by WorldTribune Staff, November 11, 2016
Egyptian parliament members said Donald Trump’s election victory is a positive development for Egypt and a major setback for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood was “eager to see Clinton become the new president to use it as a tool for exerting pressure on Egypt, but their hopes were seriously dashed,” said Alaa Abed, chairman of the Egyptian parliament’s Human Rights Committee.
Mostafa Bakri, an independent parliament member and high-profile journalist, said on his Twitter account that Trump’s victory means “very bad times for the Muslim Brotherhood and its television mouthpiece Al-Jazeera.”
Most of the members of parliament who spoke with reporters on Nov. 9 also agreed that the election of Trump should be considered good news for Egyptian President Abdul Fatah Sisi.
Margaret Azer, a Coptic parliament member, said in a statement that the election of Trump will lead to a positive new beginning for the world and the Middle East.
“Trump’s victory represents a radical departure from the Obama-Clinton clan who supported the Muslim Brotherhood and other political Islam movements,” said Azer, adding that “in fact Hillary Clinton was the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. presidential election.”
Azer said that she hopes Trump will move quickly to restore old strategic relations between Egypt and the United States. “This strategic relationship is necessary for America to win the fight against terrorism in the Middle East,” she said.
Abed accused Obama and Clinton of spending billions of dollars on support for Islamist movements in the Middle East. “They were under false convictions that these movements are moderate and democratic, and in this way they gave them cover to spread their terrorism and poisonous ideology in the Middle East,” said Abed.
Trump adviser Walid Fares told reporters that Trump, in a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, assured Sisi that he looks forward to restoring strategic relations with Egypt.
Phares also told Egyptian MPs who were visiting America at the time that Trump considers the Muslim Brotherhood a radical movement.”There is no problem at all with Trump’s administration, in that the Muslim Brotherhood would be designated a terrorist organization,” said Phares.
Ali Ezz, deputy chairman of Egypt’s Information Technology and Telecommunication Committee, told reporters that Trump’s victory was a big surprise to him. ”I was deceived by the American media, but now we see that there was a broad-based rejection of Obama and Clinton in America,” said Ezz, adding that “if Trump is serious about fighting terrorism in the Middle East, he should cooperate with strong leaders like Sisi and Vladimir Putin to stem the tide of political Islam.”
Clinton’s loss a major blow for Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian parliament members say added by World Tribune on
View all posts by World Tribune →