Category Archives: Muslim Brotherhood

Police openly beat Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers in Cairo

McClatchy reports: Egyptian security forces on Sunday openly beat demonstrators sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, without any provocation, in a sign of how the once powerful group has become the target of official suppression.

The police reaction to the Brotherhood march stood in stark contrast to the scene blocks away, where pro-military crowds, summoned to celebrate Egypt’s war with Israel 40 years ago, hoisted soldiers and police on their shoulders and offered cheers.

The difference was apparent to two McClatchy reporters who left the pro-military demonstration to cover the Brotherhood gathering. As they witnessed police beatings, the two reporters were pounced on by security officers, who stole their cell phones and cameras and threatened to haul one away. The abuse ended only after the reporters proved they’d been at the other rally by pulling out posters of Defense Minister Abdel-Fattah El Sissi, the head of the military who engineered the toppling of President Mohammed Morsi in July.

At previous demonstrations, Egyptian security forces have said the Brotherhood, the secretive organization through which Morsi ascended to office, instigated the clashes, some of which left hundreds dead.

But on Sunday, there was no sign of Brotherhood provocation. The beatings took place well away from the huge crowds that were celebrating the military. Residents nearby also played a role, refusing to give Brotherhood sympathizers shelter as they sought to flee the security forces’ onslaught. [Continue reading…]

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Clashes across Egypt kill 51, more protests called

The New York Times reports: At least 51 people were killed as street clashes erupted in several Egyptian cities on Sunday, in a surge of violence that raised new questions about the ability of the interim government to secure the fractured country.

The death toll was the highest in a single day since mid-August, when the authorities began their punishing crackdown on Islamist supporters of former President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted by the army on July 3. The military-backed government that replaced him has tried to project an aura of stability in order to lure back the tourists and investors scared off by several years of turmoil in the country.

But on Sunday, only grim, familiar scenes of violence returned, along with the sounds of gunfire.

The deadly bloodshed came as thousands of Egyptians celebrated the 40th anniversary of the 1973 war with Israel, setting up a day of bizarre contrasts that served as reminders of Egypt’s deepening polarization since the ouster of Mr. Morsi.

As the military’s supporters celebrated the anniversary in Tahrir Square in Cairo with music and fireworks, officers and armed civilian loyalists set upon Islamist protesters who were also trying to reach the square, driving back their marches with tear gas and gunfire.

More than 250 people were injured, officials said.

Over the last three months, with little resistance from the public, the military has set out to vanquish the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that propelled Mr. Morsi to power. Since July, hundreds of Brotherhood members have been killed and most of the movement’s leaders have been sent to jail or fled the country.

And Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters, who have re-branded themselves under the banner of the “anti-coup” movement, have continued to protest even with the repression of their marches and sit-ins, and despite dwindling attendance at their demonstrations.

They had billed the protests on Sunday as their own tribute to the armed services, while promising a new level of confrontation: for the first time since Mr. Morsi’s ouster, the Islamists called for marches on Tahrir Square, a stronghold of the anti-Morsi movement. [Continue reading…]

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s fight against women’s rights

The New York Times reports: During its decades as an underground Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood has long preached that Islam required women to obey their husbands in all matters.

“A woman needs to be confined within a framework that is controlled by the man of the house,” Osama Yehia Abu Salama, a Brotherhood family expert, said of the group’s general approach, speaking in a recent seminar for women training to become marriage counselors. Even if a wife were beaten by her husband, he advised, “Show her how she had a role in what happened to her.”

“If he is to blame,” Mr. Abu Salama added, “she shares 30 percent or 40 percent of the fault.”

Now, with a leader of the Brotherhood’s political arm in Egypt’s presidential palace and its members dominating Parliament, some deeply patriarchal views the organization has long taught its members are spilling into public view. The Brotherhood’s strident statements are reinforcing fears among many Egyptian liberals about the potential consequences of the group’s rise to power and creating new awkwardness for President Mohamed Morsi as he presents himself as a new kind of moderate, Western-friendly Islamist.

In a statement Wednesday on a proposed United Nations declaration to condemn violence against women, the Brotherhood issued a list of objections, which formally laid out its views on women for the first time since it came to power.

In its statement, the Brotherhood said that wives should not have the right to file legal complaints against their husbands for rape, and husbands should not be subject to the punishments meted out for the rape of a stranger.

A husband must have “guardianship” over his wife, not an equal “partnership” with her, the group declared. Daughters should not have the same inheritance rights as sons. Nor should the law cancel “the need for a husband’s consent in matters like travel, work or use of contraception” — a reform in traditional Islamic family law that was enacted under former President Hosni Mubarak and credited to his wife, Suzanne.

Egypt’s Daily News adds: The National Council for Women (NCW) denied in a statement released on Thursday that a declaration regarding violence against women currently being drafted in the 57th United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women breaches Islamic Shari’a.

The Muslim Brotherhood released a statement on Wednesday denouncing the declaration for “contradicting principles of Islam and destroying family life and the entire society”.

“The Brotherhood’s statement is completely unfounded,” the NCW said in its statement. The council added that the final draft of the declaration is yet to be released and voted on.

The council denied that the declaration goes against the principles of Islam, eliminates Islamic manner or destroys families. “This misleading allegation abuses religion to taint the UN and stall women’s rights,” the statement read. It added that the “accusations” referred to in the Brotherhood’s statement are all non-existent in the draft declaration.

“The points mentioned in the Brotherhood’s statement cannot be found in the declaration; neither literally nor metaphorically,” said Abeer Abul Ella, head of the NCW’s media office.

In its statement, the Muslim Brotherhood listed ten points allegedly present within the declaration which represent “the final step in the intellectual and cultural invasion of Muslim countries”.

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A new generation of political Islamists steps forward

Olivier Roy writes: Everywhere, the Muslim Brotherhood is benefiting from a democratization it did not trigger. There is a political vacuum because the liberal vanguard that initiated the Arab Spring did not try, and did not want, to take power. This was a revolution without revolutionaries. Yet the Muslim Brothers are the only organized political force. They are rooted in society, and decades of opposition against authoritarian regimes gave them experience, legitimacy and respect. Their conservative agenda fits a conservative society, which may welcome democracy but did not turn liberal.

Under these circumstances, the ghost of a totalitarian Islamic state is raised, with the specter of imposing sharia and closing the short democratic parenthesis. But such an outcome is unlikely.

The Islamists have, in fact, changed: They are more middle-class “bourgeois,” and they benefited from the liberalization of local economies during the last decades of the 20th century, especially in countries with no oil rent. The Islamists have also drawn lessons from the failure of ideological regimes and from the success of Turkey’s AKP party. They are no longer advocating jihad and understand geostrategic constraints, such as the need to maintain peace, even a cold one, with Israel. Realism is the starting point of political wisdom.

The Islamists have been elected with a clear agenda: stability, good governance and a better economy. If they have been able to reach a larger constituency than the hard-core supporters of sharia, it is precisely because they can combine such a reformist agenda while talking about religion, values, identity and tradition. The Nahda party won the majority of the votes cast at the Tunisian consulate of San Francisco, although Tunisian expatriates in Silicon Valley are not known for their Islamic fundamentalism.

This mix of technocratic modernism and conservative values is their brand, and to turn their back on multipartism and legalism would alienate a large portion of their constituency, at a time when they have no means to confiscate power. They have neither military forces nor oil wealth to bypass the people: They have to negotiate and deliver. Their electorate wants stability and peace, not revolution.

They are stepping into a new political landscape: a democracy, although a fledgling and fragile one. The only way to maintain their legitimacy is through elections. Even if their pristine political culture is not democratic, they are formatted by the democratic landscape, much as the Roman Catholic Church ended up accepting democratic institutions. But it will take time.

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Forging ties with democratic Egyptian government is like reaching out to the Soviet Union?

The New York Times reports: With the Muslim Brotherhood pulling within reach of an outright majority in Egypt’s new Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties with an organization once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests.

The administration’s overtures — including high-level meetings in recent weeks — constitute a historic shift in a foreign policy held by successive American administrations that steadfastly supported the autocratic government of President Hosni Mubarak in part out of concern for the Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology and historic ties to militants.

The shift is, on one level, an acknowledgment of the new political reality here, and indeed around the region, as Islamist groups come to power. Having won nearly half the seats contested in the first two rounds of the country’s legislative elections, the Brotherhood on Tuesday entered the third and final round with a chance to extend its lead to a clear majority as the vote moved into districts long considered strongholds.

The reversal also reflects the administration’s growing acceptance of the Brotherhood’s repeated assurances that its lawmakers want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel.

And at the same time it underscores Washington’s increasing frustration with Egypt’s military rulers, who have sought to carve out permanent political powers for themselves and used deadly force against protesters seeking an end to their rule.

The administration, however, has also sought to preserve its deep ties to the military rulers, who have held themselves up as potential guardians of their state’s secular character. The administration has never explicitly threatened to take away the $1.3 billion a year in American military aid to Egypt, though new Congressional restrictions could force cuts.

Nevertheless, as the Brotherhood moves toward an expected showdown with the military this month over who should control the interim government — the newly elected Parliament or the ruling military council — the administration’s public outreach to the Brotherhood could give the Islamic movement in Egypt important support. It could also confer greater international legitimacy on the Brotherhood.

It would be “totally impractical” not to engage with the Brotherhood “because of U.S. security and regional interests in Egypt,” a senior administration official involved in shaping the new policy said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic affairs.

“There doesn’t seem to me to be any other way to do it, except to engage with the party that won the election,” the official said, adding, “They’ve been very specific about conveying a moderate message — on regional security and domestic issues, and economic issues, as well.”

Some close to the administration have even called this emerging American relationship with the Brotherhood a first step toward a pattern that could take shape with the Islamist parties’ coming to power around the region in the aftermath of the uprisings of the Arab Spring. Islamists have taken important roles in Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt in less than a year.

“You’re certainly going to have to figure out how to deal with democratic governments that don’t espouse every policy or value you have,” said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and recently joined with the ambassador to Egypt, Anne W. Patterson, for a meeting with top leaders of the Brotherhood’s political party.

He compared the Obama administration’s outreach to President Ronald Reagan’s arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. “The United States needs to deal with the new reality,” Mr. Kerry said. “And it needs to step up its game.”

Kerry often serves as a kind of surrogate Secretary of State for the current administration — the one who presents policy that the administration struggles to articulate itself. So, especially during an election year, it’s hardly surprising that he is being called on to explain why Washington is now reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood as the Islamist movement stands on the brink of gaining control of Egypt’s parliament.

But why liken this move to the realpolitik of dealing with the utterly undemocratic Soviet Union? The analogy is not only extreme but also offensive and unnecessarily antagonistic. The U.S. reached out to the Soviet Union at the same time as it hoped to witness its destruction. Is that the message that the U.S. now wants to send to the Middle East’s rising Islamists? That we have no choice but talk to them even while hoping for their demise?

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Egypt: from Nasser’s ideological hotchpotch to an Islamist landslide

Magdi Abdelhadi writes: Egypt’s secular half, along with a sizeable Christian minority, is bracing itself for an Islamist parliament, the first in the country’s history. While many are stunned and terrified at the prospect, some still pin their hopes, paradoxically, on the very institution that’s largely to blame for the country’s democratic deficit – the army. They think only the soldiers can thwart, or at least to slow down, the Islamist steamroller.

No one knows for sure how that potential stand-off might evolve, if it were to happen at all. Optimists rule out a descent into bloodbath (as happened in Algeria in 1990 when the military cancelled parliamentary elections the Islamists were poised to win). Others predict a Pakistani scenario (the emergence of an Islamist-inclined officer like Zia-ul-Haq, acceptable to both the army and the Islamists) or, just as bad, a repeat of Egypt’s recent past when the military fabricated a pretext to suspend all politics in 1954.

By mid-January, when the final election results are known, we should have a better idea. So, far the Islamists have won two-thirds of the seats in the first and second phases of the vote – gains they are expected to consolidate in the third stage. Speculation and fears aside, the Islamist landslide should not have come as a surprise to close readers of Egyptian recent history.

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Hamas responds to the Arab Spring

The Washington Post reports: Buoyed by the success of Islamist movements in countries swept by the Arab Spring, Hamas, the militant Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, is showing signs of pragmatism as its sense of isolation fades.

The organization is jockeying to reposition itself amid shifting terrain in the Arab world. It is reported to be scaling down its presence in Syria, where its long-time patron, President Bashar al-Assad, is facing a popular uprising. At the same time, it is seeking to strengthen ties with Arab countries where moderate Islamists have made political gains.

Hamas officials are holding talks in Cairo this week with the rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, on implementing a reconciliation accord reached earlier this year, as some leaders of the organization suggest that it is ready for political pluralism at home and limiting violence against Israel.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister in Gaza, is planning his first official trip outside the territory since the militant group seized power there in 2007. According to an aide, Haniyeh plans to visit Turkey, Bahrain, Qatar and Tunisia.

The Islamist surge, say Hamas officials and analysts, has boosted the group’s confidence, giving it more room to maneuver.

“This is an Islamic area, and once people are given a fair chance to vote for their real representatives, they vote for the Islamists,” said Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, referring to the ascendance of Islamist parties in recent elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. “We feel strengthened by popular support.”

For Hamas, a sense of validation has replaced a siege mentality after years of international boycott and blockade by Israel and by Egypt under former president Hosni Mubarak.

“The rise of the Islamists could be seen as game-changer for Hamas,” said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics. “Hamas no longer sees itself as a besieged island in a sea of hostility. This goes to the very psychology of the movement. . . . They feel that they have strategic depth now.”

On the domestic front, this has translated into a declared intention of following the model of the Islamist parties abroad, which have shown readiness to share power with secular and liberal parties in governing coalitions, and, in the case of Tunisia, have already struck such a deal.

The Islamists’ message of pluralism is now being echoed by officials of Hamas, which has mostly stifled dissent in the Gaza Strip since it took over the territory.

The example of the Islamist parties has had an impact on Hamas leaders and “opened their eyes to make coalitions with other Palestinian factions,” said Ghazi Hamad, deputy foreign minister of the government in Gaza. “This will create a new political Islam in which a coalition is the main goal, not to monopolize the regime. No one accepts one political color. The time of one-party rule has passed.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: The Hamas militant group has agreed to join the Palestine Liberation Organization — a key step toward unifying the long-divided Palestinian leadership.

Hamas’ leader Khaled Mashaal on Thursday joined a committee that will prepare for elections to the PLO leadership.

Those elections are likely years away but Mashaal’s move means he will work with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah party.

The PLO is the umbrella group of the Palestinian independence movement.

Thursday’s development is an important step toward reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah — which have been split since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Separate elections in the West Bank and Gaza for a unified parliament are tentatively set for next year.

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The battle for Upper Egypt

Lauren E. Bohn writes: Assiut feels far away from the famed epicenter of Tahrir Square. The oft-neglected peripheral region of Upper Egypt (the cultivated valley of the Nile from Cairo in the north to Aswan, 535 miles south) has been plagued by institutional apathy for years, long dismissed as a dead-end, from where one travels to the capital for work and never returns. When Egypt’s contentious de-facto leaders, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), speak of a silent but loyal majority, or “liberals,” fret about the backward religious and violence-prone rural areas, they have cities like Assiut in mind. But the reality is far more complicated. Assiut and Tahrir are bound together by personal connections and shared concerns — inextricable ties that suggest a far more nuanced emerging Egypt than is generally felt from the central nerve of Cairo.

The new Assiut, which prides itself on being the capital of Upper Egypt, features a distinct pastiche of Salafis, felool, or remnants (a word used to describe holdovers from the Mubarak era), the popular Muslim Brotherhood, a smattering of activists, and a vaguely Egyptian brand of tribalism. Officials from the Mubarak era still cling to power, while Tahrir’s activists find few points of entry into a skeptical environment. Outside the city’s few main streets, Assiut’s mustard-hazed landscape is home to 3.5 million people spread throughout some 1,000 villages. With 24 parliamentary seats, it was a major target, and now bellwether, in the new electoral competition reshaping Egyptian politics.

Though some activists will tell you they had their own “Tahrir Square” in Assiut, by and large, the countryside remained marginally engaged with the uprisings that took Cairo by hold. Protestors continue to call for a prompt end to military rule, blaming SCAF for their inept, and even malevolent, handling of Egypt’s transition to democracy. But, it is easy to find indifference or even hostility to ongoing protests in places where most people get their news from a largely pro-SCAF state television and almost nobody has access to follow revolutionaries on Twitter. Ayad Hamza, 46, a barber in the small village of Ezbet El Geish dismisses Tahrir as a farce. “These kids are stupid. They have nothing else to do but cause trouble,” he said, mopping his cracked floor. “It’s not a revolution they’re making, but a nightmare.” This is the kind of sentiment SCAF has been banking on — one they say resonates in Egypt. But it misses important linkages between the periphery and the political battles waged in Cairo, and naively exaggerates their indifference.

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The success of Egypt’s Islamists marks a trend throughout the region

The Economist looks at the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists represented by the Nour party, whose combined successes in the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections give an overall majority to the Islamists.

Surrounded by well-wishers at his home on a narrow dirt street in the village of Nazla, Wagih al-Shimi insists his Nour party would have done even better if the Brothers had not cheated. Blind from birth and lushly bearded, Fayoum’s new MP is a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence, preaches in local mosques, and has a reputation for resolving disputes according to Islamic law.

“We owe our success to the people’s trust, to their love for us because we work for the common good, not personal gain,” says Mr Shimi. As for a party programme, he says his lot will improve schools, provide jobs and reform local government, introducing elections at every level to replace Mubarak-era centrally appointed officials. As for the wider world Mr Shimi is vague, except to say that Egypt should keep peace with any neighbour that refrains from attacking it.

The Brotherhood echoes this parochialism: its party’s 80-page manifesto mentions neither Israel nor Palestine. The two groups have more in common. The Brothers profess to share the Salafists’ end goal; namely, to regain the pre-eminent role for Islam in every aspect of life that they believe it once held. Some leading Brothers even describe themselves as Salafist in ideology. Many secular Egyptians, too, especially Coptic Christians, who make up an increasingly beleaguered 10% minority, see little difference between rival Islamists.

Yet within the broad spectrum of political Islam, the distinctions between two are telling. Muslim Brothers tend to be upwardly mobile professionals, whereas the Salafists derive their strength from the poor. The Brothers speak of pragmatic plans and wear suits and ties. The Salafists prefer traditional robes and clothe their language in scripture. The Brothers see themselves as part of a wide, diverse Islamist trend. The Salafists fiercely shun Shia Muslims. Asked what he thinks of Turkey’s mild Islamist rule, a Nour spokesman snaps that his party had nothing to take from Turkey bar its economic model.

Nour says it rejects Iranian-style theocracy, but equally rejects “naked” Western-style democracy. Instead, in what some Salafists see as a daring departure from previous condemnation of anything that might dilute God-given laws, it wants a “restricted” democracy confined by Islamic bounds. Yasir Burhami, a top Salafist preacher, says that his mission is to “uphold the call to Islam, not to impose it on people.” Still, he believes the party can convince Egyptians to accept such things as banning alcohol, adopting the veil and segregating the sexes in public because “we want them to go to heaven”.

Brotherhood leaders say instead that they must respect the people’s choice. Their party includes a few Christians. It worked hard to build a coalition with secularists, too, though most of its partners soon withdrew. Whereas Nour party leaders openly call for an alliance with the Brothers to pursue a determined Islamist agenda, the older group, with its long experience of persecution, is wary. It says fixing Egypt’s ailing economy should take priority over promoting Islamic mores. The Brotherhood would probably prefer a centrist alliance that would not frighten foreign powers or alienate Egypt’s army, which remains an arbiter of last resort.

In any case, a Brotherhood-led government is not in the immediate offing. Egypt’s generals, discomfited as anyone by the Islamists’ advance, seem determined to find ways to delay it.

The New York Times reports: In the aftermath of the vote, Egyptian liberals, Israelis and some Western officials have raised alarms that the revolution may unfold as a slow-motion version of the 1979 overthrow of the shah of Iran: a popular uprising that ushered in a conservative theocracy. With two rounds of voting to go, Egypt’s military rulers have already sought to use the specter of a Salafi takeover to justify extending their power over the drafting of a new constitution. And at least a few liberals say they might prefer military rule to a hard-line Islamist government. “I would take the side of the military council,” said Badri Farghali, a leftist who last week won a runoff against a Salafi in Port Said, northeast of Cairo.

A closer examination of the Salafi campaigns, however, suggests their appeal may have as much to do with anger at the Egyptian elite as with a specific religious agenda. The Salafis are a loose coalition of sheiks, not an organized party with a coherent platform, and Salafi candidates all campaign to apply Islamic law as the Prophet Muhammad did, but they also differ considerably over what that means. Some seek within a few years to carry out punishments like cutting off the hands of thieves, while others say that step should wait for the day when they have redistributed the nation’s wealth so that no Egyptian lacks food or housing.

But alone among the major parties here, the Salafi candidates have embraced the powerful strain of populism that helped rally the public against the crony capitalism of the Mubarak era and seems at times to echo — like the phrase “silent majority” — right-wing movements in the United States and Europe.

“We are talking about the politics of resentment, and it is something that right-wing parties do everywhere,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. They have thrived, he said, off the gap between most Egyptians and the elite — including the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood — both in lifestyle and outlook.

“They feel like they represent a significant part of Egypt,” Mr. Hamid said, “and that no one gives them any respect.”

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Democracy and Islam in the Arab elections

Jack A. Goldstone writes: No doubt the most difficult task in the months ahead for Western leaders responding to changes in the Arab world will be to stick to their guns on democracy — that is, to accord elected governments and their leaders all the respect due to democratically chosen heads of state. This is because the elected governments will almost invariably be Islamist, hostile to Israel, and suspicious of the United States.

But really, what else could we expect? “Democratic” does not simply equate to pro-Western. If you tell people: “We have oppressed proponents of your historical religion for decades to create dictatorships for the sake of better relations with the West and Israel, and now we want you to choose your own government”, what else would people do than repudiate the pattern of the old dictatorships? And wouldn’t that repudiation more likely take the form of voting for well known and established parties that stood against the dictatorships, rather than for new parties with young faces that stand for such vague things as “secularism and liberalism?”

So let us start from the fact that an Islamist majority was always logically to be expected from free elections in Arab countries, and show no disappointment on that score. The crucial issue regarding the new regimes in Tunisia and Egypt is not that they are Islamist, but how will they act? How will they act toward other non-Islamist parties, and non-Islamic groups in society? How oppressive will they be toward women? How effective will they be on economic policy and science and technology? How will they manage popular hostility toward Israel? These are the issues that will determine the risks and success of these regimes.

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Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood says end to military rule is ‘top priority’

The Guardian reports: The Muslim Brotherhood has fired a warning shot at Egypt’s ruling generals, declaring that a swift end to military rule is the country’s “top priority” as it prepares to take charge of a newly elected parliament.

With provisional election results continuing to emerge, confirming earlier predictions of a strong victory for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, the movement’s leaders emphasised that now was the time for “consensus not collision” and agreed to work with parties across the political spectrum to advance the revolution and facilitate a smooth transition to civilian government.

In a sign the Brotherhood will not tolerate parliament being treated as a rubber stamp by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), which has clung to power despite almost two weeks of anti-junta protests and violent street clashes, senior members of the organisation told the Guardian the generals risked further unrest if they defied the people and failed to return to their barracks next year.

“Egypt is currently going through a critical era in its history, and I am confident the military will choose to cooperate with parliament and not confront it – any other path will create more chaos,” said Essam al-Arian, vice president of the Freedom and Justice Party.

Amr Darrag, the group’s chief in Giza, said a quick and painless handover to civilian rule was the most important issue facing the Arab world’s most populous nation at present. “We are going through a transitional phase and we are not yet at the optimum stage of this transition,” he argued. “Parliament must be formed, a president must be elected, and power must be transferred to civilian authority. Scaf currently wields executive and legislative power; as soon as parliament convenes the latter must be passed to the institution democratically elected by the Egyptian people.”

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s democratic dilemma

Nathan Brown writes: For years, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has been taunted by its critics to demonstrate its democratic commitments. Of course, without free and fair elections in the country, it could only offer promises. But as Egyptians now go to the polls in the country’s most democratic parliamentary elections in many decades, the Islamists are finally able to grasp a golden opportunity to show their democratic credentials with deeds. And that may be precisely the problem: They may be far too successful for their own good (and for Egypt’s).

For many years, the Brotherhood has set a regional trend by running in rigged elections under dictatorships, using the slogan “participation, not domination.” In return for the right to participate, Islamists in the Arab world assured suspicious rulers that they did not seek to replace them. In fact, they usually ran for fewer seats than they would need for a majority. Of course, there were exceptions—in Algeria in 1992 and Palestine in 2006, Islamists went for the win. In both cases, the result was civil war. Their counterparts elsewhere were explicit: they had learned the lesson that they should not push too hard too quickly.

In the aftermath of Egypt’s January 25 revolution, Brotherhood leaders consistently claimed that they still took the lesson to heart. They would only seek one third of the seats; they would foreswear the presidency. And they enthusiastically pressed to give the people a chance to vote as soon as possible, moving Egyptian politics away from demonstrations in the public square and toward the polling booth. The only time they called their foot soldiers out to demonstrate was when various political forces tried to place limits on the democratic process in the form of partisan “constitutional principles” that were meant to bind those selected by the new parliament to write the country’s new constitution.

Over the years in Egypt, the Brotherhood’s self-restraint has set a model in the region. Even after the fall of authoritarian regimes, most Islamists’ preferred outcome in the short term is an election that gives them a plurality but not a majority. Controlling the largest bloc of parliamentarians, for instance, gives them a considerable voice in the political process and allows them the opportunity to develop political skills and experience without making them appear threatening or provoking a strong reaction inside and outside the country. Such an electoral result enables the preferred Islamist strategy of gradual change and lets movements escape the burden of full responsibility for the tremendous economic and security problems of societies in turmoil.

The recent Tunisian and Moroccan elections delivered just such an outcome. Islamist parties in both countries will be in the driver’s seat as Tunisia writes a constitution and Morocco experiments with limited constitutional reform.

To be sure, this strategy of demonstrating democratic credentials by working not to win elections is ironic and arguably undemocratic. In the Egyptian case, the Brotherhood sought to pursue the policy through a particularly strange and undemocratic device: it worked hard to build a coalition of political parties across the spectrum to submit to Egyptians as a single list. Instead of allowing voters to pick their representatives, the Brotherhood wanted to divvy up the seats in advance.

But in the months since the revolution, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has been wriggling free of the pledges to demonstrate its democratic credentials in such undemocratic ways; it is showing signs of abandoning the tendency to pull its political punches. Over the short term, it may gain many votes as a result. In the long term, it might come to regret its decision.

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The rise of the Islamists

Mohamed Awad, director of the Alexandria and Mediterranean Research Center, describes to Patrick Martin from Toronto’s Globe and Mail, a scenario that many in Egypt’s liberal secular elite must now dread:

“My fear,” said Dr. Awad, whose office is surrounded by models of Alexandria’s prospective future waterfront, “is that the more extreme Islamists, the Salafists, may eventually come to power.”

That could happen, he explains, if the country’s economy collapses in the next few months. “In that event,” he says, “there will be another revolution, a revolution of the poor, and this one will be very violent.”

Is he describing the threat of Islamist rule or the threat of popular rule?

Early election results from Egypt make it clear that the new parliament will be dominated by Islamists — mostly from the Muslim Brotherhood but with the main Salafist party making a stronger than predicted showing, pushing the largest secular group into third place.

A recent poll showed that 41% of Egyptians hope Egypt will emulate Saudi Arabia, while 53% favor a democratic civil state. But what these polls obscure is the fact that whoever governs, one of their overriding concerns will be that they can govern successfully and thus ensure their continued power.

Who can offer Egypt’s newly empowered politicians the most useful tuition? The Saudis or Turkey’s AK Party? (That’s a rhetorical question.)

Atul Aneja reports: Early counting in Egypt’s parliamentary elections appears to confirm the region-wide trend of Islamists — moderate, hard-line and some who are yet to be fully tested — emerging as the most potent force in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Following the first phase of elections which ended on Tuesday, counting in Luxor, Cairo and elsewhere is showing that the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has solidly outpaced its rivals in many of the constituencies.

The ultra-conservative Al Nour party is also doing well in some districts. It is either leading over the other contenders or is in second place to the FJP.

Except in a few constituencies, non-religious parties are, so far, heavily trailing the Islamists, who are not contesting as a unified bloc. The FJP and Al Nour are not pre-poll allies, though the latter is open to participation in a coalition. The Al Nour comprises mainly Salafists, who seek to recreate a society based on pristine Islam.

The electoral picture, however hazy, that is emerging in Egypt, seems to amplify a political trend fast gathering momentum in West Asia and North Africa. Moderate Islamists have emerged as the most prominent political force in Tunisia and Morocco following recent elections. An Islamist assertion is also visible in Libya in the aftermath of the killing in October of Muammar Qadhafi. Some analysts say an Islamist political resurgence through the ballot can be traced to 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the architect of the so-called “Turkish model” of new-age Islam, triumphed in Turkey.

Despite the AKP’s Islamist roots, Turkey remains secular and has deeply engaged with moderate Islamists in Tunisia and sections of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Emile Nakhleh and Augustus R. Norton write: Misplaced fears about the implications of an Islamist sweep are often heard in Washington, where some media pundits have asked whether the Arab Spring is devolving into an Islamist Winter. But Tunisia’s election provides an instructive model on an alternative to that scenario. The election fostered a coalescence of Islamist and secular politicians. The victory of the Tunisian al-Nahda party, which won a 40-percent plurality, may be a harbinger for the coming of Arab political normalcy and the delegitimization of “Arab exceptionalism.’’ Al-Nahda’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, has begun reaching out to secular groups to form a coalition government, a move that would not have happened before the demise of authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

The pragmatic behavior of Islamist parties in national legislatures should be the litmus test as to whether Western governments should engage them during transition to democracy. Their legislative performance, not ideological platforms or interpretations of the sacred text, should be the metric by which to judge their credibility as mainstream political actors.

Islamist parties that have been part of governments in Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Turkey, and elsewhere have not threatened their countries’ national security and stability. On the contrary, they have been credible and legitimate defenders of good government and the rule of law, and strong proponents of tolerance and pluralism.

The lesson from the Tunisian elections should be equally clear to the remaining Arab authoritarian regimes. Dominating the political space, persecuting minorities, violating their peoples’ human and civil rights, and blaming foreign “agents and provocateurs” for anti-regime protests will no longer work. This regime narrative is no longer believable, whether in Syria, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia.

What everyone in the West needs to remember is that when Egyptians or anyone else in the Middle East cast their votes for the Islamists, in most cases they are not making an ideological statement. They are doing what voters in all representative democracies do: picking out the candidates and parties with which they have the greatest affinity, which is to say, looking for representatives who appear to understand who they are meant to represent.

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Egypt’s Islamists: Betting on the ballot box

Ursula Lindsey writes: One evening a few weeks ago, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) invited journalists to attend one of their parliamentary campaign events in Cairo’s sprawling poor neighborhood of Imbaba.

A disciplined and cheerful crowd marched along the narrow, unpaved alleys. People leaned out their windows in the tightly packed red-brick apartment blocks. While their supporters chanted upbeat political and religious slogans, the candidates stopped at the local shops and cafes to shake hands with middle-aged men.

The march was like many other ones the MB has held in previous elections. But there were also some noticeable differences: the larger-than-usual female contingent and the yellow sashes bearing the name of the organisation’s newly established Freedom and Justice Party. The lack of plainclothes security officers lurking in the background and the palpable optimism also stood out.

For months now, Islamists have made holding elections their priority. That night in Imbaba, candidate Amr Darrag told me that electoral legitimacy would give him and others the power to truly represent the people. “This will be much more powerful than the force in Tahrir Square,” he said. “Rather than having a million people rally for a certain demand, if I represent one million people I can speak for them.”

The MB, and other new Islamist groups who formed parties in the last 10 months, expect to do well in the parliamentary elections. In the 2005 elections, seen as less corrupt as those of 2010, they won about 20 percent of the parliament seats available, and in this election many observers predict that, combined, Islamist parties may win a majority. The MB in particular is well-organized, well-funded and has a regional network across the country that no other party can match.

Ever since Mubarak’s ouster there has been a note of confidence bordering on triumphalism amongst Islamist parties in Egypt. It was they who organized the anti-army demonstration in Tahrir on November 18 to reject so-called “supra-constitutional” principles. Some opposed these principles for granting the army exceptional privileges and for enshrining freedoms that, they said, might contradict Islamic principles.

“People are afraid of Islamists,” a member of the MB told me that day. “But if Islamists win, isn’t that the will of the people? We’ve tried all the other forms of government – Mubarak’s rule, socialist, capitalist rule – why not try the Brotherhood? What’s the problem?”

The following day, the army and riot police violently cleared a small sit-in from the square after a week of bloody clashes that left 44 dead and hundreds wounded, and brought tens of thousands into the streets demanding an immediate end to military rule. The Islamists’ insistence that elections are the solution to the current political crises has reportedly caused some heated internal debates, and widened the gulf of mistrust between them and their secular counterparts.

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