Op-Ed Contributor

Egypt Risks the Fire of Radicalism

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of the Muslim Brotherhood. I oppose their politicization of my religion. I take comfort in the fact that millions of Egyptian Muslims are protesting against the ideology and policies of a government led by a Muslim Brotherhood president. Islamism is being roundly rejected by ordinary Arab Muslims. That’s the good news. But there is bad news, too.

My Egyptian friends may not wish to admit this, but their country is home to a modern experiment. It was Egypt in 1928 that gave birth to the Muslim Brotherhood. It was successive Egyptian military rulers who arrested, tortured, killed and exiled thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was in the prisons of Egypt that contemporary jihadism was born as Sayyid Qutb was hanged in 1966 for criticizing Egyptian society and its government.

Out of that violent history, the Brotherhood reformed and came to accept the ballot box, abandoned the use of bullets to assassinate politicians. They may not be Jeffersonian democrats, but they now believe in consensual government. For all their faults, they contested and won the presidency in June 2012. Mohamed Morsi has been an experiment to see if Islamism can exist within a secular framework. This is bigger than Egypt: What happens here will affect the direction of Islamist groups everywhere.

Granted, Morsi has not been as successful as hoped. His presidency has seen the rise of Salafist radicalism, attacks on religious minorities, power grabs in the absence of parliamentary scrutiny, fuel shortages, breakdown in law and order, flight of capital and investment, sharp declines in tourism and ongoing mass protests. He is surrounded by arrogant advisers who see governing Egypt as their entitlement, their reward for having been imprisoned by Hosni Mubarak.

The anger of the millions of protestors is understandable. But emotions are not a strategy for government. If Morsi is toppled, who replaces him?

There is no credible alternative political leader. The opposition has not done the hard work of mobilizing, uniting and producing leadership. Returning to military rule may seem like an attractive option to many secularists who prefer dictatorship to an Islamist democracy, but they forget that Egypt is undergoing an experiment in reconciling political Islam with modern government.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s campaign of mass counterdemonstrations to save Morsi’s presidency has focused on the slogan “supporting legitimacy.” And Morsi himself has stressed that there is “no alternative to legitimacy.” The message is that Morsi is a legitimately elected president and to overthrow him without elections is illegitimate. Not only is this politically dangerous, it is religious dynamite.

Various Salafist clerics have vowed to support Morsi’s government. On one level, this is promising: hard-line religious players supporting a secular presidency. But if their man falls, they will see his successor as “illegitimate” and will resort to violence and be in open warfare with Morsi’s military (or interim civilian) successors. Morsi himself has vowed to die to preserve this “legitimacy.” We cannot take this lightly.

CreditKhalil Hamra/Associated Press

Renewed violence by Islamists who feel shortchanged by democracy and secularism is a real prospect if Morsi is humiliated. He is now a symbol of regional Islamism at the ballot box, not just the president of an Arab republic.

Arab secularists ignore this greater narrative at their peril. Egypt’s military, judiciary, media and civil society leadership have repeatedly blocked Morsi’s attempts to re-elect a lower house of Parliament or invitations for dialogue to resolve a yearlong political impasse. The disorganized, leaderless opposition is united around one issue: Morsi must step down. And then what? Silence.

President Mubarak used to say that if he were removed from power, then the Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood would succeed him. He was right. Today, the Brotherhood is warning us that if their man falls from power, then the Salafists would be the replacement. This is not a theory I would want to test.

Egypt’s political class needs to grow up, and offer us more than the just the largest-ever crowds at the latest protests for and against Morsi.

Meanwhile, the United States has been right not to call for Morsi to resign. At stake is nothing less than bringing Islamism into the modern world — and ridding it of its anti-Americanism. When I met with Brotherhood leaders earlier this year, they repeatedly asked for greater U.S. strategic assistance to help govern Egypt and saw America as an ally. It is important that the United States seize this historic chance to tame the tiger of Islamist anti-Americanism.

There is evidence that the Brotherhood’s attitudes have shifted: Politics appear to have trumped ideology. Morsi has not only upheld the Camp David peace accords with Israel, under his tutelage Egypt’s intelligence services helped broker a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel last December. His government went further and closed the tunnels Hamas had used to smuggle weapons to Gaza. When anti-American riots broke out last September over the film “Innocence of Muslims,” the Brotherhood canceled protests at President Obama’s request. The British and American ambassadors in Cairo enjoy the confidence of the Brotherhood’s leadership: a historical first. These are building blocks for American soft power. Islamism in power has helped dilute anti-Western ideology.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is the mother ship of the region’s Islamist organizations. Where it leads, others can follow. If the Brotherhood’s tenure in office is abruptly ended due to pressure from a secular military, opposition, media and judiciary, then the more extremist Islamists in the Arab world will say: “We told you so. Democracy does not work. The only way to create an Islamist state is through armed struggle.”

That conclusion is dangerous for Arab secularists, harmful to Western interests in the Middle East, and destroys the progress made in moderating Islamist ideology. Egypt is at the epicenter of a global battle of the soul of Muslim societies. Bringing down Morsi has consequences far beyond Egypt. He should be encouraged to mend his ways, and secularists should contest the Islamists at the ballot box in new parliamentary elections. The stakes are high.

Ed Husain is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
