Ibrahim apparently was completely unaware that the western elite believed the "arab spring" was a "democracy" movement that would bring these countries into more modern rights based polity. I believe Ibrahim thought I was so crazy believing such common knowledge that he was asking for citations.
Well this is good enough. More arab spring please!
Back in January, as popular protests against President Hosni Mubarak gathered pace, the Muslim Brotherhood was easy to spot, its young women in headscarves and youths taking charge of security checkpoints in Tahrir Square. But, as just one of the many groups organising daily life in the encampment that formed the nerve centre of the uprising, the 80-year-old Islamist movement was not especially prominent.
Yet within nine months, the Brotherhood had reclaimed its status as Egypt’s most powerful political force following decades of suppression. In the country’s first free parliamentary elections, its newly created Freedom and Justice party won more than 35 per cent of the vote in the first round, and slightly more in December’s second round.
Even more worrying for those hoping the Arab world’s largest nation would adopt a liberal, pro-western face, fellow Islamists from the puritanical Salafi movement emerged with more than 25 per cent, a score likely to be confirmed in the third and final round of voting in January.
“This is the real Egyptian revolution,” says Jon Alterman of the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and one of the international observers at the Egyptian elections. “In February, the military removed Hosni Mubarak. This is the revolution that reorients power in Egypt.”
In both a domestic and a broader Arab context, the political events of the past few weeks in Egypt represent a political earthquake, one that Arab regimes and western powers alike had long sought to prevent.
For decades, the region’s rulers defended their authoritarianism to western partners by raising the spectre of an Islamist takeover as the only alternative. Any prospect of the US or other western allies holding a dialogue with Islamists was seen as an affront.
A key, nearly prophetic aspect of the Milo Doctrine, lo those years ago. We foresaw it, like seers almost.
For their part, western governments played along, largely because foreign policy in Cairo and several other Arab capitals was accommodating to their own interests – particularly in terms of preventing excessively aggressive policies towards Israel.
Today, however, 20 years after Algeria’s military staged a coup to prevent a parliamentary landslide by the Islamic Salvation Front, and five years after Hamas rode to victory in the Palestinian territory only to face a western boycott, Islamists are demonstrating their power of survival.
As policymakers around the world adapt to the new realities of the region, their biggest concern will be to develop new ties with Islamist groups as they stand for the first time on the brink of power without constraint.
The most critical test will be in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest Arab Islamist group, is the inspiration for other movements, and its first effort to share power is likely to have wider regional ramifications.
Even before Egyptians went to the polls, Tunisia’s Islamists had set the tone of the new political order. The Nahda party, persecuted under the fiercely secular previous regime, regrouped with astonishing speed following the fall of President Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali in January. The party’s exiled leaders, some of them turned successful businessmen in Europe and the Middle East, returned to run an efficient campaign in which Nahda won more than 40 per cent in the October vote for the constituent assembly, the country’s first democratic poll.
There was a similar story in Morocco. In November elections, the first to be held under a new constitution giving the prime minister expanded powers, the opposition Justice and Development party emerged as the largest single bloc in parliament, even if well short of a majority. The leader of the Islamist grouping has now been charged with forming a government.
Political analysts say that in Libya’s conservative society, politics are likely to be dominated by Islamist-leaning parties, too. Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council, the umbrella group leading the battle to bring down the regime, is fighting perceptions that it is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the party that the father of President Bashar al-Assad crushed brutally in the 1980s.
“The foreseeable future is Islamist – this much we know. It’s just a reality that people have to come to terms with,” says Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center. “People want to see Islam play a larger role in political life and liberals are going to have to learn to speak the language of religion and stop being the anti-Islamist choice.”
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Islamists might share in the broad objective of establishing a state based on sharia law. But the commitment of the various groups to participatory politics, and their vision of government, in many cases differ widely.
At one end of the spectrum is Tunisia’s Nahda which sees itself as mildly Islamist, its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, insisting the state should be founded on the principle of citizenship not religion. If Nahda has a model, it is Turkey’s Justice and Development (AK) party, which has Islamist roots and has presided over a rare period of stability and economic prosperity.
At the other end are the ultraconservative Salafi parties, founded on a vision of an Islamic state that replicates the strict social norms of Saudi Arabia. Many see democracy as incompatible with this goal.
Doctrine and democracy
When Egypt’s Salafi Nour party polled more than a quarter of the vote in the first two stages of staggered parliamentary elections, it confounded predictions that its purist brand of Islam would appeal to only a small fraction of the electorate, write Heba Saleh and Roula Khalaf.
Initial impressions are that its utopian rhetoric and literal reading of religious doctrine, presenting a simplified “roadmap to paradise”, has appealed to a swath of poorer voters who distrust politicians and are more comfortable supporting those they consider “men of God”.
Before the popular revolt that swept President Hosni Mubarak from power in February, the Salafis kept a low profile; many of their leaders were closely watched by the security services. A broad movement that has long eschewed political activism – many Salafi sheikhs preach obedience to the rulers – it was widely considered too disparate and disorganised to win a significant number of votes.
But the Salafis control a large network of mosques, several television channels and well-established charities with a formidable record of providing services in poor areas. The official press, citing unnamed justice ministry sources, said recently that Salafi charities received about E£400m ($66.3m) this year from donors in Gulf Arab states.
Thanks to their surprisingly strong electoral performance, the Salafis are certain to constitute an important bloc in parliament, a fact that is likely to have a significant impact on the calculations of other forces. Ever ready with accusations of apostasy, they are likely to inhibit the small contingent of liberal representatives in the assembly.
In addition, their presence will mean the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party will not be the only group claiming to represent an Islamic point of view. The less pragmatic Salafis are likely to set the bar high, possibly forcing Freedom and Justice into more hardline positions.
The uneasy relationship between the two groups ensures that Egyptian politics will no longer be split only along liberal-Islamist lines. “Throughout [the Middle East and north Africa], the divide between Islamist and liberal will remain one of the primary conflicts,” says Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center. “But that will go hand in hand with an intra-Islamist debate, and the two will be related.”
Somewhere in between is Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, a more mainstream Islamist organisation that considers Nahda too liberal but views democratic politics as the best means of bringing about the gradual Islamisation of society.
Western officials and policy analysts will be pondering what is driving societies that have rid themselves of tyranny to put their faith in Islamists, whether moderate or hardline. Yet the appeal of religious parties, particularly at a time of great political uncertainty, is not surprising.
In Egypt, secular groups with leftist and pan-Arab ideologies ossified under the weight of repression by successive regimes determined to abolish all potential challengers. The Brotherhood, with its message rooted in Islam and spread through mosques and charities, proved harder to eradicate. When Mr Mubarak fell, the organisation – with its long-standing structures and networks – remained the country’s most organised political force, even as new secular and liberal groups scrambled to form parties under the chaotic watch of the ruling military council.
Their brand recognition and history of victimisation by the previous regime made them the logical choice for many voters, who saw them as strong and credible agents of change. “We have tried many things, so this time let’s try those who are religious,” says Abdel Moneim Said, a carpenter in Ard al-Lewa, an impoverished district of Cairo, echoing a widespread sentiment. “Maybe they will prove honest. Anyway, we don’t see anyone else.”
But the Brotherhood is also an experienced political actor that has proved more astute than others since the revolution, judging the public mood better than liberal parties and managing a tricky relationship with the military council to its own benefit.
Even before the fall of Mr Mubarak, Brotherhood leaders played their cards well. They sent reassuring messages to the west that they would not seek to monopolise power, nor run a presidential candidate. In the aftermath of a youth-led and leaderless revolution, moreover, the army saw the Brotherhood as one of the few grown-up interlocutors with which it could seek accommodation, and appeared to give it preferential treatment in the drafting of constitutional amendments.
By the middle of summer, however, the honeymoon was over between the Brotherhood and a military seeking to protect its interests, privileges and control over sensitive issues such as Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel. Relations have grown tense, with the Brotherhood and the Salafis twice calling massive rallies to protest against plans by the generals to impose constitutional provisions that shield the army from parliamentary oversight and give it a permanent political role.
The issue has not been resolved – and the Brotherhood’s biggest power struggle in the near future will be with the military. For now though, the organisation’s leaders are attempting to play down the confrontation. “If there is a hair between us, we will not cut it,” Mohamed Badie, the supreme leader of the Brotherhood, said of the army in a recent television interview.
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But for Egypt’s Islamists, the real challenge lies ahead. Having waited decades for power, they might now be getting what they wished for – however, they also inherit a state saddled with the legacy of decades of mismanagement; and an economy shattered by recent political turmoil.
Indeed, from Tunis to Cairo, Islamist victors are showing little appetite for ruling alone in the near future. Tunisia’s Nahda has already formed a coalition with two secular parties. In Egypt, Brotherhood officials say no group can govern alone given the magnitude of the nation’s problems, including pervasive poverty and rising rates of unemployment.
After initially clamouring for the right to form the government after the completion of the elections, the organisation now says it recognises that the military council is entitled to appoint an administration that governs until a new constitution has been drafted by the elected parliament. It has also distanced itself from the Salafis, suggesting it would prefer to form a coalition with liberal parties.
“It is not a condition that we should lead the government,” says Saad al-Katatny, a senior official. “We do not want to repeat the mistakes of the previous ruling party [which monopolised power].”
The Brotherhood’s dilemma is evident in its party’s detailed 160-page election manifesto. Freedom and Justice says it wants to reduce the budget deficit, attract investment and tackle expensive subsidies – all of which appeal to the business community and to potential foreign investors. At the same time, however, it wants to change the face of society in ways that could outrage liberal businessmen and alarm foreigners.
The programme, for example, launches a bitter attack on Egypt’s endorsement under Mr Mubarak of international agreements abolishing discrimination against women and assuring the rights of children. It also seeks a less pro-western foreign policy that could clash with a new government’s need to attract international assistance.
The challenge for Egypt’s Islamists will be to strike a balance between their religious aspirations and the pursuit of pragmatic political and economic policies. As Mr Alterman of CSIS argues, they cannot afford to alienate those who have the talent to take Egypt forward economically, many of whom are highly educated liberal-minded businesspeople.
The more tolerance Egypt’s Brotherhood shows, the more likely it is to succeed where it matters most – in improving the daily life of a population that rose against decades of repression, corruption and neglect.