Pious politics

EVEN within his ruling circle, Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s president, has looked increasingly embattled and isolated since his slim electoral victory last June. More than half of his score of official advisers have abandoned him, along with his vice-president, his minister of justice and numerous sundry bureaucrats. On April 23rd Fuad Gadallah, his most senior legal adviser, angrily resigned, issuing a public letter that cited a lack of vision; failure to achieve revolutionary goals or to empower the Egyptian youth; failure to accommodate or even consult political opponents; and the overweening influence of Mr Morsi’s fellow Muslim Brothers in devising policy.

But Mr Gadallah, who is regarded as very much a fellow-travelling Islamist though not an actual Muslim Brother, offered a final justification that jarred with his blunt overall critique. Mr Morsi, he declared, was pandering dangerously to the Islamic Republic of Iran. His move to open Egypt’s doors to Iranian tourists threatened to swamp the country in a Shia tide, warned Mr Gadallah. It risked “the return of the Fatimid state and an infiltration of Iranian money and interests in the service of their goal of eliminating the Sunni sect from Egypt.”