Protesters in Alexandria, Egypt. (Al Jazeera, Creative Commons)

In The Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon argues that democracy, in its truest sense, would only lead to oppression in Egypt as the majority of Egyptians prefer an Islamic government that rules according to Islamic law. Solomon cautions against pushing democracy on Egypt and cites sobering statistics to make his case that Western style democracy is unlikely in Egypt. Here's an excerpt:

Most Egyptians — three-quarters of its overwhelmingly Muslim population, public opinion polls say — want “strict imposition of Sharia law” and a larger proportion wants policies that most in the West would view as human rights abuses — 82% would stone adulterers and 84% want the death penalty for Muslims who leave their faith.

While most of the urban generation in Cairo’s Tahrir Square desires a modern Egyptian state of some kind, the Egyptian majority does not: 91% of Muslims want to keep “Western values out of Islamic countries.” For the vast majority outside the main cities, the outrages perpetrated by Mubarak lie mostly in his suppression of Islamic fundamentalist values, such as his ban on female genital mutilation and his moves to phase out polygamy and child brides. Most Muslim Egyptians not only oppose a modern Egyptian state, they would dismantle the existing Egyptian state, two-thirds wanting instead “to unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or caliphate.”

Read it all here.