Muslim Brotherhood rejects Khamenei calls for Iran-style Islamic state

Egypt’s main opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, have rejected calls by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for an Islamic Revolution similar to the Iranian revolution of 1979 to be established in Egypt.

“The MB regards the revolution as the Egyptian People’s Revolution not an Islamic Revolution” said a statement published on the Muslim Brotherhood’s official website just hours after Khamenei’s remarks on Friday, while “asserting that the Egyptian People’s Revolution includes Muslims, Christians, from all sects and political.”

On Friday and during Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quickly seized the opportunity to exploit the Egyptian uprising and called for an Islamic state to be installed in Egypt. Khamenei said that the recent wave of Arab revolts was an “earthquake” triggered by the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

“Do not back down until the implementation of a popular regime based on religion,” said Khamenei, during the televised address. “The clergy should play a role. For example, when people come out of mosques and chant slogans, they should support. Inshallah (God willing) part of the Egyptian army will join the people. The main enemy of the Egyptian army is the Zionist regime and not the people.”

“Today’s events in North Africa, Egypt and Tunisia and some other countries have different meanings for us,” Khamenei said to worshipers. “This is what was always talked about as the occurrence of Islamic awakening at the time of the Islamic revolution of the great Iranian nation and is showing itself today,” he continued.

“Our revolution has been able to be inspiring and a model because of perseverance, stability and its insistence on principles.”

“Today in Egypt one can hear your voice echoing there. The American president who was in power during the (Iranian) revolution has said in an interview that what you hear in Egypt is familiar. What is heard in Cairo today was heard in Tehran during his days,” Khamenei said referring to former US President Jimmy Carter’s who presidency coincided with the Iranian revolution.

The recent response by the Muslim will undoubtedly irritate many in Tehran who have tried hard in recent weeks to present the Arab masses as a sign of a thirst for another Iranian-style Islamic Republic.

In recent days, the leaders of Iran’s opposition Green Movement Mir Hossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard have expressed their strong backing for the pro-democracy movements in the Arab world, including those of Egypt and Tunisia. The reformist 2009 presidential candidate stated that the “interests behind the governing ideologies does not allow for the truth to appear as it is.” He maintained that Egypt’s “Friday of Rage” was the result of the actions of “Egypt’s Pharaoh” including his arrest of dissidents, forced confessions, incompetence, corruption at the highest level, the squandering of public funds and resorting to executions to “instil fear among the people.”

“If the establishment had respected the people’s right to govern their own destiny and had not stolen the people’s votes during the elections in Egypt a few months ago, the dear people of Egypt would not have been chanting cries about the ‘downfall of the regime’,” Mousavi added. “Pharaohs usually hear the people when it’s too late.”

“Our nation values the great revolution of the brave people of Tunisia, and the righteous uprisings of the people of Egypt, Yemen and other countries in the region. We salute all the brave, wise and fighting people of Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen,” Mousavi continued, while expressing hope that the peoples of the region would be victorious in their struggle.