Egypt’s crisis deepens - Toppling towards a catastrophe

It is an over-simplification to argue that, if usurped Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi had been able — or inclined — to recognise that a great number of his 82.5m compatriots want to live in a tolerant, pluralist society rather than one based on the harshest strictures of Islam, the spiralling violence of recent weeks might not have begun.

Thousands of lives might have been saved and Egyptian democracy, and democracy right around the Muslim world, might have been enhanced rather than denied. The tragedy is that every day of violence, every atrocity inflicted on the population, will harden attitudes and make the prospect of a tolerant administration involving the Muslim Brotherhood ever more remote.

The escalating pogroms against Egypt’s Coptic Christians also forewarn of an even bloodier future for the 15% of Egyptians who are Christian.