginning of the Egyptian revolution: that the Muslim Brotherhood is waiting to take advantage of a revolution spearheaded by Egyptian youth to turn Egypt into an Islamist state.

The op-ed ends with a question: "Did [the Egyptian youth] really overthrew Mubarak for Al-Qaradawi, to tell them how to breathe and how they can wear their clothes?"

The title of the article? "Ayatollah Qaradawi."

But don't tell the oh-so-enlightened Westerners who fancy themselves experts on the Arab world what the Saudis fear about the new Egypt. No, it is much better to listen to clueless star reporters who fly into Cairo for a couple of days and interview a handful of people who speak perfect English.