Is Egypt heading for holy war?

Via Cousin John

Even posing that question will annoy many. 

Away from the troublespots, life for millions of Egyptians continues as normal. Egypt's most fundamental problems are more economic than political.

But in a week when the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood called for "an uprising by the great people of Egypt against those trying to steal their revolution with tanks", when dozens were killed in clashes between the army and Islamists and when the grand sheikh of al-Azhar warned of a civil war, an awkward question hovers in the air.

Is Egypt now prone to a new "holy war" fought by Islamists against the authorities?

Extremist minority
 
There are plenty of grounds for optimism that the Arab world's most populous country should be able to avoid a descent into wide-scale, fanatical, religiously-inspired violence following the ousting of President Mohammed Morsi last week.

Having lived there twice, for several years, I have experienced first-hand how good-natured, generous and mostly tolerant Egyptians can be. 

There are extremists in their midst but they are in a minority. Their views, however noisily they are broadcast, do not represent the bulk of the population.

Egypt has also survived worse crises within living memory: the assassination of its president by a jihadist cell in 1981 and an Islamist insurgency that killed more than 700 people in the late 1990s, culminating in the massacre of 58 foreign tourists at Luxor in 1997.

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