The assassination on Monday of Egypt's top prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, is an outrage that will have terrible consequences. Barakat was one of the most committed opponents of Muslim Brotherhood-inspired terror. The men of violence who are currently celebrating what they will undoubtedly regard as a great victory can expect to pay a high price for their savagery. It is already clear that the Brotherhood's allegedly peaceful political operations mask the presence of killers who have pledged allegiance to Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS). The path on which ousted president Mohamed Morsi embarked could not have been better calculated to lead to the current tragedy that is engulfing Egypt. Politics is a process which has to work with the consent of the people. In democracies, newly-elected leaders without long experience of government imagine that the mandate they have just been given entitles them to ignore all other shades of opinion other than their own. Morsi was a classic example of this error. Instead of seeking to put together a government that included some of his political opponents, so that Egypt could rebuild after years of debilitating cronyism, he took the extremist path. An angry popular revolution brought an end to his misguided rule. It is hard to imagine the state Egypt would be in today if Morsi's increasingly dictatorial rule had not been brought to a premature end. Many decent ordinary Egyptians supported Morsi and the Brotherhood because they thought doing so would bring about a break with their country's venal political past. Now they are discovering their error. For all its protestations to be a moderate political force, the Brotherhood has a hidden, ugly and violent face. That face is being seen now in Libya, where it has spawned the Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Ansar Al-Sharia, as well as in Egypt. There is sadly, however, no escaping the reality that the brutal murder of a senior government figure is going to have a major impact on Egypt's principle source of foreign currency earnings. For hundreds of years, tourists from all over the world have been coming to Egypt to wonder at the country's archaeological marvels. To an equal extent, Tunisia is in danger of being crippled economically by terrorist attacks. No less than 10,000 tourists checked out of Tunisian resorts within 24 hours of the Sousse attack in which 39 holidaymakers were butchered in cold blood. The world has, of course, united in its condemnation of the latest acts of terrorist savagery. But the world can do something better than merely condemn. Words are cheap. Foreigners can demonstrate their support for Egypt and for Tunisia and their peoples by refusing to be cowed by the heartless men of violence. The finest answer to the terrorists is to defy them and continue with those often long-planned holidays. There can be no disguising the risks involved but it should be remembered that these same risks are now being borne by the Egyptians themselves, every day of the year. No terrorist organization, however disgusting its fanatical crimes, can overcome a united country. As Egyptians draw together in the face of the great terrorist evil that now confronts them, people from other countries should draw together with them and demonstrate their solidarity by continuing to visit the country.
