No to Sunni version of Wilayat Fakeeh in Egypt

Mohammad Morsi has been deposed by a military and mass protest that lasted more than a week. He had fled from prison two years ago as Mubarak was sacked.

Cartoon showing Morsi sleeping by Mubarak, and Mubarak telling him “Close your eyes and do as I did”

The extremist Supreme Guide murshid of the Moslem Brotherhood, Mohammad Badi3, is detained, along with 300 its cadres.

All the religious TV channels are temporary suspended.

Within a year, the elected president Morsi acted as if the executive branch for the Supreme Guide in all the critical political decisions.

Morsi quickly wrote a constitution to the Brotherhood dictates, alienated the Constitutional Supreme Court, dismissed the Prosecutor General, and broke diplomatic relation with Syria at the instigation of  Mohammad Badi3.

During an entire year, Morsi demonstrated to the Egyptian that Egypt has substituted its political system to an Iranian Wilayat Fakeeh, the Sunni version and ruled by the imams and clerics of the Moslem Brotherhood.

It is to be noted that Iran took advantage of 8 years of protracted war with Iraq of Saddam Hussein to manage a transition to a Wilayat Fakeeh orientation.

Morsi wanted this transition to be done within a year, and with no war to back this emergency situation.

As millions of protesters converged on the streets of Egypt on June  30 to peacefully and boisterously demand the downfall of Egypt’s first elected  president Mohammed Morsi, deadly clashes broke out in several spots  across the volatile nation. Around midnight, the Muslim Brotherhood’s international headquarters, located in  Cairo’s upscale Moqattam district, was in flames.

As massive clouds of smoke blew out of the iconic Guidance Bureau of the  worldwide organization, the movement’s disciplined, listen-and-obey youth  continued to fire live ammunition at the assaulters. No more Brotherhood  reinforcements arrived at the burning headquarters, and armored vehicles of the  Interior Ministry stood watching from a distance, a clear message that the  police would no longer protect the ruling clique.

Eight anti-Morsi protesters were killed by live bullets, mostly to the head and neck, and more than 35 were wounded by live rounds and birdshot.

Calls for  blood donations to the battle-neighboring hospital continued to circulate social  media websites for hours. How the Muslim Brotherhood fighters evacuated their  positions remains unknown, but one of them was caught by protesters trying to  escape and was brutally stripped naked and stabbed before reaching the police  station in  critical condition.

Certain that the office-turned-barracks had been abandoned after hours of  deadly fighting, opposition attackers and random angry passersby raided the  building, and looted everything they came across. Stacks of confidential Muslim  Brotherhood documents were photographed and set free to virally circulate the  Internet. One document listed millions of dollars of financial gifts and grants  made by Qatar’s Prime Minster, Emir Hamad Bin Jassim Al-Thani, to top Brotherhood and Morsi  administration officers.

The authenticity of the document was never confirmed but the incident was  definitely reminiscent of raiding the clandestine fortress of Hosni Mubarak’s  State Security in March 2011; the freshly obtained Muslim Brotherhood leaks will  virally spread for weeks.

Surprisingly, thousands of devoted Brotherhood members holding their sit-in  a few miles away didn’t mobilize to protect their sabotaged minaret. Top  officials like Khairat El-Shater, the organization’s most influential  financier and deputy chairman, did not order their subservient youth to march in  defense of either Islamic Sharia or political legitimacy, as they once did in  December 2012 when they attacked an opposition sit-in at the east Cairo  presidential palace, leaving a dozen protesters dead.

“They are in a state of shock, serious and unprecedented shock,” a sacked  Muslim Brotherhood official who worked with both Morsi and El-Shater told  Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

“They underestimated June 30, but it turned out to be a surprising blow that  paralyzed their plans,” said the source who insisted on hiding his identity  fearing Brotherhood retaliation amid the ongoing instability. “After months of  undermining the opposition and people, no one could imagine the numbers and  momentum of protests, and accordingly no one had a backup plan.”

The former Brotherhood official says the movement fears a disastrous  post-Morsi future. “They will be hunted down and sent back to prison, by law for  crimes committed during Morsi’s year in power, or in a state of lawlessness that  the country will turn a blind eye on because of widespread and apparent hatred.  They are coming to realize that they will reap what they sowed.”

“The developments were too fast, so that they didn’t have a chance to flee  the country, like Mubarak’s officials who jumped ship early in January 2011,”  the source said. “The military and police apparently locked Egypt up and  Islamists are now on a turf that definitely doesn’t belong to them anymore,  despite Morsi, who is now in a palace that doesn’t obey him, more of a temporary  lock-up.”

Such anti-Morsi developments are not only limited to the Muslim Brotherhood  in Egypt.

The powerfully strategized, multibillion-dollar organization with its  deep-rooted divisions in almost every country in the Arab and Islamic world and  its worldwide businesses, either official or clandestine, is not fighting for  Egypt’s presidential seat: It is fighting for an 8-decade global legacy that  will imminently suffer the aftershocks of the popular quake jolting its murshid’s [supreme guide’s] historical  fortress in Cairo.

“This is a major element in the Brotherhood’s calculation and this is their  greater battle,” retired Col. Khaled Okasha, a security analyst and former head  of North Sinai’s Civil Defense Department of the Interior Ministry, told  Al-Monitor.

“The Egypt command, which is the only global command, has always been the  source of power to all sub-divisions in other countries,” added Okasha. “If the  Supreme Guide and his Cairo bureau are hit hard by Morsi’s downfall and all of  the current situation’s political and social consequences, they will become  nothing but a counselor to the international divisions that will then start  working independently according to their pure domestic circumstances.”

“Egypt’s presidency, the biggest win in the Brotherhood’s history and the  recently yet internationally recognized political umbrella for the Brotherhood  worldwide, will be gone with Morsi leaving office.”

Okasha disputed that Morsi and his Islamist cronies will suffer exceptional  oppressive measures after their much anticipated ouster. “Such exceptional  oppression requires a decades-strong dictatorship like Mubarak’s, which you  cannot build in a few weeks. That dictatorship was brought down in January  2011.”

“This orchestrated fear is mostly Morsi’s last card to maintain his  supporters’ morale. The Brotherhood is leading a smear campaign against every  scenario involving Morsi’s downfall.”

Okasha believes that, legally, the Muslim Brotherhood officers including Morsi, in  case of his resignation, will stand dozens of trials that could extend for  years, a scene very similar to Hosni Mubarak, his sons and regime members.

Over the past week, unconfirmed reports of Egypt’s Islamist figures on  travel ban lists and Qatar demanding the departure of Youssef Al-Qaradawi, the influential Muslim Brotherhood  cleric, have shed some light on repercussions that might possibly hunt the Muslim Brotherhood wherever they are.

The Gaza Strip’s Hamas Movement, the  closest of the Middle East offshoots to the command in Egypt, stands first in  the line after Morsi and the Guidance Bureau, and is desperately trying to avoid  the looming domino effect.

“Hamas’s popularity in Gaza and Egypt continues to sink because of their shameless interference in defense of the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi and  creating animosities with almost every non-Islamist power in Egypt. In addition  to politics, the relations between the peoples of Egypt and Gaza were negatively  impacted,” said Ahmed Ban, a researcher of Islamist movements who heads the  Political and Social Movements Unit at the independent Nile Center for Strategic  Studies.

“Hamas should hastily apologize to the Egyptian people and attempt fixing  what it broke by interference in Egypt, if that’s possible, and if the situation  worsens, it could be a start to the gradual end of Hamas’ rule over Gaza,” Ban  told Al-Monitor.

“Moreover, the 80-year cartel imposed by Egyptians on the global Supreme  Guidance in Cairo and the Guidance Council will be ended, possibly moved to  another country, and accordingly limiting the majority of direct supply,  political endorsement and the post-January 2011 refuge for Hamas.”

Signs of Hamas’ worsening situation have also surfaced in the past week.

On  June 30, Egypt’s military deployed tanks at the Gaza border; the first  appearance of Egyptian tank divisions in Sinai’s military-free Zone C since the Israeli withdrawal in 1982.

The exceptional deployment was ordered by the military shutting down the underground Rafah tunnels feeding Hamas’ armed militias with weapons and other  logistics, and it coincided with the arrest of three different groups of Hamas  armed members in different locations around Cairo on the same day, one the  detained groups occupied an apartment close to the destroyed Brotherhood Cairo  headquarters.

“They are in the heart of the Muslim Brotherhood’s battle to defend what  remains of their temple, a battle viewed by Hamas as their own,” said Okasha,  the retired colonel. “Morsi and the Brotherhood’s rule was a special,  unprecedented win for Hamas, I don’t think they will rethink their position and  withdraw from the scene at such a critical moment.”

As soon as the Egyptian military stepped in and declared a 48-hour ultimatum  for Morsi to satisfy national demands, the sacked Muslim Brotherhood member  reached out to Al-Monitor.

“The military just opened a less disastrous exit for Morsi, but he won’t take it,” the source said. “The Muslim Brotherhood is too blind to realize how weak  its cards have become.”

Hours later, a presidential statement rebuffed the military’s clear  warning.

Mohannad  Sabry is an Egyptian journalist based in Cairo. He has written  for McClatchy Newspapers and The Washington Times, served as  managing editor of Global Post’s reporting fellowship Covering the Revolution,  in Cairo, and contributed to its special reports “Tahrir Square” and “Egypt: The  Military, the People.” On Twitter: @mmsabry