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By Gregory Taggart, February 5, 2011 10:21 pm

I support Israel, and I also support a foreign policy that would be more concerned with spreading democracy and freedom and less concerned with supporting corrupt and oppressive regimes in the name of stability. That said, I am not a foreign policy expert. And that said, I am in favor of Hosni Mubarak stepping down as quickly as possible, but no sooner than a transition plan is in place that would make it difficult or impossible for the Muslim Brotherhood to take power.

Why? Well, there’s this, from MEMRI, “excerpts from an interview with Muhammad Ghanem, Muslim Brotherhood representative in London, which aired on Al-Alam TV on January 30, 2011”:

Muhammad Ghanem: Hosni Mubarak and his regime are over, but he does not know it. In the beginning, we said that we wanted Hosni Mubarak to go. Now, we say that Hosni Mubarak, his VP, and prime minister must go. Now there are three of them.

In addition, the commanders of the army are still going back and forth to America. The American position has changed, and we hope that the position of the military will change as well, but reality proves that Hosni Mubarak will not leave unless he is forced to, that Omar Suleiman is more dangerous than Hosni Mubarak, and that the appointed prime minister… They all come from the military, and they share the same interests. Like we say in Egyptian Arabic: They will not bite one another.

I don’t want to speak ill of anyone, but Hosni Mubarak will not hesitate to kill the entire Egyptian people in order to remain in power. This is a maneuver of which we must beware. Hosni Mubarak is trying to stabilize his position. He is in Sharm Al-Sheik, protected by the Zionists, by the state of Israel. There is a helicopter ready to fly him to Israel.

We do not take the situation lightly. The situation is difficult. The Egyptian people will not allow anyone to rob them of their revolution. This blessed revolution will not subside. As the Egyptians are chanting: “We will not go away. This is our country. Mubarak should go.”

[…]

As for the possible return of the security forces – this is inconceivable. If the people see members of the security forces, they will kill them all. These security forces are not part of the Egyptian people. Their allegiance lies with Hosni Mubarak.

[…]

I am absolutely certain that this revolution will not die, and that the next step must be one of civil disobedience. This civil disobedience will generate strife among the Egyptians. This disobedience must include halting passage through the Suez Canal, stopping the supply of petroleum and natural gas to Israel, and preparing for war with Israel.

[…]

And this, excerpts from a sermon in which Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammad Badi urges jihad against the Zionists and U.S. infidels:

“According to the Islamic shari’a that Allah [has bequeathed] to mankind, the status of the Muslims, compared to that of the infidel nations that arrogantly [disdain] his shari’a, is measured in a kind of scale, in which, when one side is in a state of superiority, the other is in a state of inferiority…
“Many Arab and Muslim regimes have not managed to build up their peoples, due to their weakness and their dependence [on the West], and in many cases they have begun to work against the interests of the [Muslim] nation… The lands of the Arabs and of Islam are now plagued with problems because [the Arabs] have lost their [strength of] will, leaving it to the Zionist enemies and their supporters. [The Arab and Muslim regimes] have forgotten, or are pretending to have forgotten, that the real enemy lying in wait for them is the Zionist entity. They are aiming their weapons against their own peoples, while avoiding any confrontation with these Zionists and achieving neither unity nor revival for their nations. Moreover, they are disregarding Allah’s commandment to wage jihad for His sake with [their] money and [their] lives, so that Allah’s word will reign supreme and the infidels’ word will be inferior…
“Today the Muslims desperately need a mentality of honor and means of power [that will enable them] to confront global Zionism. [This movement] knows nothing but the language of force, so [the Muslims] must meet iron with iron, and winds with [even more powerful] storms. They crucially need to understand that the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.“

Have I said that I’m not Islamophobic? I’m not. I am developing a phobia against the Muslim Brotherhood however.

For what it’s worth, I think the realist philosophy of foreign policy helped create this mess. Whenever I find myself advocating a more neoconservative policy, I have to remind myself that this mess wasn’t created in a day. It will take more than a few days, even years, to clean up. What bothers me is that innocent people suffer in the meantime.

What did Martin Luther King say? “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” The Egyptian people deserve true freedom and a democratic way of life. They may have to wait a bit longer to get it or lose it to the thugs who make up the Muslim Brotherhood. But what do I know?

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By Gregory Taggart, February 5, 2011 12:00 pm

China law to make children visit parents.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 5, 2011 11:13 am

Elder Dallin H. Oaks recently gave a speech on religious freedom at Chapman University School of Law. He also gave an interview on the subject. Both are worthy–very worthy–of our attention.

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A little background on Elder Oaks, currently an Apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Oaks graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law; clerked for Earl Warren, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; taught at Chicago; and served as interim dean of that law school, as president of BYU (where he also oversaw the establishment of the J.Reuben Clark Law School), and finally a justice on the Utah Supreme Court. He was considered for the U.S. Supreme Court by both President Ford and Reagan.

In his speech, Oaks gives a number of troubling examples of what he is concerned about and why he is calling for religions to join together in protecting religion’s place in the public square:

In New Mexico, the state’s Human Rights Commission held that a photographer who had declined on religious grounds to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony had engaged in impermissible conduct and must pay over $6,000 attorney’s fees to the same-sex couple. A state judge upheld the order to pay. In New Jersey, the United Methodist Church was investigated and penalized under state anti-discrimination law for denying same-sex couples access to a church-owned pavilion for their civil-union ceremonies.  A federal court refused to give relief from the state penalties. Professors at state universities in Illinois and Wisconsin were fired or disciplined for expressing personal convictions that homosexual behavior is sinful. Candidates for masters’ degrees in counseling in Georgia and Michigan universities were penalized or dismissed from programs for their religious views about the wrongfulness of homosexual relations. A Los Angeles policeman claimed he was demoted after he spoke against the wrongfulness of homosexual conduct in the church where he is a lay pastor. The Catholic Church’s difficulties with adoption services and the Boy Scouts’ challenges in various locations are too well known to require further comment. (see sources in transcript)

As Elder Oaks made his case that we–religious believers–need to stand up and speak out, I was particularly impressed by his quotation of his fellow Apostle, the late Neal A. Maxwell:

My esteemed fellow Apostle, Elder Neal A. Maxwell, asked:

“[H]ow can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite?”

He made this practical observation:

“Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being ‘society’s supervisors.’ Such ‘supervisors’ deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.”

Elder Maxwell also observed that we increase the power of governments when people do not believe in absolute truths and in a God who will hold them and their government leaders accountable.