EgyptArab world welcomes Brotherhood’s fall

Leaders throughout the Arab world could barely contain their glee at the news that the short and acrimonious era of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt is over, and is not likely to return.

The fractious Arab world has rarely shown such unanimity. Familiarity breeds contempt, though, and the antipathy toward the Brotherhood and its brand of politics has always been something most Arabs – secular and religious – could agree on, and on Thursday the region was awash with schadenfreude.

• Saudi Arabia praised the “wisdom and moderation” of the Egyptian military for acting to remove Morsi from power. By doing so, the army “managed to save Egypt at this critical moment from a dark tunnel,” King Abdullah said in a statement.
• Jordan hailed the Egyptian people. Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said that their “resolve has left the whole world amazed.” according to. Young Egyptians in particular had brought “intellectual and moral credit to the Arab nation,” he said.
• The United Arab Emirates, which recently has charged dozens of local Brotherhood members with sedition, noted “with satisfaction” the developments in Egypt, a Foreign Ministry statement said.
• Qatar has been the main supporter and financier of the Brotherhood – in 2012, the United States gave Egypt $1.5 billion in aid; Qatar gave $13 billion — and the main supporter and financier of Jihadi militias in Libya and Syria. The new ruler, 34-year old Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who inherited power from his father last week, offered warm congratulations to Egypt’s army in what the Washington Post notes may be a signal of a break from his father’s pro-Jihadi policies.
• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad practically gloated at the Brotherhood’s failures. I an interview Wednesday he said that “The Muslim Brotherhood’s experiment fell quickly because it is wrong, and what is built on a wrong principle will definitely fall.”

There were dissenting voices.

• In Tunisia, the elected Brotherhood-affiliated government criticized the ouster of Morsi’s, calling it a “flagrant coup,” but Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamist Ennahda Party, in an interview with Le Monde, was quick to point out that unlike the Egyptian Brotherhood, the Tunisian movement has always insisted on “le consensus national.”
• Turkey, a non-Arab state where Islamists have been in power since 2003, warned about the implications for the future of democracy in Egypt.
• The African Union (AU) has just announced it was suspending Egypt from the organization because of an “unconstitutional change of power” in the country. The AU stressed, though, that the suspension will be lifted once Egypt’s return to “constitutional order.”