…What seems to have happened in Egypt on Wednesday as a fresh declaration of martial law by the military, with the court the next day concurring by returning legislative powers to the Egyptian military and ruling that Ahmed Shafiq, former prime minister under the now convicted and sentence Mubarak could run for president.

It seems to have a military coup in partnership with the secular judges of the state system who see in the qadis, the Islamic judges, a rival judicial system. In other words, both bodies, army and secular judges do not want Egypt to go the way of Iran where the mullahs rule.

Egypt has a history as the most cosmopolitan of Arab countries and no doubt a significant and powerful segment of the ruling class does not want an Islamist state; and Wednesday and Thursday’s maneuvers were evidence of that.

What remains to be seen is the results of the two days of voting this weekend. The Court dissolved the just-elected Islamist legislature was allowed but the election for president to procedure between the Old Guard Ahmed Shafiq, prime minister under Mubarak and just like him a former head of the Air Force, and the Islamist candidate Muhammad Mursi.

So the news out of Egypt can be seen as good, even if the Sinai peninsula has become if not a no-man’s land than a land of barbaric anarchy. Last week’s shocking turn of events suggests that there still is some fight left in those segments of Egyptian society who simply do not want the country to evolve into another Saudi Arabia or Iran, though the prospects for them are not bright. Islam is a tsunami of slaves of slaves who crave the slavery that Islam provides. The antithesis of freedom, which carries with a measure of insecurity and anxiety. Islam offers the snugness of a womb, of mindlessness and submission to authority…