(MintPress) – “It appears that there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,”said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in a June, 2012 radio interview. The one time Republican presidential contender has lashed out against Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Huma Abedin, the Deputy Chief of Staff and aide to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the past month for “having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.” Bachmann’s unsubstantiated remarks have been widely criticized by members of both the Democratic and Republican parties including, most notably, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Despite the broad bipartisan condemnation of Bachmann’s remarks, there is little public debate about who comprises the Muslim Brotherhood and what they stand for. In Egypt, the group’s political wing, The Freedom and Justice Party, recently won a majority of seats in the Parliament and appears poised to take the reins of post-Revolutionary Egypt. The group’s presidential candidate, Muhammed Morsi, beat the Mubarak-era challenger Ahmed Shafiq in an election deemed to be legitimate by international observers.
For many Egyptians, the election of Egypt’s new president, Morsi, is a validation that the revolution was at least a partial success. The June 30 victory by the Islamist candidate is the latest step in the ongoing struggle to wrest control of the government from continued military rule. The Muslim Brotherhood, like all Islamist Egyptian parties, does not have a political track record given their ban from political activity before Hosni Mubarak’s removal.
Politicians in Western governments, including the administration of President Obama, have cautiously welcomed Morsi’s election, eager to see how the new Egyptian government will tackle major economic and foreign policy challenges in the post-Mubarak era. However, the greatest challenge, according to Egyptian MP Dr. Abdul Dardery, will be “to unite Egyptian around the new president” despite ongoing political and sectarian schisms.
Who Is Mohammed Morsi?
The new President, Muhammad Morsi is an engineer by training, having received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Engineering from Cairo University. Later, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1982.
Morsi won the presidential election in the runoff ballot, capturing 12.7 million votes, 52.2 percent of the total. His challenger, Ahmed Shafiq, was prime minister during President Hosni Mubarak’s rule. The large support for the Mubarak-era candidate during the two rounds of voting, experts say, may be a sign that Egyptians are uncertain how an unproven Islamist candidate will perform. Members of the 8-million-strong Coptic Christian community, as well as other religious minorities, may feel a sense of growing marginalization under a new president who represents a Muslim Party.
Stacey Philbrick Yadav, who directs the Middle Eastern Studies program at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, expressed surprise that so many voted for Shafiq in the second round, given his clear ties to the old regime.
“At least some Morsi votes reflect a rejection of Shafiq as an emblem of the old regime more than an endorsement of the Brotherhood’s platform. Similarly, votes for Shafiq also reflect anxieties about a Brotherhood presidency. For a very large number of Egyptians, the second round was a choice between two undesirable candidates, with tradeoffs between the two,” adds Professor Philbrick-Yadav in a statement to MintPress.
Jeffrey Fleishman, writing for the Los Angeles Times, commented on Morsi’s cabinet, saying, “Morsi has said his deputies may include a woman and a Christian, and Mohamed El Baradei, the former head of the U.N.’s nuclear agency, was being floated as a possible prime ministerial candidate,” the Washington Post reported. This may assuage some fears as the new president seeks to present his administration as pluralistic and receptive to the needs of all Egyptians.
There are, of course, many lingering concerns within Egypt. With virtually no previous political experience, Morsi has suddenly become the leader of a country with a population exceeding 80 million, the largest in the Middle East. Egyptians recall the tenuous relationship the Brotherhood has had with the state — a relationship that resulted in the party’s ban from politics until after Mubarak’s removal from power in 2011. The Brotherhood has been seen, at times, as a fifth column threatening the survival of secular hegemonic regimes. Additionally, the group has been accused of assassinating Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Party history
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher and religious scholar. The party gained popularity among the disenfranchised in Egypt and was seen as a challenge to British colonialism. The Free Officers Movement, with the backing of the Brotherhood, launched a successful coup d’etat against King Farouk in 1952.
The British maintained control of Egypt, primarily for economic reasons. The Suez Canal represented the link Britain needed to connect India, “the crown jewel” of the empire, with the United Kingdom. However, once India attained independence from Britain in 1948, other colonized peoples, especially those in the Arab Middle East, began to organize similar national liberation movements.
The overthrow of King Farouk and the subsequent end of British colonialism was supported by the Brotherhood. However, shortly after Gamel Abdul Nasser became the second president of Egypt in 1956, the Brotherhood was banned from political activity and was seen as a fifth column because of their pious and pro-capitalist platform. Both of these positions were at odds with Nasser’s largely secular, state-led economy. Additionally, the Brotherhood has, at times, been accused of attempting to carry out targeted assassinations against political figures in Egypt.
However, despite the ban of formal political participation, the popularity of the Brotherhood grew.
Arab armies suffered a resounding defeat in 1967 at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces. This loss led citizens across the Middle East to reconsider the legitimacy and strength of their own secular and leftist governments. A pan-Arab Nasserist notion of a single Arab state coupled with an avowedly Islamic character, seemed like a natural alternative to the failed policies of previously secular governments.
The popularity of various Islamist political movements grew further during the 1979 Iranian revolution, when the world saw it was possible to overthrow oppressive dictatorial rule and replace it with theocratic rule. Although the Arab world has had a less than cordial relationship with Iran, religion was seen as a positive mobilizing force in the Middle East for many groups.
The Arab Spring uprisings of 2011-2012 could prove to be a similar transcendent moment in the history of the Middle East. The challenges to quell post-electoral violence and continued military control are formidable. However, Dr. Abdul Mawgoud R. Dardery, a member of the Freedom and Justice Party in the Egyptian Parliament, contends in a recent MintPress statement, “Actions speak louder than words and the rule of Morsi and his Islamist party should be judged by actual policies rather than promises and speculation.”
Is the Brotherhood anathema to democracy?
Dr. Muhammad El-Sayed Habib, First Deputy of the Chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood, reaffirmed his party’s commitments to democracy in a recent interview saying, “We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc.”
While there are myriad factors differentiating Egypt from other states in the region, some Middle East scholars look to Turkey as a model for transition and model Islamist-democratic leadership.
A recent article published by the Economist magazine posits, “Turkey has suffered more than its share of coups and political violence. But those dangers have receded as the Islamists have proved moderate and popular, winning three fair elections in a row and whittling away the general’s power.” Turkey is now classified as, “partially free” by Freedom House and enjoys many of the same political freedoms found in other democracies around the world.
The United States supported Hosni Mubarak for his entire 30-year dictatorial rule. While the U.S. has long placed democracy promotion as a key foreign policy initiative, relatively little was done to push Mubarak and his regime to reform during his time in power. In fact, the U.S. maintained a $1 billion military aid package throughout the later years of Mubarak’s rule, second only to Israel.
Shortly after his election, President Barack Obama called to congratulate Morsi on his victory. During his telephone conversation, the White House said President Obama, “Underscored that the United States will continue to support Egypt’s transition to democracy and stand by the Egyptian people as they fulfill the promise of their revolution.”
Political analysts contend that the United States, with its tremendous diplomatic and economic leverage, can move beyond paying mere lip-service to democracy promotion and work with the fledgeling Egyptian government to ensure that the country does not become a military dictatorship.
Indeed, in the Economist article, “Egypt In Peril,” writer contends, “Egypt is not, however, doomed to return to dictatorship. Turkey, where the army has reached an accommodation with moderate Islamists, points to a peaceful way out. And the West can help by making it clear that democratically elected politicians, even Islamist ones, rank above generals.”
The United States, as many have already pointed out, can uphold commitments to promoting a civilian-led government by threatening to withhold the annual military aid package, the backbone of Egypt’s military strength. After Israel, Egypt is the No. 2 recipient of U.S. military aid, receiving approximately $1.3 billion annually. The Obama administration could bring significant pressure to bear should the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) delay or refuse to hand over power to a civilian government.
Continuing power struggle: SCAF v. Civilian Government
SCAF generals dissolved the Egyptian Parliament in early July following a court decision declaring one-third of the seats illegitimate. Most of these seats were held by Islamist parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Freedom party.
Morsi ordered elected officials to re-convene the 508-seat parliament on July 9, just 10 days into his presidency. This has set up the current, ongoing struggle between the old-guard military establishment and the new democratically-elected government.
What is perhaps most concerning to Egyptians is the continued power the military exercises in virtually all political and judicial spheres. Just before the presidential runoff, a SCAF-appointed Justice Minister declared that army officers have the right to arrest civilians. This, critics charge, is an affront to the burgeoning Egyptian democracy and a partial return to Mubarak-era martial law.
Additionally, SCAF maintains the power to pass legislation, including the state budget. These moves directly contradict previous promises to hand over power “in a grand ceremony” at the end of June. Major General Mohammed al-Assar, a senior member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) made grand overtures to transition, saying in several public statements, “We’ll never tire or be bored from assuring everyone that we will hand over power before the end of June.”
With the deadline since passed, some analysts believe that SCAF foot-dragging could become a soft coup by the military. The Economist magazine contends, “Rather than a hard coup intended to snuff out the country’s evolving democracy, it is an attempt to slow and control it. The army’s priority is keeping its ‘special role,’ its economic privileges and some of the ministries of power, such as defense and internal security, much as Turkey’s generals did in the 1990s, when they blocked a democratically elected Islamist government and continued forcibly to parade themselves as guardians of a secular order.”
Although the deadline has passed, other political analysts urge patience and restraint. Indeed, countries breaking from long histories of dictatorial rule rarely make seamless transitions to full-fledged democracy. Countries can, and often do, face challenges from elements of the old regime.
Thomas Carothers, the vice president of studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a political-think in Washington, D.C., has written extensive critiques of the supposed “Transition Paradigm.” The paradigm, in short, was formed by political scientists after the collapse of the Soviet Union when a rash of newly independent countries began pushing for democratic reforms. Countries, in this paradigm, supposedly progress steadily forward along a clear step by step path, eventually becoming democratic governments.
However, Carothers rebuffs this theory, writing in his article, “The End to the Transition Paradigm,” that countries can, and often do, face violence and internal instability in their respective efforts to democratize. Indeed, Carothers says that even the notion of “transition” away from a dictatorship does not necessarily mean that “democracy” as it is conceived of in the West, is the ultimate, final goal in every case.
Some countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Carothers points out, have made tremendous progress while others, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East have faced greater challenges in the democratization process.
Domestic issues and new foreign policy
Egypt continues to play a pivotal role in the Middle East, a role that the West sees as critical in upholding regional stability. Many in Israel worry that the new Egyptian leadership will falter and not uphold the 1979 peace treaty signed by President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Morsi has said that he plans to uphold the treaty but will not meet with any Israeli officials during his time in office.
Dardery, a member of the Freedom and Justice Party in the Egyptian Parliament, comments on his party’s position, saying that he believes both the U.S. and Israel need to craft a new approach. Dardery said in a recent MintPress statement, “The Israelis need to work a lot because they are an occupying power. The American administration needs to change its policy in relationship to this part of the world because after the Arab Spring, things will not be business as usual.”
President Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu both expressed optimism during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to the Middle East, hoping that Egypt would continue to uphold the peace treaty which has largely been adhered to by both sides since its adoption.
When talking about the new approach for Israelis and the U.S. in the Middle East, Dardery expressed his belief that the region should become a nuclear free zone. Egypt has shied away from condemning Iran’s nuclear program in the same strong language as U.S. and Israeli officials.
When asked about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Dardery said his party had not formed an official position but believed it is “hypocritical for the U.S. to support the continued Israeli nuclear program while criticising Iranian nuclear aspirations.” Dardery, like many in the region, believes that the best solution to the problem is disarmament for all countries, including Israel and Iran.
Creating a nuclear-free Middle East is a policy supported by a majority of Jewish-Israelis as well. In fact, a poll conducted by the Israeli Dahaf Institute November 2011 revealed that 64 percent of Jewish-Israelis support creating a nuclear-free Middle East. Of this number, 31 percent “strongly favor” a nuclear-free Middle East while 32 percent somewhat favor the idea.
Unemployment, particularly among Egypt’s younger population, remains the largest domestic concern in the post-Mubarak era. Official statistics record unemployment at 12.4 percent. However, unemployment is thought to be much higher among Egyptians under the age of 35. The problems were exacerbated by Mubarak’s dependence upon International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans to support the faltering economy.
Much of this money was funneled directly into Mubarak-regime coffers and did little to improve the economy for the average Egyptian. However, Dardery, like many Egyptians, seeks to create a new economy less dependent upon the IMF and other international lending institutions.