Egypt’s Minister of Endowments: ‘Muslim Brotherhood spreads coronavirus’, sparking wave of mockery

Activists set several examples of similar accusations made against the Muslim Brotherhood, including blocking rain drains, increasing the prices of lemons and vegetables and causing the baby boom

The Egyptian Minister of Endowments has sparked widespread controversy after he claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to spread the coronavirus among members of the army, the police, the judiciary and media figures.

The story began two days ago when the Minister of Endowments, Muhammad Mukhtar Juma, stated that “the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliates have lost their mental balance, and reached unprecedented levels of criminality beyond all human perceptions, and became a global threat. We call on the whole world to recognize the Brotherhood’s disturbing truth, as some of its criminal elements call for spreading the coronavirus among innocent people.”

Juma said in a statement published on the official website of the ministry: “Some members of the stray organization called on their colleagues who have been infected with coronavirus to spread it among members of the army, police, judiciary, and media figures as well as to the rest of the innocent citizens, which reflects the Brotherhood’s extreme state of mental, psychological and human imbalance.”

The statement was warmly received in the House of Representatives, as Mahmoud Hussein, representative of Parliament’s Youth and Sports Committee, announced his support for Juma’s statement saying: “We all need to have a role in communicating these important and urgent messages delivered by the Minister of Endowment to the whole world. The international terrorist organization of the Muslim Brotherhood poses an imminent threat to international peace and security.”

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Despite the wave of criticism sparked by Juma’s statements, he insisted on expressing the same position, while issuing another report on Wednesday evening via the official website of the ministry, in which he said: “In response to the calls made by some elements of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood to spread the coronavirus among all those whom they see as enemies or opponents, whoever deliberately transmits a lethal disease such as HIV, or any other deadly virus that leads to the death of another person, shall be deemed as a murderer.”

Juma’s statement sparked widespread controversy among activists, who emphasized that the accusation of the Muslim Brotherhood of spreading the coronavirus, which has been classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global epidemic, reflects the accuser’s impaired sense of judgment and lack of logical reasoning.

Activists also pointed out that the ruling military regime in Egypt has always resorted, whenever it fails to contain a disaster, to accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of conspiring against the state, which prompted all segments of the Egyptian society to believe that Al-Sisi’s regime is using the Brotherhood as a pretext to cover its failures. They added that this pattern of behaviour confirms the seriousness of the virus’s spread in the country and the regime’s inability to handle the crisis.

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Activists cited several examples of similar accusations made against the Muslim Brotherhood, including blocking rain drains, increasing the prices of lemons and vegetables, and causing the baby boom; in addition to having something to do with the fluctuation of Egyptian Pound’s price against the Dollar, the defeat of the national football team in the African Nations Championship, spreading hope, spreading pessimism, firing 3 million employees under the pretext of having ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, causing the national football team’s setback at the World Cup in Russia … and the last of which was spreading the coronavirus.”