Hatem Bazian and a Petition for UN Investigation of Mohammed Morsi's "Murder"

Hatem Bazian (with mic)


Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood's former president of Egypt, assumed room temperature this week when he dropped dead in a Egyptian courtroom. He had been in custody ever since his 2013 ouster by the current government. (These things happen in the Arab world, you know.)

That has led to the predictable outpouring of grief from Islamists in the US, people like Hussam Ayloush of CAIR (SoCal chapter), the MB's sister organization in our country. If you read Ayloush's tweet, Morsi was the Abe Lincoln of the Arab world (which has yet to produce an Abe Lincoln. Saddam Hussein is more the norm.)

Hatem Bazian, who works undercover at UC Berkeley posing as an educator, has gone a step further. He is hawking a petition to ask that great investigative body, the UN, to investigate Morsi's "murder".

I'm not making this up.

https://twitter.com/HatemBazian/status/1141264077383225344

The initiative was actually started by a group called The Freedom Initiative.

Let's be clear: Morsi was no champion of peace and democracy. While Egypt has never been a model of democracy, under Morsi, it was drifting toward what would have been another (losing) war against Israel as anti-Israel feeling was whipped up. Coptic Christians, whose situation before and after Morsi was never good, found themselves and their churches under increased attacks with the Brotherhood in power. The current leader, Abdel Fattah El Sisi, is no Abe Lincoln either, but he has at least kept Egypt from breaking its peace with Israel and has tried to rein in Islamic extremism. For the edification of Professor Bazian, those are positive things.

Morsi also acted as an autocrat, and, in contrast to El-Sisi, he was no friend of the US, the country that gave him his higher education and a job as a professor at an American university.

Though Morsi was elected in Egypt's first democratic election, he granted himself additional powers as he helped consolidate Islamist control of the Constituent Assembly. This led to increased public opposition to Morsi. His decree authorizing the military to "protect" national institutions and polling sites was viewed as a de facto form of martial law. That led to violence between Morsi's opponents and supporters with resultant loss of life. All the while, Christians came under increased attack as they were accused of working to undermine Morsi.

So was Morsi actually murdered by the Egyptian government? Well, I suppose in the Middle East, anything is possible, and no doubt six years in an Egyptian hoosegow will be damaging to anyone's health. But here's the deal:

I don't really care.

Now if President Trump were to slap Nancy Pelosi in Rikers Island (Why did I choose Rikers Island as an example?), and she were to drop dead while making a court appearance, I would care. We are supposed to be better than that, but contrary to what CNN would have us believe, Trump doesn't do those things.

Outside of Israel, there is no democracy in the Middle East, and I doubt there ever will be. If the UN wants to investigate why a 67-year-old man dropped dead in a courtroom after six years in an Egyptian jail, let them knock themselves out. But I will not be signing any petition.