Egypt Polls Show Shocking Results

Mark Mellman is a pollster for and a consultant to several prominent Democrats. He has dug up disturbing results from recent polls soliciting Egyptian opinion:

➢ A World Public Opinion (WPO) poll [found that] only 39% believe Egyptian democracy should be “based on universal principles of democracy that apply in all countries.” A 60% majority prefer that the country be governed by a “form of democracy that is unique for Islamic countries.”

➢ Two-thirds of Egyptians told Gallup they wanted Islamic law to be the only source of law, compared to 13% in blatantly theocratic Iran. Hence the strong support for strict Islamic standards and punishments among Egyptians. Pew found 54% supporting segregation of men and women in the workplace, 82% favoring stoning for adulterers and 84% backing the death penalty for Islamic apostates.

➢ 75% favor investing a body of “senior religious scholars” with “the power to overturn laws when it believes they are contrary to the Quran,” according to the WPO poll. Only 23% took the traditional democratic position that “if laws are passed by democratically elected officials, and consistent with the constitution, they should not be subject to veto by religious scholars.”

➢ 69% see the [extremist Muslim] Brotherhood as supportive of “democracy,” at least in the theocratic way the Brotherhood and most Egyptians define it. That’s[why] 64% of Egyptians held a positive view of the Muslim Brotherhood in the WPO poll.

Such poll results underlie the fears of observers like Charles Krauthammer, who wrote:

our paramount moral and strategic interest in Egypt is real democracy in which power does not devolve to those who believe in one man, one vote, one time. That would be Egypt's fate should the Muslim Brotherhood prevail. That was the fate of Gaza, now under the brutal thumb of Hamas, a Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.