Bad omens from Egypt

INTELLIGENCE reports that al-Qai'da is plotting to attack a US airliner in the run-up to the London Olympics provide a telling rejoinder to the disturbing pledge by Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, that at the top of his bucket list is gaining freedom for the notorious blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Centre.

Rahman, whose fatwa Osama bin Laden cited as justification for the 9/11 attacks, is as bad a terrorist as they come. A fatwa he issued before he was imprisoned for life in the US declared killing American Jews to be lawful. His followers once massacred 58 European tourists at Luxor, in Egypt. And he is linked to al-Qai'da leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, another Egyptian.

The fact that the newly minted president of the Arab world's biggest country wants Rahman freed as a priority raises serious questions about Mr Morsi's and the Muslim Brotherhood's pretensions about being Islamic moderates. So do claims by the Iranian Fars news agency that he told it another of his priorities was to forge closer ties with Tehran to create strategic balance in the region.

Mr Morsi is wrong on both counts. Egypt's economy could hardly be more dire. The country needs stability, not initiatives aimed at pleasing al-Qa'ida and Iran. If the new president wants to gain any sort of credibility, he needs to combat Islamic extremism, not identify with it.

Intelligence surrounding the al-Qai'da pre-Olympics plot, reported in The Australian yesterday, makes chilling reading. So, too, do recent events that show al-Qai'da and its affiliates slaughtering worshippers at Christian churches in pro-Western Kenya and attacking the ancient tombs of Muslim saints in Mali's fabled city of Timbuktu. The head of Britain's MI5 spy agency, Jonathan Evans, has highlighted concern about a pipeline of home-grown, radicalised Muslims travelling to terrorist training camps in Yemen, Somalia and the African Sahel.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the world's oldest and, arguably, most influential Islamist movement. Serious suspicions surround it. At a time of heightened concern about al-Qai'da, it will win no sympathy embarking on hare-brained initiatives like seeking freedom for Rahman. If it wants to be taken seriously, it must tackle Egypt's real problems, not pander to the terrorist gallery.