When the U.S. agreed to send 200+ Abrams tanks, 20 F-16 Fighter Jets and $250 million dollars in aid to Egypt it angered a lot of American people. The stories we read about the treatment of Coptic Christians and the Muslim Brotherhood regime are enough to turn the stomachs of many freedom-loving Americans.
Today I wanted to take the opportunity to quantify this bad policy with some real independent numbers. On April 30, 2013 The Pew Research Center published a study entitled The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society. It’s a study that compares and contrasts the thoughts of Muslim populations in countries all over the world. Rather than try to cover the whole report I thought I would simply look at the report and the numbers in regard to Egypt. After looking at these statistics you can judge for yourself if this is really a country that we should be sending aid to.
Before we get into the Pew Research numbers, I want to give you a quick perspective from Wikipedia:
take our poll - story continues belowCompleting this poll grants you access to DC Clothesline updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.“Egypt is predominantly Muslim, with around 80 million Muslims, comprising 94.7% of the population, as of 2010.”
I think that number is very important because when you look at the poll results, the common defense might be something like… Well yes but that’s just the Muslim population. You need to understand that nearly 95% of the population of Egypt is Muslim. So if you see a number from this study that is 90% it probably means that at least 85-86% of the entire population feels this way. There are very few non-Muslims in Egypt.
Let’s get into the Pew Research numbers. All of these statistics are for Egyptian Muslims:
- 74% favor making Sharia the official law in their country
- 95% say religious judges should have power to decide family law and property disputes
- 29% say suicide bombings are sometimes or often justified (only Afghanistan and the Palestinian Territories rank higher)
- 75% say Sharia is a the revealed word of God
- 74% say that Sharia should apply to both Muslims and non-Muslims
- 70% favor corporal punishment for crimes such as theft
- 81% favor stoning as punishment for adultery
- 86% favor death penalty for leaving Islam
- 36% say they prefer a strong leader over democracy, only 55% favor democracy (ranking them 29th out of 33 Muslim nations surveyed in regards to democracy as the people’s choice)
- 77% say they support religious freedom (only Niger ranked lower)
- 75% believe that religious leaders should have some (47%) or large influence (28%) over politics
- 94% say it is necessary to believe in God to be moral
- 79% say drinking alcohol is morally wrong
- 62% say suicide is morally wrong (only Jordan and Azerbaijan had lower percentages)
- 1% say abortion is morally acceptable (stark difference from the views in the United States)
- 94% of Egyptians believe homosexuality is morally wrong
- 41% believe polygamy is morally acceptable while only 8% responded that it was morally wrong
- 41% say honor killings are never justified when a male commits the offense but only 31% say honor killings are never justified when a female commits the offense
- 46% believe that women should decide if they wear a veil (think about that…we would assume that roughly 50% of respondents were women)
- 85% believe that a wife must always obey her husband
- 22% believe that a wife should have the right to divorce her husband (56% believe that divorce is morally acceptable but not necessarily when it is the wife’s idea)
- 26% believe that men and women (sons and daughters) have equal inheritance rights
- 96% believe that Islam is the only religion that leads to heaven (Jordan also came in at 96% but no country ranked higher)
- 88% feel that converting others is a religious duty
- 50% believe that Christians are hostile toward Muslims
- 17% say they would be comfortable with their son marrying a Christian. 0% say that they would be comfortable with their daughter marrying a Christian. (Jordan was the only other country who had a 0% number on the female side of this question).
- 4% state they interact with Christians (only Jordan scored lower at 3%)
- 62% say Western entertainment hurts morality. Only 33% say they enjoy Western entertainment.
What can we gather from all of this? Well we can gather that Egypt is a sexist society with a strict moral code. There is no perceived need for seperation of Church and state. There is only one perceived true faith and they feel a responsibility to convert non-believers. Punishments are extreme and based upon Sharia teachings.
Most of us already knew all of that. At least now we have some numbers to back it up.
If you look at morality views like alcohol consumption, homosexuality and abortion I think you will find that the Egyptian people have a lot in common with the religious right in our own country. The difference is that the religious right in this country is not as prone to violence and it is also very much a minority here.
For the record I believe that abortion and homosexuality are wrong as well. Alcohol consumption is wrong for me personally because I can’t stop at 1 or 2 drinks. But I’m not planning on strapping any bombs to my chest and killing innocent people. I’m not going to hold up any “God Hates Fags” signs like those idiots from Westboro Baptist. I personally don’t care if you convert to my beliefs because America is much different than Egypt. I can accept you as a good person and respect you even when we disagree about whom we choose to call God. A lot of my fellow Christians will bust my chops for that but it’s how I feel. I don’t care who you pray to so long as you are a good person.
However, Egypt is nothing like America and we are funding just another potentially hostile regime who could turn on us at any moment. As I reported a few days ago, 61% of Egyptians feel that terror attacks on Americans are justified.
The question we must all ask ourselves is why our government continues to use our tax dollars to fund this idiocy. We are sick of all of the lies. This has nothing to do with supporting democracy. Egypt is as anti-democratic as almost any nation on the planet.
We are playing a dangerous game with a country that will very likely turn on us at some point in the future. Why we keep dealing with countries who burn our Flag and chant “death to America” I have no idea. What you have to understand is that they actually feel like we owe them these things. We are paying tribute to them and are required to do so. They are not grateful. They feel that we are simply giving them what is already rightfully theirs. As I pointed out in a previous article, we continue to act like a scared kid who keeps giving a bully his lunch money.
I can’t see how anyone can possibly support this. Even the liberal-minded people would take offense to this, one would think. Do they want to send tax dollars to a society that condemns homosexuality and abortion while treating women like second class citizens? Do they want to support a society that burns our flag and chants “Death to America?” I would certainly hope not. Just because the democratic leadership supports this aid it does not mean that their constituents have to swallow that pill.
I can support my conservative boys on a lot of issues but when they do something stupid I have to call them out. This is not a right-left issue. This is an American issue and our leadership is very wrong in its relations with Egypt. We can not continue to support this. We are arming a potential enemy.
Geez, we’ve never done that before.
Wake up America!
