Whatâs
Wrong Today:
While we were
preoccupied with the crisis in Syria and what Sen. Cruz and the Tea Party are
doing in Congress, the interim Egyptian government that took over Egypt three
months ago was cementing its political control over the country. In a sweeping
ruling, an Egyptian court banned the
Muslim Brotherhood and ordered its assets seized. The Brotherhood’s leader Mohamed
Morsi, was elected in a election widely regarded as fair in 2012, but he is now
imprisoned by the Egyptian Military.
The interim
government, led by Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi, did not really have to do
anything, because the MB was banned as a result of privately filed lawsuits. Egypt’s
judiciary moved to not merely contain the Islamist organization, but to render
it non-existent.
From David
Kirkpatrick in the New
York Times:
ruling, by the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters, amounts to a preliminary
injunction shutting down the Brotherhood until a higher court renders a more
permanent verdict. The leftist party Tagammu had sought the immediate action,
accusing the Brotherhood of âterrorismâ and of exploiting religion for
political gain. The court ordered the Brotherhoodâs assets to be held in trust
until a final decision.
However, the
government has said it will not yet implement this ban until all litigation
against the group has exhausted all judicial processes and procedures. Kirkpatrick
added:
out its reasoning, the court reached back to the Brotherhoodâs founding as a
religious revival group in 1928, when Egypt was in the last tumultuous decades
under a British-backed monarchy. From its beginning, the court argued, the
Brotherhood has always used Islam as a tool to achieve its political goals and
adopted violence as its tactic.
The BBC added this
important detail:
ruling by the Cairo Court for Urgent Matters bans the Brotherhood itself, the
NGO, as well as âany institution derived from or belonging to the Brotherhoodâ
or âreceiving financial support from it.â It is not clear if it applies to the
charities and social services linked to the Brotherhood, including schools and
hospitals.
Among
other things, this could be a humanitarian disaster: The MB feeds many of the poor
in Egypt and runs free medical clinics.
Some view
Mondayâs court ruling as telegraphing the widely-held desire to continue on
the path toward destruction of the group, which was first banned in 1954, and that operated
underground for decades. It emerged as a political powerhouse during the 2011
Arab Spring revolt that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Postponing
enforcement of the judgment shows that there are at least some in the interim
government that have enough balance to understand that when you talk about
democracy, you have to go by the numbers. Morsi was elected by 51% of the
voters, more than GW Bush got in his first term.
On the other hand, outlawing
the organization is an important formality. It replaces the de facto ban on its
activities, demonstrated by the interim governmentâs rounding up of its leaders
and zero tolerance of its protests by security forces.
The
questions before us are:
- Is
this a great leap forward in the political evolution of Egypt, since it
represents a rejection of the MB, for whom âdemocracyâ seemed to be a convenient
step toward the implementation of Shariah law?
- Is
this simply the restoration of the Mubarak regime without Mubarak?
- Will
this more sectarian government just ban the MB and any other pro-democracy
forces that participated in the 2011 revolution, or are they simply banning
ideas, like Shariah?
Banning
ideas is useless. The MB is based in its religion. It has its own ideas and
deserves a hearing. If it is wrong, its errors should be rejected or corrected
if possible. But its ideas will never be suppressed by banning, particularly in a country that is 91% Muslim.
Banning is
the tool of those who cannot respond effectively to the ideas they are banning.
That said, the Brotherhood’s English language website describes the principles
of the MB as including first, the introduction of the Islamic Sharia as
“the basis for controlling the affairs of state and society” and
second, unification of “Islamic countries and states, mainly among the
Arab states, and liberating them from foreign imperialism”.
For democracy
to thrive, there must be a separation of church and state, or in this case, of
mosque and state, to protect the rights of secularists and religious minorities.
Until this separation is made a basic part of Egyptian law, democracy will
never really operate effectively. In the meantime, it is naive to expect a
country that is 90% Muslim wonât have a religious group seeking power. Who will
be banned next? The Egyptian military may see itself as the conscience of the
nation or the ultimate arbitrator of what should happen in Egypt. It isnât, and
it shouldnât be allowed to perpetuate this mind set.
Any free Egyptian democratic
election meant the MB would be the ruling party. And they deserved it, since
they had been the stalwart opposition and they were the ones who fed the poor
and tended their illnesses.
But after the
election, the MB rammed through a constitution they shouldnât have: They took a
democratic victory and transformed it into a permanent Islamic state, rather
than something which could be changed by election. That was a mistake, and it
was wrong. But the coup was also wrong and outlawing the MB could cause
unbelievable suffering. So donât be surprised when car bombs start going off.
It should
be an expected consequence of what the interim government, the judiciary and
military have done.
For the
US, our support first of Morsi, and later of the Al-Sisi coup, is not the same as what we did in the 1950âs Eisenhower era, when governments were overthrown in Iran, Nicaragua,
and a Christian government was installed in Lebanon. It is reminiscent of those situations though.
In each case, it was a âeasyâ
solution that came back to bite the US in the ass. It took about 25
years or so for payback, think Somoza in Nicaragua, the Ayatollah in Iran and
the mess in Lebanon that Israel still cannot handle.
Payback
here could happen more quickly.
The story
is not yet finished, but it is a sad day for the âArab
Spring.â Since fall is officially here, perhaps Mondayâs development in Egypt may
turn out to be the start of the âArab Winter.â
