The caption accompanying the post: "One neighbor to the other."
Bramjnet, one of the largest (is there a bigger one?) Egyptian web forums on the internet, features a very long thread on the Egyptian elections, with over 27,000 posts and almost 1 million views.
For those of you who don't like Egyptian presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail, take a look at this video of a TV interview with him and his mother. [The video is included within the article on Al-Arabiya, and it has English subtitles.]Yes, that's right, the mother whose American citizenship got him prohibited from running for president (at least for now).
We also found the video on YouTube:
You might be surprised, but his mother comes off as....articulate, respectful, religiously moderate, and intelligent. We here at the blog wish his mother was running instead of him. His mother, Dr. Nawal AbdelAziz Nour, presents herself very well, speaking positively of other religions and condemning the Al-Qaeda attacks.
Nour's attitude is in stark contrast to that of her son, who regularly issues streams of lies to the Egyptian people. An example of that can be found in this video that we found on Bramjnet. Here, Abu Ismail rails against American aid to Egypt, spouting lies such as:
American aid never consists of actual money; Americans love homosexuality and gay marriage, and American aid is intended to promote that; American aid is tool intended to end American unemployment by giving jobs and factories to Americans in Egypt but disguising it as American aid to Egyptians; Americans give Egypt defective food; Americans throw thousands of tons of wheat into the sea to keep the prices high....the list goes on and on. Watching Abu Ismail's videos really shows that the man is not fit to be a president.
In my last post, I discussed how Dubai's police chief Dahi Khalfan threatened prominent Shiekh Yousef Al-Qardawi for his criticism of Dubai's deportation of protestors at the Syrian consulate in the emirate.
On several forums, it looks like predictable battle lines were drawn:
Some people criticized Khalfan for what they interpreted as a position against the Syrian revolution, and praised Qardawi for being steadfast in his support of the Arab spring across the region (I guess they all forgot about his conspicuous silence on Bahrain?)
Others noted that Khalfan was simply enforcing the laws of Dubai, where it is well known that you can't take part in protests without getting government permission. Interestingly, Amhed Salama, the user I just linked to, keeps an admiring picture of Hosni Mubarak in his signature block....I guess he's just a fan of authority in general? Not all proponents of this position are old-Arab-regime types, however, there's some pro-revolution types also pointing to
While still in the minority according to what I've seen, some people actually criticized Qardawi for "زرع الفتن"/ "sowing discord" by creating conflicts in the Arab nation. This position isn't as clear, and I haven't seen anyone explain how Qardawi is spreading discord anymore than Khalfan.
