Inchoate Rage

Ramy Yaacoub, Free Egyptian Party: "We are deeply concerned about the security situation"

Can there ever be anything resembling democracy as it is known in liberal Western countries taking hold in the Middle East, in Africa, in Muslim countries that are increasingly turning themselves into Islamist states? The long and seemingly inevitable progression from reasonable accommodation to Islamic precepts aligned with the governance of a modern state toward intractable fundamentalist Islam has matured into an icy winter of discontent that will soon mire all Muslim countries in Islamism.

This is the Islamism that is redolent of the Bedouin, tribal culture of incessant sniping, suspicion, challenges, assassinations and inter-clan warfare, whose ethos the religion was formulated to express, and to bring together under one spiritual roof. Because Islam is so deeply engrained in every facet of life for the believer, regulating each hour of each day, demanding utter fealty and surrender of self to the faith, there is no compatibility with another kind of political ethos. They are polar opposites.

Young Egyptians who gathered nine months ago to express their dissatisfaction with the kind of regime that they and their parents and their forbears have always lived under; authoritarian, rigid, demanding, to be exchanged for a more liberal, free political atmosphere where the individual has rights, saw that gestation give birth to more of what they rejected. The transition they longed for is an illusory one. In any event, meaningful change takes time. Nothing of any substance is achieved in a relatively short period of time. And they are due for a surprise.

Their own tradition, heritage and culture is incapable of assimilating a Western-style liberal democracy. They are too heavily weighted with prejudices, suspicions, hatreds, handed down from generation to generation. Theirs is essentially an uncivil society, a hard and primitive one, despite that among their population are those who would, in the best of circumstances, embrace the concept of liberty and equality. Growing Islamism among the populace had led Egyptians increasingly to reject Christian Copts in their midst, to acknowledge their heritage rights.

If thousands of Cairenes gathered in Tahrir Square to demand the immediate dissolution of the current governing body, there are millions living in Cairo who are silently hoping their presence there will dissolve, and peace descend, enabling them to get on with their lives that have been disrupted by all the raucous unrest and resulting violence. What is occurring in Tahrir Square resembles the Intifadas that took place in Israel. The country's economy has suffered hugely in the last nine months.

The demands of the protest are unreasoning ones. An orderly progression must take place between one government and another; the institutions of government must be well understood and tended to and the transition completed in good order. This fundamental necessity in a country that has been wracked by unrest and violence is required to avoid utter civil chaos. The devil we know is the ruling national army, the very same one of which President Mubarak was the head.

The devil waiting in the wings are the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood, salivating at their good fortune that non-religious, secular university students, the unemployed, the mildly Muslim and the working poor are doing the groundwork for them. Pressing the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to stand aside in favour of a civilian government, rejecting the presence of Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi in the interim until the voting process is completed, handing the field of eventual victory to the Muslim Brotherhood.

That eventuality will honour the Egyptian protesters with another kind of totalitarian rule that will circumscribe their lives even more than they had previously experienced. And it will set their country on a potential resumption of war with the Middle East neighbour with which President Anwar Sadat and his deputy, Hosni Mubarak, honoured a peace agreement for 38 years.