Difficulty: When is it not the Muslim Brotherhood’s “day of rage”? Isn’t rage all they do? Well, and kill, and persecute. They didn’t give rise to al Qaeda for nothing.
Protests by supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi turned violent across Egypt on Friday, with witnesses reporting four dead in central Cairo and at least 12 killed in northern cities as the Muslim Brotherhood staged a “Day of Rage”.
That’s Reuters’ take. Reality: The Muslim Brotherhood is violent, has always been violent, and they’ve been violent throughout the current mess. Wednesday they burned more than 20 Coptic churches. They have been persecuting Christians throughout, to make scapegoats out of them, and because they hate Christians. So the protest didn’t “turn violent” Friday.
Deeply polarized after months of political turmoil, Egypt stands close to the abyss of chaos with Islamist supporters refusing to accept the toppling of Mursi, which followed mammoth rallies castigating his trouble-plagued, year-long rule.
They have demanded the resignation of army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the reinstatement of Egypt’s first freely elected president, who is in detention and has not been seen in public since his downfall.
“Sooner or later I will die. Better to die for my rights than in my bed. Guns don’t scare us anymore,” said Sara Ahmed, 28, a business manager, joining a march of thousands of demonstrators heading downtown from northeast Cairo.
What we have here is the beginning of an Islamist insurgency, in reaction to the army reasserting its historic role as a bulwark against extremism.
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