Those following the ups and downs of Egyptian politics must not have missed the element of skepticism if not hostility towards the Muslim Brotherhood on the part of the West. Thereby hangs a tale. Today’s prejudices, of course, stem from 9/11 Islamophobia afflicting the West in the immediate context as indeed in historical backdrop in general. The Brotherhood is not the same as the new-fangled Islamism. One need not sound apologetic about the question yet a lesson in history, one or two perhaps, would be useful.
The term “Brothers” dates back to 1920s when Hasan Al Banna, young and charismatic leader of Egypt, started a movement aiming at modernization of Islamic discourse within religious parameters. He was a man with vision but found no takers from the traditionalists including those of Al-Azhar. Yet he caught the imagination of the youth. He was indeed an Islamic modernizer with ideals which were partly Sufi and partly socialist. However, he was assassinated in 1928. It was Al-Banna who coined the term “Muslim Brothers”, the label that has persisted since then. Came Nasser and the Revolution, but things went off well till President Nasser came clamping down on the Muslim Brotherhood around 1955.
Hasan Banna has gone long time back and the organizational leadership underwent many changes for better and worse over the time, but the spirit of Al Banna did not totally die down, however. As it happens, the movement witnessed divisions and rifts. A large section of radicals took the lead and Saiyyad Qutb switched over from the theme that mere preaching would take them nowhere and that it was time to use force. This was Nasser’s opportunity to come down on the Brotherhood with a heavy hand. The organization was banned.
However, Al-Banna’s lessons were at no time completely forgotten. The ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood now as a major power group in the Parliament may thus be viewed in the context of this historical perspective. Morsi is in coalition with the liberals and socialists without unease, and at the moment his government is busy quelling the Islamist militancy in Sinai.
It is obviously too early to pass a judgment but it would be safe to assume that the fall of the autocrats has put Egypt on the democratic path. There need be no cobwebs in this respect as there is no basis to believe all the Western myths. About the risks of a Muslim-led coalition conformity to the western views is neither necessary nor credible. The debate in the West itself has raised questions regarding the efficacy of their own model of democracy in the changing global context. The model has been found to be inadequate and hardly self-sustaining. What we have there today is laissez faire democracy founded on the 19th century concepts. There is a quest for rediscovery, therefore.
Even Huntington’s clash of civilization’s theory insists that Islam and democracy are not irreconcilables but indeed, he asserts, that Islam will only accept democracy on its own terms. George Bush became an ardent supporter of the civilization clash theory but very much like him, missed, perhaps willfully so, the Huntington rider.
The developments in the wake of the Arab Spring deserve to be properly understood–despite Yemen, Syria, even Libya or the autocracies elsewhere in the Middle East. Also, it would be worth remembering that the two fastest growing world economies are Turkey and Indonesia, both democracies, both Islamic.
On its part, Egypt has a long way to go to realize its goals. It is still in the midst of its new-political journey for which a well-knit apparatus must evolve to create a democratic institutional network. Unlike Turkey and Indonesia, Egypt’s democracy is in a nascent stage even if each of them faces similar threats from radical elements.
Once the consolidation process is successfully achieved in Egypt, the main problem of those in power will be on the economic front– a phase which will be more challenging and more arduous in more senses than one.
