Egyptian Election: Islamist Victory or Deceptive Strategy?

Has anyone stopped to ask where the headlines “Muslim Brotherhood Wins Egypt’s Presidential Election!” originate? They come, of course, straight from the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies—particularly the Qatar-based Islamist propaganda machine, Al Jazeera—and were then unquestioningly picked up and spread like wildfire by the Western mainstream media and talking-heads.

Morsi celebrates: True triumph or planned propaganda?

Left unquoted by the Western media are the many Egyptian analysts that have a different tale to tell—that the secular candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, has won.

What does the Muslim Brotherhood have to benefit by claiming victory now, if official results might prove otherwise on June 21, a mere three days from now? Simple: they will be able to scream foul play—and gain the world’s sympathy. For days the world will have been inundated with news that the Brotherhood won, so that, when and if it hears that Shafiq won, it will naturally conclude electoral fraud—which best serves the Islamists’ interests.

Mahmoud Baraka, a Shafiq campaign spokesman, maintains that “their candidate [Shafiq] won the presidency, with 52% of the votes”—precisely the same number the Brotherhood is claiming—adding that the Brotherhood’s claims to victory “are bizarre and unacceptable,” a “big act.”

Likewise, talk show host Tawfik Okasha appeared emphatically saying that the Brotherhood’s claims are “all lies,” that most polls indicate that Brotherhood candidate Muhammad Morsi “failed,” and that the Islamist group’s motive is simply to sow “discord and dissension.” He proceeded to give several examples of how the Brotherhood’s claims are incongruous with reality.

But why believe Shafiq’s spokesman and staunch secularist Okasha? Good question. Here’s a better one: Why believe the Muslim Brotherhood? Why follow the lead of an organization that has mastered dissimulation, an organization that promised Egypt it would not run a presidential candidate, only to renege once opportune?...Continue reading.