Ian Buruma published an opinion column on Al Jazeera English today about why the West should respect the results of elections in Egypt even if the Muslim Brotherhood wins them. Of course, I firmly believe that the MB will face much higher competition from other opposition (non-religious) groups if the elections are fair and transparent. It's Mubarak's heavy-handed rule which has popularized the MB in Egypt by forcing them to go underground and organize more organically in the Egyptian society through social welfare programs, which the government has not been providing properly to large swaths of Egyptians. Omar Suleiman, Egyptian vice president said today quite bluntly what Mubarak and his cronies and many Western leaders have repeated over the years, that Egypt (Arabs in general) are not ready for democracy. It's as if Mubarak's policies had nothing to with the radicalization of some members of the MB. As Buruma says in his AJE piece, "Violent crackdowns rarely result in moderation. The greater the repression that religious parties face in secular police states, the more extreme their politics are likely to become." The Islamists are not a central player in these uprisings and they will participate alongside many other groups in the elections of a future democratic (let's hope) Egypt. It's hard to dislodge this obsession with the Islamist peril and I'm not surprised because many in mainstream media keep harping on this all day despite clear evidence to the contrary on the ground. This video below from Fox News painfully confirms my point. John Bolton, former American UN ambassador chooses to simply ignore an incredibly rich report from a 10-year-veteran correspondent in Cairo which confirmed that the protests in Egypt have been free of any religious fervor or rhetoric. Bolton instead sounds his bells of doom by telling the Fox audience that this is all about the MB taking over. He says, "Mubarak while no Jeffersonian democrat to be sure has been our ally for more than 30 years. These are not things you toss away lightly against the promise, the hope, the aspiration for sweetness, light and democratic government." I just have no words and I wonder what the young Egyptians who have been camping out in the Tahrir Square would think if they heard such a hypocritical and brutal statement like this.