AUTHOR'S UPDATE

Sunday, June 24, 2012, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, having garnered 51.7 percent of the presidential run-off vote tally, was declared Egypt's president by the Egyptian state election committee.⁵¹

During a presidential campaign speech broadcast May 13, 2012, on the Egyptian television station Misr 25, Morsi revealed, unabashedly, his traditionalist Islamic Weltanschauung.

[in the 1920s, the Egyptians] said: “The constitution is our Koran.” They wanted to show that the constitution is a great thing. But Imam [Hassan] Al-Banna, Allah’s mercy upon him, said to them: “No, the Koran is our constitution.” The Koran was and will continue to be our constitution. The Koran will continue to be our constitution.⁵²

His adoring crowd then segued immediately into a responsive exercise with Morsi, each repeating the individual statements that comprise the Muslim Brotherhood credo: ⁵³

Crowds: The Koran is our constitution.

Mohamed Morsi: The Prophet Muhammad is our leader.

Crowds: The Prophet Muhammad is our leader.

Mohamed Morsi: Jihad is our path.

Crowds: Jihad is our path.

Mohamed Morsi: And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.

Crowds: And death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.

Mohamed Morsi: Above all—Allah is our goal.

Morsi concluded this part of his speech by making clear that he would work aggressively to implement the sharia, as president:

The shari’a, then the shari’a, and finally, the shari’a. This nation will enjoy blessing and revival only through the Islamic shari’a. I take an oath before Allah and before you all that regardless of the actual text [of the constitution]....Allah willing, the text will truly reflect [the shari’a]}, as will be agreed upon by the Egyptian people, by the Islamic scholars, and by legal and constitutional experts....Rejoice and rest assured that this people will not accept a text that does not reflect the true meaning of the Islamic shari’a as a text to be implemented and as a platform.

As this book went to press in late July 2012, Al- Masry Al-Youm, reported on July 21, 2012, that President Morsi pardoned and released 572 military detainees, including twenty-five leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Jama’a al-Islamiya,⁵⁵ jihadist groups that have employed mass-murderous violence in Egypt, and well beyond, to impose the sharia.⁵⁶ Indeed earlier, within a week of being elected, Morsi gave a speech pledging to seek the release of Jama’a al-Islamiya founding member Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, currently serving a life sentence at a US federal penitentiary in North Carolina for his role in planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing⁵⁷ (which caused six deaths, 1,042 injuries, and nearly $600 million in property damage⁵⁸) and other acts of jihad terrorism within the New York City Metropolitan area.⁵⁹