The tragedy of the Egyptian revolution, as reflected in yesterday's appalling carnage, is that two-and-a-half years after the uprising against the Mubarak regime so many people still hanker after authoritarian solutions.

This is not altogether surprising since for decades they have known no other form of government and Egyptian society itself remains largely patriarchal. Politics is still shaped more by the notion of "capturing the state" than finding workable solutions to a multitude of problems.

The Muslim Brotherhood's protest camps did not have to be broken up; to do so was a deliberate political choice. In a post for the Arabist blog, Issandr El Amrani writes:

"Over the last week there was much talk ... over whether or not to negotiate with the Brothers or break their sit-ins. The camp that eventually won does not just believe that the Brothers are not worth negotiating with. They want to encourage it in its provocative sectarian discourse, its supporters' desire for violence, and push as much as the Islamist camp as possible into being outlaws. 

"Those who nurture such eradicateur sentiment do not so much actually want to physically eradicate all Islamists as to provoke them into a situation where their political existence will be eradicated because they will have opted for violence. They are willing to endure that violence, even a return to the counter-insurgency of the 1990s, and sporadic sectarian and terrorist attacks, because they believe it will strengthen their camp and enable them to permanently block most Islamists from politics ...

"Their thinking is cynical in the extreme, not unlike Bashar al-Assad's push towards militarising the political conflict he faced [in Syria] in 2011."

As in Syria, this is more about holding power than the good of the country and can only lead to disaster. At some point the military will have to recognise that no one in Egypt can call all the shots – and the Muslim Brotherhood will have to recognise that too.

An editorial in today's Guardian likens the Cairo massacre to that in Tiananmen Square by the Chinese authorities in 1989, but the comparison is somewhat misleading. What happened in Egypt yesterday was a confrontation between two different forms of authoritarianism – one military, the other religious.

In essence, the Brothers are playing the same cynical, unpatriotic game as the military. Brushing aside the ineptitude of their year in office, they have reverted to playing the role of aggrieved victim – a role in which the military have assisted by providing them with martyrs. In turn, the Brothers have provided the military with an excuse for repression by threatening to cause turmoil.

What they ought to be doing, if they really want a future role in government, is analysing the mistakes of Morsi's divisive presidency. The Brotherhood is a significant part of Egypt's political makeup and cannot be excluded if democracy is to take root. In order to be fully included, though, the Brotherhood will have to change. It is not enough simply to engage in electoral politics unless the movement also embraces freedom and democracy in the broadest sense – and in order to do that it will have to set aside dreams of imposing its religious agenda.

Whether the Brotherhood and other Islamist movements are actually capable of doing so remains to be seen, though the example of Tunisia offers some hope. There, Rachid Ghannouchi has so far steered the Ennahda party away from major confrontations over religious issues. But what we don't know at present is whether that's a long-term strategy or a short-term tactic.

     
Posted by Brian Whitaker
Thursday, 15 August 2013