The Muslim Brotherhood's election platform, in English

Today Egyptians are voting for their new parliament, and the Muslim Brotherhood is widely expected to garner more votes than any other party.

Reader Alice has found what appears to be a legitimate Muslim Brotherhood "Election Program" published on the web, in English.

Some highlights:

...We seek to play an active and influential part:

Affirming the right of the Palestinian people to liberate their land, and highlighting the duty of governments and peoples of Arab and Muslim countries, especially Egypt, to aid and support the Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance against the Zionist usurpers of their homeland.

This means all of Israel, and the wording hardly limits itself to "non-violent" resistance.

Endeavouring to achieve full integration and cooperation in all fields with Sudan in order to ensure its safety and territorial integrity and achieve security, stability and development, including the activation of the Four Freedoms Agreement, so that we can attain true unity as a nucleus for achieving historically desired Arab unity.

The MB does not like independence for South Sudan and wants to roll back that achievement - next door to Egypt.

We appreciate the importance of restoring the role of Egypt in the Islamic domain and the need to strengthen relations with Islamic countries, especially Turkey, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.

No Sunni/Shi'a issues here. The MB loves Iran, and vice versa.

Securing Egypt's quota of Nile water and defeat Zionist plots in this regard.

There is some background behind this one. For years, there has been talk in southern Sudan to create the Jonglei Canal, which would increase the amount of water available to the Nile by 10-15 billion cubic meters. It has never been completed. According to a report last year, Israel offered to complete this project - where everyone would gain more water - in exchange for the right to purchase a percentage of that water at a discount. I have no idea whether this report was true. But Egyptians were upset at the very idea of selling Israel any water - even if they would gain water as a result!

Encourage the film industry, both financially and morally.

Emphasis on the freedom of the press and freedom of publication of newspapers, magazines,and various other paper and electronic publications without any legal or administrative obstacles, as long as the publication abides by the Constitution and the law and takes account of public morality.

Apply a "code of honour" for the use of the internet that depends on a culture of self-immunisation rather than external censorship; to assist the protection of public morality and values in Egyptian society, with emphasis on the prevention of pornography downloads or uploads, and use of all technical and legal ways to achieve this

Ah, the "Freedom" and Justice Party.

[I]t is of paramount importance to restore to Egypt its religious leadership position in Arab, Islamic and global domains.

Yes, this is a political platform.

Finally:

The family is the oldest institution on earth. It‟s also the first incubator for breeding and upbringing of humans. To realise the importance of focusing on the construction of the family unit as a means for making and shaping the good Egyptian citizen, let's look at the outcome of the previous decades of exposure systematic corruption implemented by several parties, especially the National Council for women, the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood, and a whole list of civil society organisations that receive foreign funds from suspicious sources. Those were helped along down that slimy slope with a package of corrupt laws passed not due to public demand, but were the result of international dictates imposed on us by international conventions signed under the previous regime.

Thirty years ago, Egypt joined an international convention for women called the "Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)" although this Convention controls the most private of the marital relationship details. Do any members of our great public know that Egypt is a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which allows a child to choose the family to live with? Do Egyptians realise that they are obliged to accept homosexuals and treat them in the best and kindest way possible, in compliance with those agreements?? Not to mention the legalisation of adoption in ways strictly forbidden in Islamic law?! Was it not our right as citizens in this country to have referenda on such conventions and agreements that control the finest details of our lives and our family relationships? Since this was not done at thetime these conventions were signed, it is our right – as a people proud of their identity and religion
– to insist on re-consideration of those agreements. Then they should be re-evaluated in terms of suitability to our culture, traditions and established values. We should have the first and last word on accession to those conventions.

Surprisingly, however, the platform does not call for Egypt to cut off natural gas shipments to Israel, but rather to increase the price of the gas to bring in some $18 billion of additional revenue annually.