Khairat al-Shater, the clever man and his presumed plots

This article was published on al-Bawaba News site on Saturday, December 1, 2012

Conspirator + person conspired against + conspiratorial events = conspiracy

These are the elements that must be present in any conspiracy so that it pillars can be complete. The absence of any element from this equation causes the conspiracy to fail. 

With this equation, we try to simplify the idea of ​​the conspiracy for ordinary people to sabotage conspiracies against them. 

Eng. Khairat al-Shater surprised us by organizing a press conference at the Guidance Office in Mokattam.

In his conference, he talked about a conspiracy against Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, one concocted by the enemies of Islam and the remnants of the former regime. 

The conspiracy was planned, he said, by elements in a foreign country (Britain) and funded by Arabs (Gulf countries). 

Before we dive into Khairat al-Shater's presumed conspiracy, we must mull some indicators that have important connotations.

1. What is the legal capacity of Eng. al-Shater in the Egyptian state to hold a press conference? He is just the deputy general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood which is a banned group that needs to restructure itself legally. 
2. What is the group is being linked to Egypt? Does the conspiracy target the group or Egypt? Can Egypt with its great history be reduced to the size of a group like the Brotherhood? Do al-Shater and his followers believe that the group is Egypt? Does criticizing the group and describing it as 'terrorist' mean that Egypt is being accused of terrorism?
3. Who are the enemies of Islam that al-Shater referred to in his conference? Are they members and supporters of civil forces and parties in Egypt? Are they the real revolutionaries who are stationed in the vicinity of the Ittihadiya Palace and Tahrir Square, and all the fields of the revolution in Egypt? Those who went out on January 25, 2011, seeking glory for the homeland, at a time when the Brotherhood was seeking to make deals with the regime? Are they half of the Egyptian people who gave their votes to Gen. Ahmed Shafiq? Does any sane person believe that all those who make up, with simple statistics, the overwhelming majority of the Egyptian people, are enemies of the country?
4. Can Gulf states collectively agree to overthrow the Brotherhood state - I mean the Egyptian state - through funding they provide to the vast majority of the Egyptian people to overthrow the regime and bring down the state? If we assume that these lies are true, is the timing appropriate in light of the circumstances the country is going through (I mean Egypt, not the group)? Egypt needs the help and support of its Arab brothers, including of course Gulf states. 

These are some indications that we should have considered before we dwell on al-Shater's conspiracy so that the people can understand the mentality of those who run the country and how they think.

As for the conspiracy, let us return to the equation previously mentioned:

First, the conspirator

Who is the conspirator that al-Shater talked about? He spoke about him in absolute terms, about something unknown and illusory. He said the group feels that everyone outside it is conspiring against it. This is the conspiracy theory that the group lives by, where everyone who disagrees with it and opposes it is a conspirator. The group believes that it possesses the absolute truth, and always does the right thing, without any mistakes. 

The group decided to sack the public prosecutor and appoint him as an ambassador to the Vatican. It was a legal and constitutional decision par excellence. Did not Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi issue a constitutional declaration, in which all his decisions were immunized? All the people applauded him when he did this. Did not the president issue a law to increase taxes on a number of vital commodities? Was this a decision to protect poor consumers from extravagance and waste? 

Were all these decisions correct par excellence? Why does the Brotherhood consider itself above criticism? Does it have the right to do all this?

Who should we accuse now? According to al-Shater, accusations should be made to everyone who is outside the group; to the entire Egyptian people who forgot or ignored that the group is above the nation.

Second, the person conspired against

Al-Shater linked the conspiracy against Egypt to the Egyptian people's uprising against the group when they went out to all squares to chant "Down with the rule of the guide". 

He tried to suggest to the Egyptian people that Egypt and the group are one and the same thing, and that the conspiracies being hatched against the group are in fact directed at Egypt, considering that the group is a large entity that accommodates everyone, and contains everyone, including Egypt.

Third, conspiratorial events

Al-Shater, unfortunately, did not address any facts that support his talk about the conspiracy, except for the burning of 28 Brotherhood headquarters (and we are, of course, against all types of violence and sabotage) in a way that reminded us of the Cairo fire in 1952. He also referred to the beating lawyer Sobhi Saleh (one of the important Brotherhood cadres in Alexandria) he was beaten. But when he dealt with the events of the bloody Tuesday, December 5, 2012, he began to turn the facts and falsify them. Here we remind al-Shater of the role played by the group in burning the headquarters of the dissolved National Democratic Party, police stations and the headquarters of the State Security Investigation Service after the glorious January 25 revolution. We also ask him about who assaulted activist Abu al-Ezz al-Hariri, activist Hamdi al-Fakharani, and political activist Mohamed Abu Hamid? Why did he not answer these questions during his press conference?

The real conspiracy is the one whose threads are being woven and is led by al-Shater and his group. We may remind citizens of the famous Salsabil case, and what the security services found in al-Shater's office at the time. The document found then was called the 'Empowerment Plan'. The plan was published several times in the media outlet, the last time being in al-Fajr newspaper, under the headline 'Protocols of the Elders of the Brotherhood'.

The empowerment plan included controlling the Egyptian state by controlling all its joints. The most prominent provisions of this document were the following:

1- Distorting the media in various ways and removing it completely from the scene.

2- Neutralizing the army and containing the police.

3- Penetrating the General and Military Intelligence.

4- Controlling society through religion and convincing the society that the group represents true Islam and expiating the violators and assassinating them morally.

5- Working to create a constitutional and legal environment for the formation of militias trained in martial arts.