Egypt saves Middle East from another Iran

HAARETZ

Helicopters drawing the Egyptian flag on the sky of Cairo, fireworks, patriotic songs, and chants. This is how the Egyptians proudly celebrated the fall of Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday and the swearing-in of Adly Mansour, the new interim president, Thursday morning. But above all, Egyptians are celebrating their once again confirmed power and determination to drive their country through the path of liberal democracy, a path we first took when we brought down Hosni Mubarak, in January 2011.

By toppling the Islamist president and his Muslim Brotherhood regime, Egypt is given a new chance to stand on its right foot, and the Middle East is given the privilege of not having a Sunni version of the Mullah regime in Iran.

Like to the Mullahs in Iran, the Brotherhood was not ashamed to label their opponents disbelievers, and call for Jihad against them. The sinful rhetoric by some extremist sheikhs and imams leading over the past couple of days the rally of Morsi supporters outside the Rabe�a Eladawya Mosque in Cairo was only a small part of it. They deceived the innocent participants of those rallies - mostly uneducated and poor � into thinking that Morsi was authorized by G-d and therefore they should seek Jihad against his opponents while willing to sacrifice their lives in order to keep him in power.

Similar sectarian speech was repeated behind closed doors in rural mosques all the time, inciting to kill Shi'ites and Christians because they are the enemies of the Brotherhood's Islamic project. Four Shi'ites were tragically murdered in Giza, only one week before the second revolution.

In a broader perspective, the Muslim Brotherhood are not any better than Iran�s Mullahs in running regional and international affairs. Their use of Hamas was just a carbon copy of Iran's use of Hezbollah, meant to maintain instability in the Middle East and keep Israel and the U.S. on their toes. Needless to say, both regimes shared strong sentiments not only against the State of Israel � but against anyone who happened to be Jewish. Morsi, like many other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, was not ashamed to publicly declare that he sees Jews as �pigs and monkeys.�

In what could only be described as epic, tens of millions of Egyptians - backed by state institutions such as the military, police, judiciary, Al-Azhar University and the Church - decided to put an end to the spread of this plague before it was too late.

The people have learned their lesson and are now determined not to do the big mistake of electing the wrong leader simply because he is religious. In fact, people's priority now is not choosing another leader, but establishing the proper liberal and democratic context that would first and foremost guarantee our basic human and civil rights - and thus helps us make the right choice the next time we visit the ballot box.

According to the roadmap, this would happen by drafting a constitution, building state institutions and implementing an ambitious - but certainly feasible - initiative for national reconciliation. For this democratization process to succeed, all factions and groups must take part in it.

Women should be an integral part of every single step that would be taken and not be excluded again. The Egyptian women played a very important role in the both the first and second waves of the revolution: they worked, protested, fought and put their lives on the line only to better their country and see their status improve, in a free state.

It is essential that the interim president see this as a top priority.

No one can predict what may happen next, but the energy and hope that I can see on the faces of my fellow Egyptians right now tells me that a wonderful future of freedom and justice is waiting for us.

Dalia Ziada is an Egyptian blogger, a human rights activist and an Executive Director of Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies based in Cairo.