Letter: Watching brief on Egypt situation

IN A move which Barack Obama and David Cameron would do well to follow, Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his ministers not to comment on the situation in Egypt (News, 30 January).

Some 40 groups aim to turn Egypt into an Iranian-style fundamentalist state, including Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Gamma al-Islamiyya, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like al-Qaeda, they use Egyptian theocratic hero Sayyid Qutb's "Signposts" as the basis of their training manual in Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism.

It argues that God alone should rule the state and that any society which does not accept this edict should be attacked and destroyed in the name of Islam.

If an extremist regime does take over the "heart of the Arab world" and bins the crucial peace treaty with Israel, the last lights will start to flicker out in the whole region.

Dr John Cameron, St Andrews