Following are excerpts from an interview with Saudi cleric Muhammad Al-Arifi, which aired on Freedom Flotilla TV on July 5, 2010.

Muhammad Al-Arifi: Dearly beloved, when a war is waged against some country, it is customary for its neighboring countries to allow the entrance of women and children fleeing death. Pakistan opened its borders to the Afghan mujahideen, in the days of the Soviet invasion, and took in three million women and children. Poverty-stricken Congo let in one million refugees. Sudan took in over four million refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Uganda.

When war was waged against Iraq, Syria did not seal its borders with Iraq, and say: “You can die over there!” Today, there are one million Iraqis in Syria. Jordan did not seal its border with Iraq, and there are 1.5 million Iraqis in Jordan today. So one wonders why Hosni Mubarak seals the [Rafah] border crossing.

We pray that Allah corrects Mubarak’s ways or hastens his annihilation, granting our brothers in Egypt a better leader, and turning Mubarak into a lesson for others. Amen.