As Egypt struggles its way through the worst political crisis after revolution a retrospective view to the principles of Muslim Brotherhood and events that took place since the fall of Mubarak can explain a lot of what is taking place there now.
President Morsi with the flags of Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt behind
Last year after presidential elections we met some liberal Egyptian activists who took part in 2011 revolution and we were shocked to know they voted for Morsi, preferring a representative of a religious party to a liberal statesman. Our friends were haunted with fuloul-phobia and any figure related to the old regime was rejected for the sole reason of being related to the old regime. What an “outsider” could see clearly seemed to be obscure for those involved in the events. Now Egyptians seem to be shocked with Morsi’s decree as if is it was not expected.
The Brotherhood didn’t fool the public. Its speech has been consistent all the way since the beginning of its political life more than 8 decades ago. The ultimate goal of the Brotherhood is to establish an Islamic rule with the Quran being the main source of legislation. This was no secret. It has always expressed its intolerance regarding views on emancipation of women, freedom of speech, Copts and other religious minorities. The mere name “brotherhood” conveys a philosophy of division between “brothers” and “others”. The commitment of members to the orders of The Leader (al-murshid) is also well known.
Though the movement officially claims to reject violent means to achieve its goals, a lot can be deduced from the slogan its flag carries “prepare” (arabic وأعدوا) from the Quranic verse “And make ready (prepare) against them all you can of power, including steeds of war to threaten the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides whom, you may not know but whom Allah does know” (al-Anfal 60). Under the light of what the movement considers to be “others”, any secular movement can consider itself threatened. No wonder, supporters of president Morsi are so harsh in speech and deed in clashes with anti-Morsi protestors.
Since the beginning, the movement had a lot of advantages over its opponents. It was already well established and organized even during Mubarak’s rule, it had wide venues to propagate its well formulated message while other groups were still busy organizing themselves into political entities. When the Brotherhood decided to ballot Morsi for presidency after a long period of silence while Egypt was boiling, it was clear the brotherhood has prepared to hijack the revolution. a scheme similar to that of Khomeini in Iran was expected. The Brotherhood soon started getting rid of major players on the political arena one after the other till the liberals lost all the capacity to resist Islamization of state and Ikhwanization of institutes. Egypt now is a state with no constitution, ruled by Muslim Brotherhood president and a brotherhood dominated parliament.
The crisis could be well foreseen and it would have been better to prevent it than to deal with it now. Muslim Brotherhood has been waiting for this historical moment since 1928. It has sacrificed and passed through all pains to evolve as a secret community yearning to power. Now that the fruit of the Brotherhood’s struggle is already nearer to hand than ever it will be a very hard job for liberals and secular groups to protect the 2011 revolution values of freedom and justice.
Maybe the lesson is that when seculars had their window it only leaded to a Mubarak regime because they also lacked to provide equal freedom & justice to all, so hopefully the new “brotherhood” rule will be able to understand that when power comes with injustice & oppression, it always starts with the opposition and ends with the oppression of its own… and the cycle starts again… unless the new group to power decides to learn from the previous one and not take advantage and feed his hunger, then feed his greed, then when there is nothing more to feed, be ousted, and the cycle to restart for another 40yrs… I am not an islamist (I am not a muslim) but what i fear is that each group in the area is condemned to learn from his own evolutionary experience rather than from others…
The point is that the guys are power hungry and when they got the chance they granted themselves all the powers possible marginalizing others- the viscous circle again. Theoretically, if we go through the same way of evolution as Europe, we should pass some years under the rule of theocracies before the age of states starts (democracy would be yet far to reach).
Indeed Europe had the dark ages of the middle ages, but this revolution was, I believe, mostly similar to the french revolution against oppression of the royalty then (best comparable to the rule of dictators). Mind you, after the french revolution, the invention of the guillotine and the beheading of many, came the self throned emperor Napoleon, and France, that would have been considered as left on its own back then and not under scrutany of existing super powers, it took her till 1849 to have its first constitution….
Anyhow, I believe times have changed a lot and predicting the future needs a crystal ball knowhow that I do not have, so I speculate and I hope for the best.
Also, even more difficult, is controlling the upcoming in such turmoils and power hunt (to which I agree) all I can hope for is that eventually Egypt does the smart thing by learning from the trials and errors of others (including the mubarak rule), rather than the not-so-smart thing and start it all over again but with a beard… Although that latter option seems a likely one, the best that could happen is that egyptians be left to their own alone…