O Brotherhood, Where Art Thou?

Image by barspiller via Flickr

Analysis of the state of the Egyptian Revolution in the West is starting to harden into a set of competing assumptions, both of which centre around the Muslim Brotherhood. On the one hand, the Brothers are being portrayed as violent fantasists who must be opposed at all costs – including, apparently, by the propping up of a dictator.

On the other side are those seeking to placate liberal Western fears by casting the Society of the Muslim Brothers (to give the movement its formal name) as peaceful democrats who pose no threat to Egypt’s historical role as voice of moderation in the Middle East.

The reality is that this either-or analysis lacks an appreciation of the political realities on the ground inside Egypt, as well as a historical perspective on the nature of the distinctly Arabic forms of mass democratic action currently sweeping the region.

Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood have certainly been implicated in violent attacks inside Egypt in recent decades – most spectacularly the assassination of the Prime Minster Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha in 1948.

More recently, and coinciding with decades of repression, the movement has focused on electoral participation, winning 88 seats in the Egyptian Parliament in 2005. With 20% of the seats, the group form the largest single voting bloc within the legislature. Although the party is illegal in Egypt, its members have circumvented the ban by standing as independents in elections.

There is no doubt that the Brotherhood are an Islamist movement and that the political freedom they envisage is governed by their particular regressive understanding of the Quran. Their vision of the Muslim state is not the “secular” model of a Turkey. They advocate Sharia law and envisage restrictions on the rights of non-Muslims, for instance. Their political dominance would take Egypt in a far more conservative direction than at present, and their anti-western stance would make them unpopular with Washington.

It is less clear that the movement supports terrorism. A statement released by Mustafa Mashhur, then General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, on September 14th 2011 read as follows:

“The undersigned, leaders of Islamic movements, are horrified by the events of Tuesday 11 September 2001 in the United States which resulted in massive killing, destruction and attack on innocent lives. We express our deepest sympathies and sorrow. We condemn, in the strongest terms, the incidents, which are against all human and Islamic norms. This is grounded in the Noble Laws of Islam which forbid all forms of attacks on innocents.”

It is also important to keep the degree of political influence of the Brothers in perspective. Although they are the largest single bloc in the Egyptian Parliament, they are in no sense a majority party.

The current democratic impulse sweeping the Arabic world has so far been promoted by middle class, educated citizens seeking greater political freedoms, protesting against corruptions and fuelled by economic hardships. It is not an Islamist movement, primarily religious in nature. Facilitated by the Internet, this is a rapid, grass roots populist movement, the impact of which is already being felt from Tunisia to Yemen.

A truly democratic Egypt will not be centred around the limited issue of “Who replaces Mubarak”. More fundamental constitutional reforms are an essential demand of many of the protesters camped in Tahrir Square.

The assumption that a democratic Egypt would slide inexorably into a fundamentalist theocracy also fails to draw the correct lessons from another popular Muslim-majority republic that experienced the overthrow of its dictator in recent years.

While comparisons between Egypt and revolutionary Iran are being bandied around, Thomas Carothers argues persuasively that a more appropriate comparison is with Indonesia, which has emerged from the overthrow of the American-backed dictator Suharto to become the Muslim world’s largest democracy. Although modern  Indonesia may not as yet be a beacon of liberal pluralism, neither is it a state sponsor of terrorism.

As long as Western governments think of Egypt as the next Iran, the more likely it is that what they fear will come upon them. Supporting civil society groups, demanding the resignation of Mubarak and expressing solidarity with the Egyptian people’s demands for constitutional reform are all essential ingredients for supporting Egypt on its sudden and sometimes messy road to democracy. The democracy that emerges may not be to the liking of every western government, but it need not be a theocracy either. 

As Carothers says,

“The Muslim Brotherhood will certainly play an important role in post-Mubarak Egyptian politics, but Egypt is not ripe for a radical Islamist revolution.”