Inside The Revolution: Drama builds amidst military coup in Egypt. Muslim Brotherhood leadership arrested. Who is Adly Mansour, new “interim president”?

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In Uncategorized on July 4, 2013 at 6:49 am

“Adly Mansour, left, has been declared interim President of Egypt by the military after mass protests.” (photo credit: UK Telegraph)

>> Watch the 2013 Epicenter Conference on Friday, July 5, 2013 from Jerusalem.
(Jerusalem, Israel) — As if there is not enough drama in the epicenter already, a military coup d’état occurred overnight in Egypt. Mohamed Morsi is no longer the president after 22 million Egyptians signed a petition to remove him. Morsi and other top Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been arrested. The Brotherhood’s TV station was seized by the army. Other Brotherhood leaders have been put on watch lists and told they may not leave the country. The country’s new Sharia law-focused constitution has also been suspended.

Now all eyes are on Adly Mansour, the 67 year old judge, the interim president,appointed by the Egyptian army. Mansour is expected to oversee the drafting of a new electoral law, and oversee new elections, though it is not yet clear when those elections will be. A new constitution will also be drafted. More on Mansour in a moment.

First, let me say that I am grateful Morsi has been removed and the Brotherhood has been neutralized, at least for the moment. Generally, I don’t support military coups. But in this case I believe Morsi posed a grave threat to the people of Egypt, and to Israel, and the U.S. and the West generally. He needed to be removed and I have been praying for this ever since he rose to power. According to Bible prophecy — notably Isaiah 19 — the Egyptians have very dark days ahead of them. But as long as possible, I so want them to experience spiritual and personal freedom and for the Church to be free to preach the Gospel and demonstrate the love of Christ and the power of the Word to a nation in so much pain.

Second, this coup represents another dramatic chapter in the battle between the Radicals and the Reformers in the Muslim world. The Egyptian people launched a revolution against Hosni Mubarak in 2011 because they wanted real reform and he was resisting true democracy and personal freedom. But Morsi and the Radicals of the Muslim Brotherhood hijacked that revolution and turned into an opportunity for them to dominate and oppress Egypt. Now the Reformers are pushing back. It’s been stunning to see 22 million people — 1 in 4 Egyptians — sign a petition to get rid of the Radicals. 

The Egyptian army’s leadership are not Jeffersonian democratic reformers, to be sure. But they have long opposed the Radicals and they could see the popular handwriting on the wall. The army signaled last December it would not allow Egypt to enter a “dark tunnel” of Radical Islamic extremism and economic collapse. Yet that is precisely where Morsi and the Brotherhood were heading.

• “Who is the new President of Egypt?” I wrote just one year ago on June 25, 2012. “He’s an absolute disaster — an Islamic Radical who poses a grave threat to Israel, the U.S. and to the people of Egypt, especially the Christians of which there are millions in Egypt. Here’s what Mohamed Morsi  (sometimes spelled Morsy or Mursi) said at a speech at Cairo University in May: ‘The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path and death in the name of Allah is our goal.’ According to a Russian news service, Morsi also said, ’Today we can establish Sharia law because our nation will acquire well-being only with Islam and Sharia. The Muslim Brothers and the Freedom and Justice Party will be the conductors of these goals.’ Those quotes ought to provide insight into just how dangerous Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood really are.”
• Just last month, for example, Morsi called for Egyptians to support a jihad or “holy war” against the Assad regime in Syria.
• Recent polls show the vast majority of Egyptians were coming to the same conclusion just a year after electing Morsi. A stunning 73% of Egyptians say Morsi didn’t make a single good decision in his first year in office.

All this is further evidence of the central dynamic in the Muslim world that I described in my non-fiction book in 2009, Inside The Revolution: How The Followers of Jihad, Jefferson and Jesus Are Battling To Dominate The Middle East and Transform The World. The Islamic world is going through historic convulsions. The Radicals (like Morsi and the Brotherhood) are trying to overthrow the Resisters and return the region to a “pure” version of fundamentalist Islam based on Sharia law. They believe “Islam is the answer and jihad is the way.” Ultimately, they want to create a global Caliphate where all people in every country are living under Islamic rule. The Reformers, on the other hand, believe “Islam is the answer, but jihad is not they way.” They are pushing back at the Radicals. They are Muslims, but they don’t want Sharia law. They don’t believe in waging jihad. To the contrary, they want more freedom, more openness, and even democracy. Then there are the Revivalists. They believe “Islam is not the answer, jihad is not the way; Jesus is the way.” What’s more, they believe that “the only way for our part of the world to move forward is to skip back in our history before Islam and revive what we once had — first century, New Testament, Biblical Christianity.” They are Muslims who are renouncing Islam and becoming true and fully devoted disciples of Jesus Christ. We need to be praying for these Revivalists to be strong and bold in their testimony for Jesus and their proclamation of the Word of God.

Third, there is still a very real possibility that a civil war will erupt in Egypt. The Radicals might counterstrike. The Muslim Brotherhood — a Radical Islamic jihadist organization — is furious about what has happened. It has been trying to seize power in Egypt since the 1920s. It may not take the coup lying down and it could unleash waves of brazen violence. Isaiah 19 indicates a tragic civil war is in Egypt’s future in the last days. Let us pray that we have not yet arrived to that point. Let us pray for peace and stability and calm in this important country of more than 80 million people.

Now, let’s look more closely at Egypt’s interim president. “It’s been a momentous week for Judge Adly Mansour,” reported CNN. “On Monday, he became the head of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court. Just two days later, the 67-year-old was installed as the country’s president after a military coup ousted Mohammed Morsy from power.”
“New parliamentary elections will be held, and Mansour will have the power to issue constitutional declarations in the meantime,” CNN noted. “[Mansour] as appointed vice president of the court in 1992. In that role, Mansour served during former President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30-year rule and also helped draft the elections laws that set the time frame for campaigning in the 2012 vote that brought deposed President Mohammed Morsy to power, the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported.…Mansour was born in Cairo, according to a biography on the court’s website. He received law and management science degrees from Cairo University, and also studied in Paris. He is married and has a son and two daughters.”

Foreign Policy magazine reports: ”The shakeup thrusts a little-known judge into the spotlight, and entrusts him with the unenviable task of shepherding Egypt to its next presidential and legislative elections, which could take place in as little as three to six months. But Mansour, a veteran of the Supreme Constitutional Court who only just became its chairman on July 1, will not hold ultimate authority. ‘He is not the president of Egypt in the same way that Morsy or Mubarak were presidents of Egypt,’ Tarek Masoud, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, tells Foreign Policy. The best analogy, according to Masoud, is probably Sufi Abu Taleb, who served as acting head of state for eight days following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. ‘The administration of the country is going to be in the hands of the military, but they had to put a constitutional face on it. [Mansour] is under no illusions about the extent of his power,’ says Masoud.”

“Despite his subordinate position, however, Mansour will likely exercise considerable control over the drafting of a new election law, experts say,” FP notes. “‘His main job will be to get an electoral law done,’ Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation, tells FP. Over the past year, the Supreme Constitutional Court has twice invalidated electoral laws drafted by the Shura Council, Egypt’s upper house of parliament. The result, according to Hanna, has been a delay in holding parliamentary elections and a deepening of the political crisis in Egypt.”