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Egypt: The Founders
The single most powerful and prolific Islamist movement was born in Egypt, the intellectual center of the Arab world. Formed in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood was started as a social and religious club by a twenty-two-year-old schoolteacher, who recruited six members of the Suez Canal Company. It has since become the ideological grandfather of more than eighty-five other Islamist groups in dozens of countries well beyond the Arab world. Members or supporters of its many branches now number in the tens of millions.
More than any other group, the Muslim Brotherhood reflects the way Islamist politics have transformed Arab politics in the early twenty-first century. In the 2011–12 elections, the Brotherhood's political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, won 43 percent of the seats in parliament in the freest vote in Egypt's 5,000-year history. All together, Islamist parties won about 70 percent of the seats in the People's Assembly, the lower and more powerful house of parliament.
But the Brotherhood has also evolved significantly over the eight decades between its birth and its rise to power. The Brotherhood first tried to run for office in the 1940s but was repeatedly outlawed. It went through a militant phase in the 1950s and 1960s, when some of its members attempted to assassinate political leaders, including President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The regime undertook a massive crackdown against the organization, and thousands of its members were imprisoned and tortured. During this period, the Brotherhood's chief ideologue justified violent jihad. Even after the Brotherhood renounced extremism in the late 1960s, its platform continued to be intolerant of Christians and women's rights. It called for laws to comply with Sharia, or Islamic law. And it rejected Egypt's peace accord with Israel. Under the cover of other parties, it began running candidates for office again in the mid-1980s. In 2005, it won eighty-eight seats in parliament.
The Brotherhood faced regular repression under three successive presidents—Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak, who tolerated some of the movement's social welfare services but methodically curtailed political activities. Members and leaders of the Brotherhood were frequently detained and imprisoned, even after it became the largest opposition group in parliament in 2005.
The Egyptian uprising in 2011 caught the Islamists by surprise. But they quickly capitalized on it, mobilizing members and security for Tahrir Square. After Mubarak was forced to step down, the Brotherhood formed a new political party to run for office. After decades of repression, the Brotherhood has gone from being an embattled opposition to the most powerful bloc—holding 216 of 498 seats in a parliament charged with writing Egypt's new constitution. The Brotherhood is now poised to play critical roles as Egypt attempts to make the transition to democracy.
The Beginning
Hassan al Banna founded the Society of Muslim Brothers in the provincial town of Ismailiyya during a tumultuous political period. The son of a cleric, Banna came of age as Egyptians pressed for an end to British occupation and Western cultural and economic encroachment, including Christian missionary activity. Banna believed that Egypt—and the Muslim world in general—were weak and blighted by corruption, social inequality, and foreign exploitation.
Ismailiyya was a microcosm of the challenge. Home to the Suez Canal Company and British military garrisons, the town was filled with luxurious homes for foreigners juxtaposed with poor living conditions for Egyptian workers. Western influence permeated education, language, law, social habits, and values.
Like other Islamic modernists, Banna believed that Muslim societies were weak because they had fallen out of touch with their faith. He held that the key to achieving national independence, progress, and development was an Islamic renewal that restored religion in everyday life and politics, including application of Sharia, or Islamic law.
The Brotherhood began in 1928 as a social welfare society devoted to Islamic revival and social reform. The society built mosques, schools for both boys and girls, youth centers, and Koranic schools. It undertook literacy campaigns. It engaged in many forms of charitable work. It also created small economic enterprises and artisan workshops.
Egypt's first mass social and political movement experienced rapid growth. The Brotherhood had 50 branches nationwide by 1934, expanding to 300 branches with some 50,000 members by 1938. When Banna was assassinated in 1949, the Brotherhood had approximately 2,000 branches with an estimated 500,000 members, making it the largest organized force in the country. It also soon became the mother of all mass Sunni Islamist organizations in the Arab world.
The Brotherhood initially recruited members primarily from the lower-middle class and working class, including employees of the Suez Canal Company. Members also were artisans, laborers, merchants, and civil servants. A charismatic speaker and efficient organizer, Banna preached in villages across the country. The movement's nonelitist character was an important source of its strength. The educated and professional middle classes eventually constituted the backbone of the movement and its leadership.
In the 1930s, the Brotherhood became increasingly involved in politics, taking strong positions on both domestic and regional affairs. It called for immediate evacuation of British forces from Egypt and raised awareness and funds for the 1936 general strike in Palestine. To support its causes, the movement published pamphlets, newsletters, and eventually a weekly newspaper that took up social, cultural, and religious issues. It held regular public meetings, rallies, and national conferences. Banna was a frequent speaker across the country.
The Brotherhood's rapid growth and activities led to Banna's first brief detention in 1941. In 1945, he was one of a handful of Brotherhood candidates who ran for parliament. They all lost in what was widely seen as a flawed poll.
Like other political parties, such as the Wafd, Nationalist, and Young Egypt parties, the Brotherhood established a small clandestine militia in the early 1940s. This era was a period of nationalist agitation, political instability, and occasional violence, including bombings and assassinations. A member of the Nationalist Party assassinated Prime Minister Ahmed Maher Pasha in 1945.
The Brotherhood's militia, known as the "special apparatus," was trained in the use of small arms. It was ostensibly charged with armed resistance against British occupying forces, but it was also involved in several domestic operations. Two members of the group assassinated a prominent judge in 1947 after he sentenced a Muslim Brother to prison for attacks against British soldiers. There are conflicting accounts of how much control Banna had over the militia and whether some actions were taken without his knowledge or orders.
The Brotherhood also supported the war effort in Palestine in 1948 by sending arms and volunteers to the front. In November 1948, the government discovered an arms cache at the home of a Brotherhood leader responsible for aiding the Palestine war effort. Other arrests led to the government's discovery of the movement's militia.
The Egyptian government moved quickly to dissolve the Brotherhood, confiscating its assets and arresting many members, although not Banna. In retaliation, a young Muslim Brother assassinated Prime Minister Al Nuqrashi Pasha on December 28, 1948. Banna denounced the assassination, but less than two months later Banna was assassinated by members of the Egyptian political police.
The Nasser Era
On July 23, 1952, a group of junior military officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser staged a coup to depose King Farouk. The Free Officers Movement promised national independence, social justice, development, and democracy. The Free Officers had previous contact with members of the Brotherhood, including Banna. Some Free Officers, notably a young officer named Anwar Sadat, were sympathetic to the Brotherhood's ideas.
The Brotherhood initially welcomed the revolution, but the honeymoon was brief. The military junta had no interest in partners and did not return to the barracks, as promised. To consolidate its own power, the military began to eliminate rivals, dissolve political parties, and put former senior regime officials on trial. The military also outlawed the Brotherhood and arrested many of its leaders. The military and the Brotherhood then moved into open conflict.
In October 1954, a Brotherhood member attempted to assassinate Nasser during a visit to Alexandria. Over the next decade, thousands of Muslim Brothers were arrested; others went into exile. The crackdown continued until after Nasser's death in 1970.
The 1960s were a particularly dark period for the movement. The Brotherhood was radicalized by Sayyid Qutb, a writer intensely critical of Western civilization, of Egypt under Nasser, and of authoritarian governments in Muslim countries. Qutb was arrested following the 1954 assassination attempt against Nasser and spent a decade in prison.
Qutb's ideas later influenced extremist movements—from Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group (al Gamaa al Islamiyya) to al Qaeda—that justified violence for political ends. He was released from prison in 1964 but was soon rearrested for allegedly plotting an assassination attempt against Nasser. Qutb was tried and executed in 1966.
After intense internal debates, the Brotherhood moved away from Qutb's ideas, renounced violence, and gave priority to religious propagation rather than to political power. The turning point was marked by the 1969 publication of Preachers, Not Judges by Hassan al Hodeiby, the general guide of the movement. Hodeiby rejected takfir, the idea of declaring Muslims infidels, and rejected violence as a method of political change.
The Sadat Era
The Brotherhood's status shifted under Anwar Sadat, a former army officer who succeeded Nasser in 1970. Sadat released many of the movement's leaders from prison and used the Brotherhood to counterbalance his Nasserist rivals. Although the movement was still legally outlawed, it was permitted to operate on university campuses. Islamists swept student elections between 1975 and 1979, until the government dissolved the student unions. The group was also allowed to propagate its message (dawa, or the call) and to reestablish many of its social welfare activities. Religious publications proliferated, and two newspapers associated with the movement began circulation in 1976.
Sadat was also less hostile, if not sympathetic, to some of the movement's ideas. He called himself the "believer president" and employed Islamic rhetoric and symbols to bolster his legitimacy. He also introduced Sharia, or Islamic law, into the Egyptian constitution. Article 2 of the 1971 constitution declared that "the principles of the Sharia are a principal source of legislation."(Previous constitutions had only stipulated that Islam was the state religion.) In 1980, Sadat amended the article to stipulate that Sharia was "the principal source of legislation."
The 1970s generally witnessed increasing religiosity and conservatism across the Arab world. The 1973 Middle East war was a particularly important turning point. The war, an invasion designed by Sadat to take Israel by surprise, was fought using Islamic symbolism, not Arab nationalism. The Arabs lost militarily, but the war shook Israel, altered the status quo, and encouraged both countries to move toward peace negotiations.
But Sadat personally became increasingly unpopular in the late 1970s. His peace treaty with Israel, including his trip to Jerusalem, was contentious at home and isolated Egypt in the Arab world. Economic conditions deteriorated, resulting in the 1977 bread riots. Sadat's rule gradually became more authoritarian. Radical Islamist movements—such as Takfir wa Hijra, which rejected the Brotherhood's call for reform and instead promoted isolation and radical change through violence—emerged during this period. After Sadat's crackdown on political opponents, members of Islamic Jihad assassinated the Egyptian leader on October 6, 1981, during a parade to commemorate the 1973 war.
The Mubarak Era
During Mubarak's thirty-year rule, the Brotherhood began to participate in formal politics, including elections for parliament, professional syndicates or unions, student councils, and even faculty associations. The Brotherhood so successfully gained control of unions for doctors, pharmacists, engineers, and lawyers that the regime changed the election rules to block the Brothers from dominating those groups.
But the Brotherhood's most strategic decision in the 1980s was to run for parliament even though it was still outlawed. It fielded candidates under cover of other opposition forces. For the 1984 election, the Brotherhood forged a coalition with the Wafd Party. The alliance took slightly more than 15 percent of the vote, or eight seats for the Brotherhood and forty-eight for the Wafd in a 448-person legislature. In the 1987 elections, the Brotherhood allied with the Labor and Ahrar parties. The alliance took 17 percent of the vote for fifty-six seats, thirty-six of which went to the Brothers.
Participating in the democratic process had a profound influence on the movement. It gained practical experience with campaigns, voter mobilization, media outreach, and parliamentary affairs—the processes of democracy. But the experience also deepened the movement's interest in pluralism and forced it to articulate clearer positions and specific solutions to critical issues. Both required compromises.
The Brotherhood was not Egypt's only Islamist movement, however. During the 1990s, radical Islamist cells increased their violent attacks against the Mubarak regime as well as the Coptic Christian minority and foreign tourists, particularly in Upper Egypt. The deadliest terrorist attack was carried out in Luxor, where more than sixty people—mostly foreign tourists—were killed in 1997. Although it had renounced violence, the Brotherhood often paid a price too. After the 1995 assassination attempt against Mubarak in Ethiopia, the regime cracked down on all Islamist groups. Hundreds of the Brotherhood's members were imprisoned; some were tried in military courts and received long prison terms.
The Brotherhood persevered politically, however. It won seventeen seats in the 2000 parliamentary elections despite alleged electoral fraud. In 2005, it took an unprecedented eighty-eight seats in the People's Assembly, the largest number any opposition group had ever won. Almost immediately, the Mubarak regime clamped down on the group by imprisoning the deputy guide and other leaders, sentencing them in military courts, and confiscating Brotherhood businesses. Over the next five years, the regime restricted political space generally. In the December 2010 elections, widely considered the most flawed in modern Egyptian history, the ruling party won more than 90 percent of parliamentary seats. When the extent of electoral fraud became apparent, the Brotherhood withdrew from the poll.
Less than two months later, on January 25, 2011, protests to demand sweeping political change erupted in Cairo. Both the regime and the Brotherhood were taken by surprise. Younger Brothers participated in the initial demonstrations, but as individuals. The movement's leaders waited four days before calling on the faithful to join the protests—and only when the scale of the uprising became apparent.
But in the end, the Brotherhood's numbers, organization, and discipline were critical in defending Tahrir Square and other protest sites from Mubarak's security forces. Eighteen days after the uprising began, Mubarak was forced from power by peaceful civil disobedience.
The Uprising
The Muslim Brotherhood established a formal political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, in June 2011. The party's top three leaders came directly from the group's highest body, the Guidance Bureau. Mohammed Morsy was selected as the party's new chief, Essam el Erian was chosen as vice president, and Mohammed Saad el Katatny became the secretary-general. (Katatny was subsequently elected speaker of parliament and resigned as secretary-general.) All three had previously been elected to parliament and were deeply involved in the Brotherhood's political activities. Morsy is an American-educated engineering professor. Erian is a medical doctor and well-known Brotherhood spokesman. And Katatny is a German-educated microbiology professor. Rafiq Habib, a Christian intellectual, was named as a second vice president.
The platform of the party states that it is committed to equality for all Egyptians; pluralism; social justice; human rights; and the freedoms of expression, belief, and worship. It advocates a "civil state" with an Islamic reference, language the Brotherhood has developed to signal that it does not advocate theocratic government. It is committed to popular sovereignty and to the Sharia as the main source of legislation. The party believes that Egypt needs comprehensive reform to overcome decades of authoritarianism, corruption, and mismanagement.
But the uprising also exposed differences within the Brotherhood. After Mubarak's ouster, the movement faced several internal fissures. Younger members, many of whom participated in the uprising, left the movement to establish the new Egyptian Current Party. They had objected to the undemocratic manner in which Freedom and Justice Party leaders were chosen. They differed with the leadership on the role of religion in politics, its rigidity on other issues, and the specific relationship between the movement and its new party. They also resented the marginalization of younger members within the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood, for example, expelled Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a charismatic, liberal, and popular figure, in June 2011 after he announced his intention to run for president. The movement had earlier pledged not to run a presidential candidate to allay fears that it would try to dominate Egyptian politics.
Guaranteeing space in the new political era also forced compromises. During the first year after Mubarak's ouster, the Brotherhood's relations with the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) were cautious, pragmatic, and at times uncritical and supportive. Unlike the Tahrir protesters who demanded the immediate transfer of power to civilian authority, the Brotherhood initially accepted the military's political timeline and transition plan, which it calculated would benefit its own interests.
The Brotherhood did not press the military council to fulfill the uprising's specific democratic aspirations. The Brotherhood was reluctant to criticize SCAF's management of the country or the security forces' use of violence against civilian protesters, which resulted in nearly one hundred deaths and thousands of injuries. It also offered only mild criticism of SCAF's decision to try more than 10,000 civilians in military courts. The Brothers even supported the generals' characterization of protesters as troublemakers.
On the issue of a new constitution, the Brotherhood had long advocated a parliamentary system of government, especially after decades of unrestrained presidential power. But the Brotherhood now began to propose a balanced presidential-parliamentary system, a popular idea among other political groups as well. And it stipulated separation of executive, legislative, and judicial authority. It also objected to a SCAF proposal that would have ensured significant powers for the military and effectively placed the generals above civilian control.
The Muslim Brotherhood is generally a conservative and risk-averse organization. Former Deputy Guide Mohammed Habib reflected, "Revolution is not in the Brotherhood lexicon." But the Brotherhood's role in Egyptian politics changed significantly after the 2011 uprising. From an embattled opposition force, the Brotherhood emerged as the largest elected force in Egypt, and its statements and actions reflect this new reality.
Key Positions
The Brothers have long accepted the basic principles and institutions of democracy, such as a multiparty parliament, the separation of powers, and judicial independence. The group's founder ran for parliament in the 1940s. Since the 1980s, the Brotherhood has consistently participated in legislative and other elections, when permitted, despite significant government repression. But the Brothers are not liberal democrats, and some of their views on women, personal freedoms, and minority rights (including the right to run for president) reflect the limits of their liberalism.
Women's Rights
The Brothers accept many rights for women, including the right to work, get an education, and hold public office. But Egypt is socially conservative on gender, sexuality, and social issues, so the Brothers reflect a widely held patriarchal concept of gender that views women as primarily responsible for the family and home.
The Brother's 2007 draft political party platform drew sharp criticism for stipulating that women and Coptic Christians should not be eligible for the presidency. In the guise of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brothers now say that the party would not nominate a female presidential candidate but would not advocate prohibiting women or Copts from holding the office.
The Muslim Sisters, the female branch of the movement, has played a visible role in election campaigns and social services, but the Sisters' role is not equal to that of their male counterparts. Women are not members of either the Guidance Bureau or Shura Council, the Brothers' governing bodies. The Brotherhood nominated a single female candidate in the 2000 and 2005 elections. After the Mubarak regime instituted a sixty-four-seat quota system for women, the Brothers fielded more female candidates in the 2010 elections. But the ruling military dropped the quota in 2011. (All of Egypt's political parties historically fielded few women as candidates, a practice that continued in democratic elections in 2011 and 2012.) In 2012, the Freedom and Justice Party had the largest number of women in parliament—four.
The Brotherhood and its political party claim to support citizenship rights for all Egyptians, regardless of gender or religion. But Copts and liberals are skeptical that the movement believes in equal political rights for religious minorities. The group's 2007 draft manifesto said that Coptic Christians, who make up 10 percent of Egypt's 85 million people, should not be eligible for the presidency. This position was removed from the 2011 party platform.
The United States and the West
The Brothers support relations between the United States and Egypt based on mutual respect and interest. But the movement decries American support for Israel and Arab authoritarian regimes (such as Mubarak's) as well as U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The first contacts between the Brothers and U.S. Embassy officials were in the late 1980s, but they ended at the request of the Mubarak regime in the early 1990s. After the 2011–12 election, top U.S. State Department officials flew to Cairo to initiate new contacts with Freedom and Justice Party leaders.
The Brotherhood's long-standing position was that the Camp David Treaty should be put to a national referendum. Like the majority of Egyptians, the group is intensely critical of Israel and supports Palestinian rights, including the right to resist occupation. The movement also gave birth to Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian movement that won the 2006 Palestinian elections, governs Gaza, and justifies violence against Israeli military and civilian targets.
The Brotherhood's current position on Israel reflects its attempt to maneuver between its long-standing ideology and political realities. After Mubarak was ousted, the Brotherhood said that it would honor Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, but like other Egyptian parties, it suggested that the treaty might have to be modified. The Brothers are unlikely to call for abrogating the agreement while at the same time supporting Hamas and the Palestinians in neighboring Gaza.
The Future
As the dominant power in parliament, the Brotherhood's challenges are daunting. One of the toughest may be negotiating with SCAF, the military panel that assumed control after pressing Mubarak to resign in 2011. The generals pledged to hand over power after the writing of a new constitution and election of a president by mid-2012.
But Egypt has been ruled by military officers since the 1952 revolution, with the armed forces accumulating a large stake in the economy and virtual veto power over key legislative and foreign policy issues. Whatever happens on paper, the real transition of power may take years. And other political actors have been suspicious that the Muslim Brothers will make a deal with the military in the name of their mutual political interests—and at the expense of Egyptian democracy.
The Freedom and Justice Party will also have to negotiate with other parties, both liberal and Islamist, as well as the revolutionary forces of Tahrir Square—some of whom are skeptical about the Brotherhood's commitment to a truly democratic Egypt. The Islamist parties are also not necessarily natural allies on a range of issues.
Egypt's failing economy will be a particularly urgent issue for the Freedom and Justice Party. Even before the 2011 revolution, Egypt's woes were staggering: high unemployment, perennial budget deficits, crumbling health and educational institutions, and 40 percent of the population living at or close to poverty.
A year later, Egypt was reeling from the costs of political change. After the uprising, tourism, the stock market, and foreign investments all plummeted. Foreign reserves dwindled, and Egypt's credit rating was downgraded. Strikes and labor protests proliferated, while the global economic crisis prevented the world from offering more assistance. Yet public expectations have never been higher, with Egyptians expecting an end to corruption, more jobs, the redistribution of wealth, and more social service benefits—almost none of which the Islamists could quickly provide. How the Freedom and Justice Party and others in parliament tackle these important issues will largely determine the country's future.
Samer Shehata, an assistant professor at Georgetown University, is a former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Endowment for the Humanities–American Research Center in Egypt, and the Carnegie Foundation. He is the author of Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt (2009) and the editor of the forthcoming Islamist Politics in the Middle East: Movements and Change (2012).
Egypt: The New Puritans
Salafism is a new force in Egyptian electoral politics. The rise of ultraconservative ideologues has been particularly striking because Salafis had previously renounced participating in politics altogether. In Egypt, the Salafis emerged from the political backwater to win the second largest vote in the 2011–12 elections for parliament. They are now poised to play a pivotal role during Egypt's political transition.
Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis historically have been a loose coalition of groups and individual sheikhs who espoused strict interpretations of Islam and called for implementation of Sharia law. To them, the ideal Islamic society emulates the first three generations after the founding of the faith in the seventh century. They generally hold conservative and often illiberal views on gender relations, minority rights, and personal freedoms.
Yet political Salafism is also a heterogeneous phenomenon encompassing different groups with socioreligious views ranging from the far right to the left. Some sheikhs would like to re-create God's rule on earth. Others more modestly want to implement traditional mores and forms of justice. The sheikhs also differ in terms of the time frame and context for implementing Sharia. Some want to begin moving soon; others are committed to gradually implementing the Sharia, even if it takes decades or centuries. The various sheikhs are often stronger locally than nationally, another contrast to the Brotherhood.
As in other Egyptian movements, the Salafis have a generational divide. The older generation tends to be more puritanical, while the younger generation is more willing to reach beyond its own circle. The sheikhs considered the act of suicide by the Tunisian street vendor, which sparked the Arab uprisings, to be forbidden, or haram. The older generation of Salafis also did not support the 2011 uprising, whereas many in the younger generation turned out at Tahrir Square and other protest sites. One group of young Salafis launched the Costa Salafis, named after a popular coffee chain and complete with a page on Facebook.
The Salafis developed a large support base by providing grassroots social services, including welfare, medicines, and food for the needy. Although many Salafis are middle-class professionals, they are also religious populists who play to the lower-class resentment against Egyptian elites. Ironically, Salafis made inroads in Egyptian society partly because the government tolerated their social activities as a counterweight to the more political Muslim Brotherhood. Salafis are often (although not always, as younger members insist) distinguishable by their untrimmed beards and prayer marks on their foreheads, symbols of the practice of their faith.
In Egypt, the chief Salafi political actor is the Salafi Call, or al Dawa al Salafiyya. Its political arm, the Nour Party, was formed only in mid-2011, after the Egyptian uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak. But within six months, the Nour Party won 25 percent of the vote in the first free and fair election, or 125 of 498 seats in the lower house of parliament. Together with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamists captured about 70 percent of the vote.
The Beginning
Salafism in Egypt originated when university students broke away from the Islamic Group, or al Gamaa al Islamiyya, an umbrella network of Islamist factions that emerged in the 1970s to counter leftists and Nasserists (sometimes with the encouragement of President Anwar Sadat's government). By the mid-1970s, the breakaway factions ranged from radical and violent Islamists to conservative but peaceful groups. The students at Alexandria University created their own movement, the Salafi Call, or al Dawa al Salafiyya, in the late 1970s.
The Salafi Call was created largely because of political and ideological differences with other Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, which sought to dominate the Egyptian Islamist scene in the 1970s. The Call's chief founder was Sheikh Mohammed Ismail al Moqadim, a surgeon who received his religious education in Saudi Arabia. He was influenced by Saudi Salafi thinkers such as Sheikh Abdel Aziz bin Baz and Sheikh Mohammed ibn Saleh al Othaimin, who were religious leaders of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's own brand of Salafism. Saudi Arabia was created by the merger of Wahhabi clerics and the al Saud family.
In Egypt, the movement's epicenter was Alexandria, where Salafism sought to enhance its presence among university students. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafi Call did not have a formal organizational structure. It relied primarily on preaching—known as the call to Islam, or dawa—and student outreach in leaflets, Islamic camps, and lectures in the city's mosques. The major Salafi leaders included Sheikh Yasser Burhami, Sheikh Ahmed Farid, Sayyed Abdel Azim, and Mohamed Abdel Fattah.
In 1986, followers founded the Al Furqan Institute for Preparing Preachers, a school for religious education. Al Furqan became the main venue for the Salafi movement. Through the institute, the movement directed Salafi activities across the country through social, youth, and district committees in the 1980s and 1990s. The movement disseminated the Salafi ideology through a growing religious education network, and it published a monthly magazine, al Dawa. In 1994, as the movement's influence grew, the government closed the institute, dissolved its executive council, and banned its monthly magazine.
From Piety to Politics
Yet the Salafi Call eschewed politics. Classical Salafism has a long tradition of quietism. Many Salafis believe that political participation is heresy that corrupts Muslims and therefore should be avoided. Moreover, many traditional Salafi scholars prohibit rebellion or revolution against the ruler even if he is unjust or corrupt, as long as he is a Muslim.
In more practical terms, the movement also shunned Egyptian politics because the government provided no political space for any Islamists to participate. Despite their quietism, many Salafi leaders were arrested during President Hosni Mubarak's last decade in power. The movement even remained silent when one of its members, Sayyed Bilal, was arrested and tortured to death in January 2011, a month before Mubarak was toppled. When popular protests erupted against Mubarak, Sheikh Burhami's faction criticized the protesters and called on Salafis to abstain from participating.
After the revolution, however, Salafi leaders became heavily involved in politics. The movement spawned three new political parties: al Nour (Light), al Asala (Authenticity), and al Fadila (Virtue). The three parties formed a coalition—the Islamic Alliance—to field candidates in Egypt's first fully democratic election in 2011–12.
The ideology of all three parties is uncompromising. They advocate rigid application of the Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence), which they believe entails gender segregation, strict Islamic dress for women, and social restrictions such as outlawing alcohol. Abdel Moneim al Shahat, a controversial senior Nour Party official, outraged Egyptians when he dubbed democracy as "forbidden" (haram) and "blasphemy" (kufr). He described the works of Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz as "atheist literature" that promoted "prostitution and drugs." Another hardline Salafi leader urged Egyptians not to vote for liberal, secular, or non-Muslim candidates in the elections.
Salafis are socially conservative partly to preserve Egypt's Islamic identity in the face of Westernization and secularism. As a result, they argued that a new constitution should emphasize the role of Sharia in public and political life as well as in private belief. During the new parliament's inaugural session in January 2012, many Salafi members insisted on adding a religious reference to the official oath; they swore to uphold the constitution as long as it did not contradict the Sharia.
Since the 2011 uprising, Salafis have sought to inject themselves and their ideas into the center of political debates. They were surprisingly well organized in their first elections despite total political inexperience. They tapped into deeply rooted social networks to encourage support for their candidates. They also built alliances and coalitions with different political forces.
Before the parliamentary elections, the Nour and Asala parties joined the Democratic Alliance, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and including the liberal Wafd Party. But the two Salafi parties withdrew from the alliance on the eve of elections after what they perceived as attempts by the Brotherhood to marginalize Salafi candidates. The two Islamist parties then formed an alliance with the Building and Development Party, the political arm of the Islamic Group (al Gamaa al Islamiyya). (Many leaders of the Islamic Group, which had advocated violence against the regime, were imprisoned in the 1980s and 1990s. By the end of the 1990s, the group had formally renounced violence, and many of its members were released. In 2011, the group fielded candidates for parliament through the Building and Development Party.)
The Salafis did well in elections for several reasons. Islamist ideologies do resonate with pious Egyptians, but the Salafis had also delivered social services to the needy for several decades. Loose-knit but entrenched networks had built up around these services among the lower class and lower-middle class, which suffered under Mubarak's economic reforms. The Salafis achieved sweeping victories in some rural constituencies and on the outskirts of Cairo.
The Salafis' hands-on approach was more effective than that of the social networks, based on the twenty-first-century technology used by liberal and secular activists. "They didn't come to our streets, didn't live in our villages, didn't walk in our hamlets, didn't wear our clothes, didn't eat our bread, didn't drink our polluted water, didn't live in the sewage we live in, and didn't experience the life of misery and hardship of the people," explained Salafi leader Sheikh Shaaban Darwish. In addition, said Nour Party spokesman Mohammed Nour, "Other parties are talking to themselves on Twitter, but we are actually on the streets. We have other things to do than protest in Tahrir."
Rival Islamists
Islamist groups won 70 percent of the seats in Egypt's parliament, but the fiercest battles during the first parliamentary elections were actually between different types of Islamists—not between secular candidates and Islamist candidates. The Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood will not necessarily work together toward a common Islamist political or social agenda in parliament. And the divergence between the two groups—on a range of issues, including interpretation of the Sharia, gender relations, and views on democracy—represents only a segment of a wider Islamist political spectrum.
The Salafis view the Brotherhood as insufficiently Islamist and too compromising. The Brothers, in turn, view Salafi positions as naïve, overly rigid, insufficiently centrist, and inappropriate in a modern Egyptian context. The Brothers have shown during sporadic participation in past parliaments that their primary focus is on politics and not on religious or cultural issues. After the 2011–12 vote, a Freedom and Justice Party leader said its priorities would be "economic reform and reducing poverty … not (fighting) bikinis and booze."
As the Salafis began scoring well in the phased elections, Nour Party chief Emad Abdel Ghaffour vowed that the party's new members of parliament would not play second fiddle to the Brotherhood. "We hate being followers," Ghaffour told Reuters. "They always say we take positions according to the Brotherhood but we have our own vision.… There might be a consensus but … we will remain independent.… They always speak of it with reproach." He warned that the Brotherhood might try to "marginalize" Nour's politicians and portray them as "the troublemaking bloc. The experiences of other parties who have allied with them in the past are bitter."
The Nour Party has demonstrated occasional pragmatism in its political outlook. After the 2011–12 election, its leaders reached out to liberal forces in parliament to counter the strength of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. Although Salafis favor Islamic rule, the Nour Party's platform called for establishing a "modern state that respects citizenship and coexistence between all people." The party stressed the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers. And it emphasized social justice as well as the people's right to elect their leaders and to hold them accountable.
Key Positions
Until the 2011 uprising, the majority of Salafis rejected democracy as a Western construct that was anathema to Islam. Most Egyptian Salafis also rejected the idea of participation in any formal politics. Salafi leaders criticized the mass protests against the Mubarak regime and argued that opposition to a Muslim ruler contravened Islam. But some Salafis did participate in the protests.
The quantum shift in the willingness of Salafis to participate in formal politics does not mean that most accept the principle of democracy. Some say that democracy is a "tool" or an "instrument" that can be used to implement Sharia. Sheikh Yasser Burhami, a leader in the Salafist Call, explained, "We want democracy, but one constrained by God's laws. Ruling without God's laws is infidelity."
Women's Rights
Most Salafis believe that the most important role for women is in the family, as wives and mothers. Many Salafis object to the idea of women in leadership roles, and some claim that women should minimize their activities in the public sphere. The 2011–12 elections mandated that all political parties include at least one woman on their party-list ticket. The Nour Party's female candidates always appeared at the bottom of the ticket. Their faces never appeared on campaign material, and they were instead depicted by a flower or a party symbol.
Some Salafis also call for the separation of boys and girls in educational institutions after the primary level. Although several prominent Salafi leaders have said that they would not force women to wear the veil or the niqab, the full-face veil, some Salafis have suggested imposing restrictions on dress in public.
The Nour Party and other Salafi parties hold decidedly illiberal views about religious minorities and personal freedoms. They do not subscribe to the principle of full and equal citizenship for all Egyptians, regardless of religion. Several Salafi leaders have said that they oppose full political rights for non-Muslims.
The Salafis draw a distinction between private and political practice. The Nour Party contends that Sharia ensures Christians the right to practice their beliefs, including the right to handle personal status and family affairs according to Christian traditions. But the party has stated that non-Muslims cannot hold the presidency. On the subject of Coptic Christians, who make up 10 percent of Egypt's population, Sheikh Burhami went further. He specifically said, "Copts do not have the right to run for political office in Egypt."
The Salafis take a tough position on Sufi Muslims, a tolerant mystical form of Islam. Burhami has accused them of heresy and of being supported by the United States. He has been even tougher on the Bahai. Burhami said that he opposes allowing the tiny Egyptian Bahai community to hold religious services in Egypt or to list their religion on national identification cards.
The United States and the West
The views of Salafi parties toward the United States are still not clearly defined, however. Although most Salafis are hostile toward Western civilization generally, the Nour Party claims to advocate relations with foreign states based on respect and peaceful coexistence. But Salafis have demanded the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in New York after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Many Salafis are outspoken against what they view as U.S. meddling in Egypt's domestic affairs on issues of religious freedom.
The Nour Party has shown some pragmatism in its position on Israel. Its platform does not specifically address the party's stance on Egypt's peace treaty with the Jewish state, although in an interview with Israeli Army radio, a Nour Party spokesman said that the party would respect Egypt's international commitments and would not abrogate the Camp David Treaty. But like the Brotherhood, the Salafis are sympathetic to Palestinian issues and to Hamas.
The Future
Egyptian Salafism has evolved from a movement that rejected democracy into a major political force, but it is still immature politically. Public opinion polls indicate that the majority of Egyptians support Sharia as the main source of legislation, which was already enshrined in Article 2 of Egypt's constitution. The more contentious issue will be how strictly that provision is implemented or supervised. The Salafis are likely to have a hard time navigating alliances to achieve the movement's political or economic goals because of concerns among both secular parties and the Brotherhood about the ultraconservative Salafi agenda.
The Salafis' economic strategies are somewhat naïve. One of Nour's proposals is to increase medical tourism so that Egypt is a regional center for health care in both Africa and the Arab world. Given the state of Egyptian health care, that proposal would not be a quick fix for the country's profound economic woes.
Yet despite their conservatism and inexperience, the Salafis have demonstrated their adaptability to Egypt's new political environment and their success in amassing popular support—more so than any secular or liberal party. The Salafis' influence will depend on how Nour and other newly established parties work in parliament—and learn to compromise to win majority support in a democracy.
Khalil al Anani is a scholar of Middle East politics at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University in Britain. His books include Elections and Transition in the Middle East in the Post-revolutionary Era (forthcoming), Religion and Politics in Egypt After Mubarak (2011), Hamas: From Opposition to Power (2009), and The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Gerontocracy Fighting against Time (2008).


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I'm not sure what kind they are but have pink blooms. They are spreading like crazy and are very healthy but get very few blooms. What's up? |
Follow-Up Postings:
A picture would really help. There are a lot of pink flowered spreading geraniums. You could start by comparing yours with G endressiii and G macrorrhizum which are two common ones. A wild one you might get is G robertianum. |
Is your plant near your lawn.....and do you fertilize regularly so that the grass grows well. If so, chances are you are fertilizing your lawn with a high nitrogen lawn food and your lawn appreciates it by greening up well and the bare spots are filling in fast. Unfortunately, the nearby flowering plants are also sucking up all that nitrogen which tells the plant to keep producing green foliage.....at the expense of bloom. Whenever you fertilize near a garden of flowering plants....do the spreading by hand....not by spreader which sends the granules into the garden. Flowering plants appreciate more the higher phosphurus fertilizers such as Miracle Gro...15/30/15 |
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RESEARCH > Tuomo Glumoff > Kalervo Hiltunen > André Juffer > Alexander Kastaniotis > Sakari Kellokumpu > Inari Kursula > Petri Kursula > Raili Myllylä > Ohlmeier, Bergmann > Lloyd Ruddock > Rik Wierenga
Department of Biochemistry Tel. (08) 553 1200 Fax (08) 553 1141 PL 3000 90014 University of Oulu
Professor Lloyd Ruddock Biocenter Oulu and Department of Biochemistry P.O.Box 3000 FIN-90014 University of Oulu FINLAND Tel: +358-8-553 1136 Fax: +358-8-553 1141 e-mail: email@example.com
Background and significance
Protein folding for both soluble and membrane proteins is an essential, complex multi-factorial process. Around one-third of all human proteins fold in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and have an added complexity during protein folding - the formation of native disulfide bonds. The formation of these covalent bonds is often the rate limiting step of protein folding in vivo and in vitro.
At its simplest native disulifde bond formation can be broken down into two distinct steps, oxidation of two cysteines to form a disulfide bond and subsequent isomerization of the disulfide bonds formed to the native functional state. In practice, the mechanisms of native disulfide bond formation are much more complex and the complexity is further increased by having multiple parallel pathways for their formation (figure 1). Currently nearly 40 proteins have been implicated in native disulfide formation in the ER of mammalian cells.
While many of the participants in the cellular process of native disulfide bond formation in the ER are known, their individual physiological roles and/or mechanisms of action are often unclear. Furthermore, virtually nothing is known about their synergy of action with each other or with other ER resident molecular chaperones and folding catalysts or with components of the ER-associated degradation pathway (ERAD). However, protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) is central to most of the known mechanisms for disulfide bond formation (figure 1) and, as the name suggests, proteins belonging to this family are the only known, physiologically relevant, route for disulfide bond isomerization in protein substrates with substantial regular secondary structure.
Figure 1: Pathways for disulfide bond formation in the ER. Dotted arrows represent hypothetical pathways, red arrows indicate pathways in which our group has recently generated significant new data, the green arrow indicates a pathway for which the physiological relevance is unclear but which has recently been shown to be the major route in the periplasm of some bacteria. ROS = reactive oxygen species
Due to the complexities of their formation the production of proteins that contain disulfide bonds is difficult. This severely inhibits scientific progress in understanding a myriad of mechanistic processes and imposes limitations on the biotechnology industry for the production of therapeutic proteins. While disulfide bond containing proteins can be made in eukaryotic systems, the most common route for their biopharmaceutical scale production involves heterologous expression of (mammalian) proteins in the cytoplasm of E.coli. Here there are no mechanisms for disulfide bond formation and the recombinant proteins form insoluble inclusion bodies.
E.coli has two pathways to ensure that its cytoplasm is reducing i) using thioredoxins/thioredoxin reductase and ii) using glutathione/glutathione reductase (figure 2). When both pathways are disrupted, for example in the commercial strains origami, rosetta-gami (Novagen) or SHuffle (New England Biolabs), the cytoplasm is less reducing and disulfide bonds can form. These systems allow the production of disulfide bond containing proteins, however, disulfide formation in these strains is very inefficient.
Figure 2: Pathways for disulfide bond reduction in the cytoplasm of E.coli. To disrupt both pathways the most common route is to knock-out the gor and trxB genes.
Recent progress Three distinct, but interconnected areas of progress are outlined below. These range from the fundamental understanding of protein disulfide bond formation in the ER to the application of this understanding for improved technologies for recombinant protein production and back to fundamental understanding of protein biogenesis.
i) Disulfide bond formation in the ER For more than a decade the major route for disulfide bond formation in the ER was thought to be via the oxidation of PDI (or a PDI-family member) by the sulphydryl oxidase Ero1 (figure 1), with the role of other systems, such as the glutathione redox buffer being downplayed. These views sometimes overlooked decades of in vitro studies which showed that the optimal glutathione ratios for native disulfide bond formation matched those found in vivo. Similarly, once it was reported that Ero1 made one molecule of hydrogen peroxide per disulfide bond the field shifted towards the view that disulfide bond formation per se was toxic to cells, but this overlooks both the inefficiency of this model and the chemistry of peroxide and thiols. Two years ago we reported that in vitro peroxide could efficiently be used to make disulfide bonds and that native disulfide bond formation was not only possible, but kinetically faster than the use of a glutathione buffer, with minimal side reactions. This lead to the subsequent identification by us and others of multiple catalytic systems for this process and the radical shift in viewpoint from peroxide being a problem to peroxide being a possible major route for disulfide bond formation in the ER, a shift reinforced by the discovery that Ero1 is not only not an essential gene product in mammals, but that its deletion has minimal associated phenotypes. Other small molecules also potentially play an important role in disulfide bond formation in the ER. In the past year we reported studies on dehydroascorbate (DHA), one of the oxidized forms of vitamin C, is able to extremely rapidly oxidise dithiols to disulfides in peptides and non-native proteins in the absence of a catalyst. This study also sparked considerable interest and we and others are trying to distinguish if this is a relatively minor route for disulfide bond formation in vivo (via the antioxidant role of ascorbate) or whether there is a catalytic system for making DHA in the ER of some organisms. Also within the last year we published a long standing and controversial study on the kinetics of oxidation and reduction of PDI by glutathione, which when combined with some recent in vivo studies on how rapidly the optimal glutathione redox buffer is restored after treatment of cells with reductants we hope will allow glutathione to retake its rightful place centre-stage in oxidative folding in the lumen of the ER.
ii) Identification of human ER-resident proteins involved in protein folding There are already over 80 human proteins directly implicated in protein folding in the ER. However, given the recent identification of a significant number of these, including ERp18, ERp27 and two PDI-peroxidases identified by our group there are likely to be a significant number yet to be identified or to which the wrong physiological role has been assigned. Identification of soluble ER-resident proteins is aided by the requirement for an N-terminal signal sequence and a C-terminal KDEL-like ER retrieval motif. It is known that variants of KDEL also work to keep proteins ER-resident, with 24 possible variants being listed as the PROSITE-motif for the ER-localization of soluble proteins. Using novel reporter constructs we defined 37 new retrieval motifs that work in human cells and determined the specificity of the three human KDEL-receptors to both existing and novel KDEL-variants. For this we were awarded Biocenter Oulu discovery of the year. These new ER-retrieval motifs are found on 29 human proteins which enter the secretory pathway and we have confirmed the ER localisation of 16 of them, most of which we believe are functionally linked to protein folding. We have also shown that the C-terminal retention motif is not only limited to the terminal four amino acids, but must be extended to include positions -5 and -6 as well.
iii) The CyDisCo system From our studies on understanding the mechanisms for disulfide bond formation we have developed systems which allow efficient disulfide bond formation in the cytoplasm of E. coli. These systems are based on the expression of a catalyst of disulfide bond formation and a catalyst of isomerization. While the latter idea has been widely used, the former idea has not previously been considered in main due to misunderstanding of the effects of knocking-out the gor and trxB genes (figure 2). This system, known as the CyDisCo system (cytoplasmic disulfide bond formation in E.coli), has a variety of formats, but all share the same basic principles. Initial studies with the CyDisCo system shows that the system is very successful, that knockout of the reducing pathways in the cytoplasm is not essential for disulfide bond formation and that high yields of active, correctly folded, eukaryotic proteins can be obtained. The potential importance of these papers is demonstrated by the fact that both were accessed over 700 times within one month of acceptance and the second is the 3rd most highly accessed paper from the journal from this year. Current versions of the CyDisCo system, while still not optimal for all proteins, can easily be transferred between bacterial strains and allow the production of human proteins with multiple disulfide bonds in E.coli grown in shake flasks with yields of up to 100 mg/litre culture.
Future directions The overall aim of the group is to provide a complete molecular description of the processes by which protein folding occurs within the ER and the application of this knowledge for the efficient production of disulfide bond containing proteins of scientific, medicinal or biotechnological importance.
The research within the group can currently be subdivided into three overlapping and inter-dependent areas:
In addition there is a smaller subproject arising out of studies connected with CyDisCo connected with determinants of membrane protein topology. The research work is highly collaborative and involves collaborations with 11 groups in 6 countries.
Recent publications from the group:


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Did you know that wombat poo is cubed shaped? Or that pink hot pants are illegal after midday on Sunday in Australia? This graphic from Bondi Beer puts together some truly fascinating facts about Australia; each fact is more astounding that the last. So next time you're trying to impress someone with an interesting fact, try one of these!
This infographic gives you the chance to win a trip to Bondi Beech in Australia; all you need to do is like the page on Facebook. Enjoy!
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50 Insane Facts About Australia – An infographic by the team at Bondi Beer


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The Chat Noir Cookbook
Although it may not be packed with French recipes, it was made while the cook enjoyed the company of a particular chat noir. You will find different experimental recipes, of East-European, French, Italian and Asian influences, rather easy to make and, of course, low in calories. Bon appetite!
(1 Recipe) Created by JULES1990
Recipes in this Collection
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This is a very light and refreshing recipe, sightly oriental, for those hot days in the summer. It's very easy to make, very tasty and very low on calories, with a lot of vitamins! I serve it with some pasta and chicken breast, but you can combine it with anything, it also goes very well with fish or rice. I hope you enjoy it:D Submitted by JULES1990 Carbs: 18.8g | Fat: 10.6g | Fiber: 4.7g | Protein: 4.7g | Calories: 176.4
Send this recipe collection to a friend - http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/cookbooks.asp?cookbook=116368


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Holman Christian Standard (CSB) | New International Version (NIV) |
5 Now I want to remind you, though you know all these things: the Lord, having first of all saved a people out of Egypt, later destroyed those who did not believe; | 5 Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. |
Holman Christian Standard Bible ® Copyright © 2003, 2002, 2000, 1999 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. (Holman Christian Standard Bible Online) | Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online) |


text: I was diagnosed with Parkinson's in Nov 2008, but up until three months ago, many of the symptoms have gotten much worse; my speech is very much impaired, when the medication wears off, I have a shortness of breath and I am quite constipated. I don't really know what meds to take as my doctor hasn't been overly helpful. I am now taking 2 Senimets 200/50 and one Comtan every three hours and seem to be getting shorter as the meds wear off. There are other meds out there but may not be available in Canada.The escalating part is kind of scary? Is the constsipation slowing down the effectiveness of the Senimet. Any help you can give me will be very much sppreciated.


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The Message (MSG) | New International Version (NIV) |
1 I'll sing a ballad to the one I love, a love ballad about his vineyard: The one I love had a vineyard, a fine, well-placed vineyard. | 1 I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. |
2 He hoed the soil and pulled the weeds, and planted the very best vines. He built a lookout, built a winepress, a vineyard to be proud of. He looked for a vintage yield of grapes, but for all his pains he got junk grapes. | 2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. |
3 "Now listen to what I'm telling you, you who live in Jerusalem and Judah. What do you think is going on between me and my vineyard? | 3 "Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. |
4 Can you think of anything I could have done to my vineyard that I didn't do? When I expected good grapes, why did I get bitter grapes? | 4 What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? |
5 "Well now, let me tell you what I'll do to my vineyard: I'll tear down its fence and let it go to ruin. I'll knock down the gate and let it be trampled. | 5 Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. |
6 I'll turn it into a patch of weeds, untended, uncared for - thistles and thorns will take over. I'll give orders to the clouds: 'Don't rain on that vineyard, ever!'" | 6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it." |
7 Do you get it? The vineyard of God-of-the-Angel-Armies is the country of Israel. All the men and women of Judah are the garden he was so proud of. He looked for a crop of justice and saw them murdering each other. He looked for a harvest of righteousness and heard only the moans of victims. You Who Call Evil Good and Good Evil | 7 The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. |
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved. (The Message Bible Online) | Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online) |


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Datasheet | April 14, 2009
Honeywell ScanPal®2
Source: HoneywellMetrologic's compact ScanPal®2 mobile handheld computer is designed for a multitude of scanning applications including inventory/stock control, shipping and receiving, document monitoring, factory floor data collection, shelf price audits, price checking, asset tracking, warehousing and distribution with ergonomic, single handed operations.
A brightly lit LCD graphics screen, built-in contrast control and adjustable font size enable perfect display reads. Over 100 hours of operation is achieved using two standard 'AAA' batteries. ScanPal®2's easy-of-use is enhanced with a comprehensive Windows®-based application generator.
- Easy to use Windows-based application generator
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- 1 MB SRAM, stores over 50K records


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Anton Bruckner
Classical Academy | Composers | Romantic Period
Born on 4 September 1824, Anton Bruckner would grow to become one of the last great Austro-German Romantic composers, his compositions emblematic of the end of this era and prophetic of 20th century music.
Bruckner came to know music through the organ, which he learnt to play as a boy. Although he wrote no major works for the instrument, his improvisational sessions furnished him with ideas for his famous symphonies. These often feature abrupt switches and call-and-response between different groups of instruments, characteristics that reflect the switching of manuals on an organ. It was a style that invited criticism from many of his contemporaries but that has drawn much admiration in more recent years as it has come to be understood as a extension of his passion for organ-playing.
The symphonic material presents numerous problems for classical music scholars, since Bruckner frequently made sweeping revisions to them once finished. He worked on them successively, starting to pen new ideas just days after finishing the last one. Often feature powerful codas and big finales (listen out for the use of Wagner tubas in his last three works), his symphonies develop organically one from another in a pattern reminiscent of Schubert's working process.
Enjoy the unique sound of the 'Bruckner symphony' in this recording of the seventh and the ninth. Listen out for the organ-like changes of flow and sit back in awe at those monumental finales.
If you enjoy these symphonies, you can read more about Bruckner's choral music in our special discovery article. Why note discover more about Austo-German Romantic composers here.


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Iran's deputy foreign minister said his country is willing to provide weapons to Iraq if asked, but does not plan to send troops. He admitted, however, that Iran would be sending "military consultants" to Iraq to help it resist the advance of the Islamic State. He also blamed the rise of the IS on American policies in Syria, and ruled out the possibility of cooperating with the US against the IS.
The Revolutionary Guards are reportedly recruiting Afghan refugees to fight alongside Assad regime forces in Syria. A senior Guards commander recently claimed that Iran has trained an extra 130,000 soldiers ready to back up Assad's forces if need be.
Iran claimed to have watered down over 440 pounds of enriched uranium pursuant to its agreement with world powers, and offered to redesign the Arak heavy water reactor to reduce plutonium output. Tehran criticized the US decision that applied Iran sanctions law to seize a Manhattan skyscraper and sell the assets. A Senate bill that withholds US visa approval for any UN nominee who has been involved in terrorism was signed into law yesterday, impeding the appointment of Hamid Aboutalebi, Iran's proposed ambassador to the UN, who is linked to the 1979 hostage crisis.
President Rouhani declared yesterday that Iran has decided on principle not to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. He also said the Iranian government's foreign policy is now "based on easing tensions and building confidence with the world." State media said five border guards who had been kidnapped in Pakistan were freed.
As part of seven promised "confidence-building" measures on its nuclear program due for completion by May 15, Iran agreed to provide information to the IAEA on its detonators. A top IAEA official said progress at the Feb. 8-9 talks was good but much work remains to be done to examine possible military aspects of Iran's nuclear program. Iran claimed to have successfully test-fired two new missiles, an advanced ballistic missile with a fragmentation warhead and a laser-guided surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missile.
The commander of the Northern Navy Fleet said Iran is sending several warships on a three-month mission in the Atlantic Ocean that will take Iranian ships close to US maritime borders for the first time. In a meeting in Tehran with a top official of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, called Israel the main threat to Middle East peace, urged PIJ to maintain unity, and said the conflict in Syria was an important lesson for the Islamic resistance front.
Foreign Minister Zarif urged all foreign fighters to leave Syria and called on foreign forces to stop "stop funneling funds, money and arms" into Syria. The UN's nuclear watchdog agency asked for funds so it can nearly double the number of personnel working to verify Iran's compliance with the recent agreement on its nuclear program.
The UN withdrew its invitation to Iran to attend the Geneva II talks, after pressure by the US, Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian opposition. As part of the recent nuclear agreement, Iran suspended sensitive enrichment activities and world powers lifted some sanctions in response.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace division, claimed that improvements in Hezbollah's missile capabilities now enable the group to hit targets accurately anywhere in Israel. Hezbollah is thought to have recently moved various types of missiles from Syria into Lebanon, including the long-range Scud D missile, the medium-range Fateh missile, the shorter-range Scud C, and the Fajr rocket.
State TV quoted Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi as claiming that Iran has decided to not put 1,000 second generation centrifuges into operation at one of its nuclear fuel enrichment sites. Salehi also said Iran currently has 19,000 operating centrifuges, and is now developing third and fourth generation-type centrifuges, and that Tehran is in discussions with Moscow over the construction of four new nuclear power plants in Iran.
Foreign Minister Zarif said Iran will never participate in talks with Israel. Iran's ambassador to Turkey noted that cooperation has improved between the Iranian intelligence and security services and Turkey's National Intelligence Organisation, and said Iran has offered to help Turkey mend ties with Syria.
Iranian officials and the EU announced that a deal has been reached between Iran and the six world powers on the Iranian nuclear program. It provides that Iran will suspend enrichment of higher-grade uranium for six months in exchange for $6 billion to $7 billion in US sanctions relief as well as renewed trade in metals, aircraft parts, and petrochemicals. Israel sharply criticized the deal as giving Iran time to move closer to developing nuclear weapons.
Iran signed a pact yesterday with the IAEA giving it "managed access" to some of the country's nuclear facilities, but not to its most sensitive sites, including the Parchin complex. President Rouhani transferred the work of the "modesty project," which attempts to enforce Islamic dress codes on women, from the police to the Ministry of the Interior.
Iran and the US blamed each other for failing to come to an agreement about Iran's nuclear program in recent talks. An investigation shows that the business empire controlled by Supreme Leader Khamenei is worth about $95 billion, some 40% more than Iran's total oil exports last year, which amounted to $67.4 billion.
A lawmaker claimed that Iran has "hundreds" of troops in Syria assisting Assad regime forces; the IRGC countered that "Iran has only advisers in Syria to transfer its military experience to the Syrian army." Iran entered talks with world powers in Geneva about its nuclear program. The Sunni militant group Jaish-ul Adl claimed the recent assassination of a prosecutor in Zabol.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered outside the former US Embassy in Tehran on the 34th anniversary of its seizure, chanting "Death to America," in the largest such gathering in years. President Rouhani said he was "not optimistic" about negotiations with the West on Iran's nuclear program, and Supreme Leader Khamenei said, "No one should see our negotiating team as compromisers."
A new report estimates that Iran may be only a month away from having enough weapons-grade uranium to produce a bomb; the Obama administration has estimated that Iran is six months away from that capability. In the past 12 months, Iran has nearly doubled its stockpile of medium-grade uranium and has increased its number of centrifuges to 19,000 from 12,000. Four Christians were sentenced to 80 lashes for drinking communion wine. A UN report said non-Muslims in Iran are routinely punished for violating Islamic laws.
Ansar Iran, a Sunni jihadist group, released a video threatening retaliation in the event of Iranian attempts to dismantle the group's camps. EU head Catherine Ashton said the next round of talks on Iran's nuclear program will begin in November. Talks today ended with no breakthrough, despite Iran's offer to allow unannounced IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi rejected the West's demand that enriched uranium be shipped out of the country. Speaking of negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, US Secretary of State Kerry said that "no deal is better than a bad deal."
The exiled dissident National Council of Resistance claimed that Iran is quietly moving a nuclear weaponization research and planning center to a site in a defense ministry complex in Tehran ahead of talks with world powers on the Iranian nuclear program. Semi-official media said "counterrevolutionary armed guerrillas" killed five members of the Revolutionary Guards near the Kurdish town of Baneh, close to the Iraqi border.


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(1795–99) Government set up during the French Revolution by the Constitution of 1795. Legislative power was placed in the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients, while executive power was placed in a five-member Directory. Though the Directors nominally inherited many of the powers of the Committee of Public Safety, they had no funds to finance their projects or courts to enforce their will. The regime was marked by administrative chaos and corruption and by the uprisings in the Vendée. It was overthrown in Napoleon's Coup of 18–19 Brumaire.
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Complete Jewish Bible (CJB) | New International Version (NIV) |
1 [ADONAI] says: "If a man divorces his wife, and she leaves him and marries another man, then if the first one marries her again, that land will be completely defiled. But you prostituted yourself to many lovers, yet you want to return to me?" says ADONAI. | 1 "If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again? Would not the land be completely defiled? But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers-- would you now return to me?" declares the LORD. |
Complete Jewish Bible Copyright 1998 by David H. Stern. Published by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. (The Complete Jewish Bible Online) | Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online) |


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Acqualina Testimonials |
Thank you for another great stay
The Acqualina is a place i have been visiting for the past five years. The staff consistently provides the highest standard of service any guest could expect! The ambience of the entire resort is second to none in Sunny Isles! Thank you for another great stay.
Christopher Russell


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Leipzig Edition of the Works of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Complete Works)
Series I (Orchestral works) - Vol. 6A: Symphony No. 4 in A major (Op. 90) MWV N 16 "Italian". Version of 1834
Posthumous torso
A mystifying question of versions surrounds the "Italian:" right after the world premiere in London, Mendelssohn is unsatisfied with his symphony. Since he no longer has the score with him, he writes it down afresh (except for the opening movement), but stops at three quarters of the way. In the meantime, trusted experts weigh in with their views. Fanny Hensel writes to her brother: "I don't like the change in the first melody at all; why did you make it?" Nevertheless, Felix continues to busy himself with the first movement, but ultimately finds no more time for it and leaves it primarily in the form of the "complete early version" of 1833, which is published posthumously and remains, to this day, a standard repertoire piece in all concert halls. The "revised torso," in turn, was long ignored. It was published in this volume, yet it is clear that the three movements of the "incomplete final version" of 1834 were – from the composer's viewpoint – not at all ready for publication, seeing that Mendelssohn had never critically reviewed them after having penned them.
1 - Preface |
2 - Introduction |
3 - Andante con moto |
4 - Menuetto. Con moto grazioso |
5 - Saltarello. Allegro di molto |
6 - Faksimiles |
7 - Kritischer Bericht. |
8 - I. Quellen |
9 - 1. Quellenübersicht |
10 - 2. Quellenbeschreibung |
11 - 3. Quellenbewertung |
12 - II. Zur Editionspraxis in diesem Band |
13 - III. Textkritische Anmerkungen |
14 - Skizzen und verworfene Fassungen |


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Following my last post, I continued to train Dratini until around 8 o'clock in which my training ground for Atk and Spd would turn into Hoothoots and Spinaracs. I decided it was time to take on the Kimono Girls. Pretty easily beat out everything but Espeon and Umbreon. Took them down with a combination of Pupitar and Gengar, the latter being used on Espeon. Gengar then proceeded to sweep the rest of the Kimono Girls with a Hypnosis-Dream Eater/Shadow Ball treatment.
I climbed my way to the top of the Bell Tower and met Ho-oh. I got lucky with some sunny day uses in a row after the first move, which was a sacred fire which burned Pupitar. Pupitar used Rock Slide until Ho-oh was no more (as I like to kill off the legendaries at the beginning and go back for them later in the game).
After Ho-oh, I continued to Victory road where I met and beat my rival Silver. I am currently taking advantage of rematches to level up my team to around 50 if not 55 (as I will need to do that to get Dragonite and Tyranitar anyways). The team is as follows...
Lv 40 -- Lv 41 -- Lv 37 -- Lv 39 -- Lv 41 -- Lv 37
Today I get to work on levelling my team to the mid 50's while working on homework and other everyday things. Hopefully I can take down Lance before the end of the weekend


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Bioshock PS Vita release date this year (seems unlikely)
Zavvi have gone live with an order page that lets you pre order the game right now for £34.95 although their Bioshock PS Vita release date would see it out ahead of Bioshock Infinite.
Zavvi have gone live with an order page that lets you pre order the game right now for £34.95 although their Bioshock PS Vita release date would see it out ahead of Bioshock Infinite.
Irrational have revealed the final Heavy Hitter, a class of special combat-altering enemies that so far have included the Mechanised Patriot, Handyman, Boys of Silence and now the Siren. She's a spectral opera singer that can reanimate dead bodies influenced by the 19th century's fascination with spiritualism and the paranormal. I kind of hoping Irrational shut up now. I'd have loved to have met this thing as a surprise, it would have been terrifying.
It really looks like Bioshock Infinite is getting weirder by the minute. The latest Heavy Hitter announced is described as 'a camera that moves'. It seems to be a small boy locked inside a helmet that listens for you and calls for reinforcements with a horrible metal scream. It suggests there's more to the Hitters than just the brute force demonstrated by the Handyman and Mechanised Patriot revealed so far.
Here's the latest Heavy Hitter to be (re)revealed for Bioshock Infinite: The Handyman. He's under gone a little redesign since his brylcreem and moustache debut but the essential concept remains – big angry metal monkey man thing that will smash you up good.
After today's reveal of Bioshock Infinite's Motorized Patriot, a murderous clockwork George Washington with a minigun, Irrational Games have followed it up with a video showing the creepy thing in action.
The new enemy is part of a class of Bioshock Infinite opponents called 'heavy hitters'. Director Ken Levine has revealed the Motorized Patriot saying "Unlike most of the enemies, he's completely fearless. He doesn't have a sense of self-preservation, so he'll just keep coming at you and coming at you." So he's basically a clockwork Terminator.
Speaking to PlayStation Access (new episode on the PSN today) Ken Levine has expressed a love for all things greek and murdery. "I'm a huge fan of the God Of War series. When I was a kid I used to love Clash Of The Titans, I was sort of drawn to that period."
Speaking to PlayStation Access Ken Levine has talked about the creative process and influences between other games. When asked a reader question about similarities between Bioshock and Skyrim's "magic in one hand weapon in the other" set up, Levine said, "There is a constant back and forth".
Speaking to PlayStation Access Ken Levine has been talking about what makes Bioshock, well, Bioshock. Levine says the decision to leave the sea and move to the floating sky city of Colombia came once he and Irrational Studios had decided they'd "said what we wanted to say about Rapture". Despite the shift into the clouds, though, the series' creative director thinks it doesn't matter where the game's set, as long as it adheres…


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Sun, Mar 26, 06 at 13:31
I am trying to start up a backyard nursery. I'm wondering though how to get a hold of non patent cuttings or seeds to start to grow and sell. Also if anyone can tell me how to get a hold of someone to buy these from. I am having a hard time with this information. Can anyone help me out???? I'm interested in vegatable plants, flowers & herbs. |
Follow-Up Postings:
Hi, I am trying the same, but we're living in Australia. There are more here which are yet selling. I still only sell at the garden gate. I purchase my seeds like a normal gardener and if I make cuttings it is from my own plants that need to be prunded. |
- Posted by mocountryboys 5b/6a (My Page) on Wed, Jul 19, 06 at 9:25
Check out North Carolina Farms.....they're a friendly company, have a decent selection, and don't have the huge minimum orders that some places do. HTH |
Here is a link that might be useful: North Carolina Farms
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This week we talk to Claire Fox, founder and director of the Institute of Ideas, and convenor of the annual Battle of Ideas conference, which took place last month. Claire is one of the regular team members on Radio 4's Moral Maze, and has appeared on BBC 1's Question Time.
What's the latest download on your Ipod?
Ipod? – you're kidding me? But CDs I have bought recently are Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's Raising Sand which I love and rather belatedly I have bought Joan Wasser's Joan as Police Woman which I play and replay. Also, I have been bought Thomas Zehetmair and his Quartet's Bartok: String Quartet No.5 Bela & Paul Hindemith Quartet No. 4. – On a couple of listens – and I will need more – this might prove to be a favourite.
What was the last thing you saw at the theatre?
The fantastic David Edgar adaptation of Dickens' The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby Parts I and II at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. Ensemble acting at its best: 23 actors, 100 roles, and perfect pace and attention to detail ensured the six and a half hours at the theatre passes without you once thinking time is dragging. Teenagers in attendance, usually written off by those in the arts' elite as having the attention fly of a gnat, were rapt throughout.
Tate Britain or Tate Modern?
Tate Britain every time. I feel art is at the heart of Tate Britain; too often Tate Modern indulges in 'art for headlines'. Too many treat it as a glorified coffee shop, a pretentious meeting place with art at its periphery. If you want to be seen, go to Tate Modern; if you want to see some art, go to Tate Britain.
What are you reading at the moment?
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which the Institute of Ideas book group is discussing this month. It recently won the Orange prize for fiction. Winning literary prizes is not necessarily a guide to great novels, but in this instance the judges are to be congratulated for finding us a novel well worth reading, with not only literary merit but insight into the recent history of Africa. The vivid set of complex characters act as a counter to caricatured depictions of Africans as hapless victims of either famine or corrupt dictators, in need of saving by Western celebrities such as Bono and Bob Geldof. What is more, once you start it, you can't put it down
Which cultural figure from the past or present would you most like to meet or have met?
I would like to spend time with FR Leavis and argue with him about The Great Tradition. I have met and interviewed Harold Bloom, but it was too brief an encounter. His rejection of feminist and post-structuralist criticism may sometimes seem too much like a grumpy old man, out of time, but this should not put people off. His writings about literature are fresh, accessible passionate and erudite without being pompous or over-populist. I love his The Western Canon and Shakepeare: The Invention of the Human. Meanwhile, I have heard George Steiner give three long lectures, and even spoken to him on several occasions. I stuttered through each encounter. He may be an old man, but he makes me go weak at the knees. Oh to have been taught by any of these great teachers and critics.
Which cultural figure from the past or present do you think is the most over-rated?
Young British Artists (YBA) collectively. Despite some talented artists amongst them, such as the Chapman brothers, the YBA phenomena is over-rated and over flattered by a fawning art establishment, who seem over-awed by youth and so called 'cutting edge' per se.
And the most under-rated?
Leon Trotsky's writings on culture collected in On Literature and Art, are endlessly perceptive and challenging, and significantly stand the test of time. Trotsky eschews today's fad for reducing art to its instrumental value, writing "A work of art should, in the first place, be judged by its own law, that is, by the law of art". He's a useful reminder that the tendency to hi-jack the arts for political ends is not confined to Stalinist philistinism, but is still thriving at the DCMS.
On novelists, Edith Wharton is often under-rated. Worse, film adaptations of her novels do her no justice, and lose her wit and savage social critique. Hopefully Hermione Lee's fabulous new biography of the American writer will inspire more people to read her.
The X-Factor or Strictly Come Dancing?
Both – I flick between the two. Trash TV on a Saturday night is my perfect way of unwinding. Neither actually pretends to be 'cultural' as such. However, the classical music world's aping of reality TV, from BBC2's Classical Star to the forthcoming BBC1 prime time Choir Wars, are more problematic. We shouldn't let the BBC get away with telling us this shows a commitment to bringing high art to the masses. It's a betrayal of such a mission, by suggesting the only way ordinary people might 'get' classical music if it is wrapped up as a game show.
You're asked by a paper to review either The Magic Flute or We Will Rock You. Which do you choose?
The Magic Flute. Sub-Queen c/o Ben Elton I can live without. However, although I am a Mozart fan, I am not an expert and hence any review might lack insight. I prefer to read reviews by experts rather than enthusiastic amateurs. However, this is not to be snobbish about West End musicals; many are entertaining, even exhilarating. I thoroughly enjoyed Billy Elliot (ballet and the miners' strike – tow of my favourite subjects) and even Wicked, my last encounter with the genre.
Have you ever walked out of a play, film, concert or other production?
Never; there is always a hope things will get better, especially in live performances, and sometimes I have hated the first half of a play and then become hooked as the actors / performers have relaxed. I have given up on novels after a few chapters; life's too short to waste on self-indulgent, poor writing, however much the reviewers tell you this is the 'next big thing'.
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Submitted by admin on Tue, 2007-11-20 09:05.


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See, told you it was quiet
Doh! on me though.
Easy mistake to make. Those Vantacs are only ~ $25! Found that a bit surprising. If I didn't have so many extra TT docks, I'd buy one. Might buy one just for the halibut.
Posted 07 February 2013 - 12:57 PM
See, told you it was quiet
Doh! on me though.
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Posted 07 February 2013 - 01:03 PM
Assuming you bought the enclosure from Amazon, how do you make a link to them? For about 6 months I haven't been able to do that because I get a line across the top of the page that says I bought this item and gives me the option to buy it again or something like that and when I preview the post the link shows my sign in page at Amazon. Must be a setting on Amazon, but I can't find it.
Slimlin-5 with SWM16
HR44-700 with AM21 OTA tuner and eSATA 4.0 TB
HR24-500 with AM21 OTA tuner and eSATA 2.0 TB
HR21-700 with DECA adapter for network
Network: Netgear R7000
Internet: Comcast 105/20
Posted 07 February 2013 - 01:08 PM
I don't know if this is the same for poster you quoted, but when I make links from Amazon I just copy the link shown on the address bar of my browser. No setting was changed.


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On September 17th Mississippi-born blues legend, Big George Brock and his harmonica take the stage at The Sheldon. His grand voice and presence are simply unbelievable. Combined with the high energy show of the New House Rockers and Miss Clarine Wagner, Big George Brock reminds us why he is the "The Heavyweight Champion of the Blues!" Tickets are available for $10 at the door. For more information, call 314-533-9900 or go to http://www.TheSheldon.org/ https://www.facebook.com/events/575870809125707/
cost- The Sheldon Concert Hall
- 3648 Washington Boulevard Saint Louis, MO 63108
- St. Louis, MO 63108