Cairo, Egypt Over the weekend, in the wake of the removal of President Hosni Mubarak and demands for change, Egyptians voted in favor of batch of changes to Egypt’s constitution, all of the provisions having to do with elections and the political process. The mainstream American press hailed the referendum as a victory for “democracy” in that country, joined by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) who praised the result. But those closer to the facts tell a different story. Counter to the impression created by press reports, only about 41% of Egypt’s qualified electorate actually voted. According to the Pakistan Christian Post, the referendum was hijacked by leaders of the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood, who used mosque prayers last Friday to round up voters to vote “yes” in favor of a quick national election process. The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) will be one of the few political parties able to mount an effective campaign for elections in such a short amount of time, and therefore it was pushing a “yes” vote over the weekend for these “constitutional” changes. Our information is that those Egyptians truly thirsting for freedom were voting “no” over the weekend, as they quickly detected that the Brotherhood was running the political show, but they couldn’t mount an effective counter-campaign against the MB in time. If the MB has its way, Egypt will be even more fiercely Islamic after the upcoming elections than it was under Mubarak. And the United States cannot wash its hands of that dismal result if it happens. President Obama openly called for the resignation of Mubarak. Tragically, after doing that, our President then steadfastly refused to stand up for the persecuted Christians in Egypt who will end up being the real losers. Within the last two weeks 13 people were killed in Cairo when Muslim gunmen attacked Christians who had been peacefully protesting the burning of a Church. Twenty one Christians were slaughtered in Egypt in January. Religious rights leaders have been calling out for President Obama to demand rights for persecuted Christians in these Middle Eastern nations, but they have been calling out in vain. President Obama, a former law professor, should remember that America’s founders - some of them Christian pastors like John Witherspoon - firmly believed that the promise of political freedom becomes a bitter betrayal if it is not coupled with religious liberty. That is a lesson that Egypt, and the White House, both need to learn.
(c) 2011 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall
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