Ayatollah ElBaradei

Although some are still fooled by the talk of “freedom” around Cairo, the onset of an Islamic dictator in 2011 is looking all but inevitable in Egypt, with consequences as profound for the Middle East (and the world) as when an Islamic dictator first took over Iran in 1979—the most important turning point in Middle Eastern geo-politics since Napoleon took the pyramids.

(Check out yesterday’s post for some background on today’s fire in Cairo, and this video below for a short summation of the views of the folk in and around “Liberation” Square, Cairo, who want nothing more than to be free to destroy, and have nothing to offer the world but blood, tears and genocidal hatred .)

It will only have added irony if the vehicle by which that dictatorship comes is the man whom the UN had inspecting Iran’s nuclear facilities—”nothing to see here” was his message when he came back from Tehran—the same man who now says of the Muslim Brotherhood, the progenitors of Al Qaeda and Hamas, that “We should stop demonizing them.”

The heroic Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave her take on Egypt this morning, one to which most of us would like to give a resounding “Yeah!”:

"We should help the secular democrats with a campaign of 'Yes to freedom. No to shariah.'

Well, yes we should. But the fact has to be faced that hoisting that sentiment in the face of the Islamist whirlwind is little more than wishful thinking. In the battle of Mid-Eastern ideas, freedom lost out to shariah centuries ago, and everything since has been the consequence of that.

I suggested yesterday what’s been obvious for some time, Egypt is going Islamist, as has Lebanon last month, as did Iran in 1979, and there’s very little you or I or Ayaan can do about it.

The mystic blood-letters are taking over from their secular cousins.

To commiserate with those few folk of reason in Egypt, who will soon be shot by both sides, here’s a sing-along from 1979 that is almost as topical today: Ayatollah, by Phil Judd and the Swingers.