Brotherhood leader rejects Zawahiri's call to 'abandon democracy'

A Muslim Brotherhood leader on Saturday rejected calls by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for the group to "abandon democracy." "The democratic path is the sole solution to all of the Islamic world's problems and to ending dependency," Hasan al-Berens, a former deputy governor of Alexandria, told Anadolu Agency on Saturday. In a Friday audio message, al-Zawahiri accused the United States of overthrowing elected President Mohamed Morsi. He said that Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, had been targeted by a conspiracy led by secularists, Coptic Christians and Egypt's "Americanized" military. Al-Zawahiri went on to call on the Muslim Brotherhood to "abandon" democracy. Al-Berens insisted that democracy in Egypt was being "kidnapped by generals backed by foreign political groups." "The Brotherhood is convinced that democracy deserves sacrifice, and we will make 'peaceful' sacrifices to restore it," he added. "We will not abandon the democratic path and will use all democratic and peaceful means to restore democracy," the Brotherhood leader asserted. Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, was ousted by the powerful military on July 3 after mass demonstrations against his regime. Since then, thousands of his supporters have been staging daily protests and sit-ins to defend his "democratic legitimacy" and demand his reinstatement.