My Cousin and Me -- Gary Lane

My Cousin and Me -- Gary Lane
(Cairo) Except for frequent anti-Israeli protests at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, many Egyptians were slow to criticize the Israelis at the start of the Jewish state’s recent war with Hizballah. President Hosni Mubarek’s government denounced Hizballah saying it had prompted the Israeli military response when it kidnapped two IDF soldiers. That response wasn’t made because Egyptians love Israelis—some I talked to here seem to dislike Hizballah even more. It’s a Shiite terror group and most Egyptian Muslims are Sunnis. Many devout Sunnis believe Shiites are apostates because they follow Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali Ibn Abi-Taleb rather than Mohammed. This is a centuries- old dispute—one that continues as Shiites and Sunnis slaughter each other daily in Iraq.
This thinking was vocalized recently by Sheik Mohammed Ihsan of the el-Mogamma el-Islami Mosque in Port Fouoad, Egypt. He raised the ire of Muslims attending Friday prayers when he said, “Backing Jews and Christians is better than supporting Shiites.” He was referring to Hizballah.
As the war with Hizballah dragged on and images of dead Lebanese appeared hourly on television screens throughout the Middle East, anti-Israeli and pro-Hizballah rhetoric intensified in Egypt. The great divide between Shiites and Sunnis has now narrowed--at least among the radicals. During the fighting, Sheik Mahdi Akef, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood—a banned militant group-- announced he was prepared to send 10,000 Sunni fighters to join Hizballah in it’s battle against “the Zionist enemy” and the United States. Apparently theological differences were set aside because militant Shiites and Sunnis felt they were being threatened by a common enemy.
Emboldened by the belief that they’ve delivered a crushing blow to Israel, Muslim radicals may now work together to destabilize moderate governments in the region. In the days ahead, this development may likely lead to additional acts of violence against the people of Egypt as militant Sunnis like the Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda join forces with Shiite groups like Hizballah in an attempt to overthrow the Mubarek government.
The Lebanon crisis has created a new threat to the region as an age-old Middle East saying is now being realized: “My brother and me against my cousin, but my cousin and me against all the