EGYPT – As Egypt’s military announced it had deposed the country’s first-ever democratically elected president, many Egypt watchers braced to see whether Mohamed Morsi’s Islamist followers would resort to violence as they said they would.
Radical Islamists such as Mohamed al-Zawahiri, a leader of Egypt’s radical Jihadi movement and the brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, promised his followers Wednesday they would have “the upper hand” should the military follow through with its threatened coup. A day earlier, Morsi made a speech promising to defend his right to the presidency with his blood.
At least 16 people were killed overnight in clashes at Cairo University, where pro-Morsi demonstrators had gathered. Throngs of his followers in the Muslim Brotherhood surrounded his headquarters with hardhats and shields promising to protect him.
Experts say the words are matched by stockpiles of weapons that have grown since the end of civil war in Libya, next door, and through smuggling routes that run from Sudan through Upper Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula.
A military coup feeds into the narrative of Jihadi radicals such as al Qaeda, who have long argued that advancing their ideology cannot be accomplished by democratic means, but only through violence, says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center.
“It provides real ammunition for al Qaeda and other extremist groups that have been arguing for years that change is not possible through democracy, and violence is the only way,” Hamid said.  (read more)