Egypt Reborn

Egyptians are not encouraged by the tide of events that brought them from living resentfully under a military-led government and a president whom they loathed as autocratic and imperious, to a Muslim Brotherhood-led government and a president whom they mistrust as aspirationally pharasaic and sharia-driven, imposing upon the populace an imperialist Islamism that suits some and insults others.

But in the interests of freedom and liberty and democracy this is the government that the majority of Egyptians voted into power.  And power is what the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom & Justice party and the Salafists' Nour party have taken for themselves; a long-held dream of ascension and one brought to their opportunist assertion thanks to the passionate exertions and exhortations of the liberal-left, secular and Christians who swelled Tahrir Square for the removal of Hosni Mubarak.

It may or may not be true that three of President Mohammed Morsi's aides have decided to leave rather than prolong their collaboration with a government they believe has misled the people in promotion of a draft constitution that will greatly enhance Islam in Egyptian governance.  Nor is it held by those who know, that these three advisers were taken with the presidential decree surrendering untold power to the president.

Despite the blood that has been shed, the deaths and the hundreds of wounded in the raging battles between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and their opponents, the regime's supporters are more numerous and just as equally determined as those who deplore the direction this new government has taken.  Egypt will end up reflecting the values of the Muslim Brotherhood; how could it be otherwise, after all? 

And those who now decry that direction have earned the transitory gratitude of President Morsi for initiating this great adventure in overturning one regime to introduce another.  The gratitude, however, has had its day, and President Morsi will remain intransigent to their appeals and denunciations, for he is the new power and they must resign themselves to that incontrovertible fact however uneasy it makes them.

Democratic action elected the Muslim Brotherhood to power.  And a laying aside of democracy's inconvenient type of politics is now responsible for the monopolistic creation of a new constitution.  Qur'anic scholars will now advise the justice system, favour the introduction of Shariah law and clamour for a formal role in everyday life for Islam to dominate.  And the vast majority of Egyptians are in complete accord.

The polarization of Egyptian society is a study in contrasts, but then that describes polarized values, does it not?  The steadily emerging Islamist state is not one in which some significant portions of Egyptian society will be comfortable, find themselves at ease with, reflective of their values and choices.  They are expressing their frustration with that evident potential in due time, with fire bombs, rocks and cudgels.

The secularists are viewing the disappearance of the Democratic process with dismay.  But they needn't, for the ruling Brotherhood will display democracy when it suits them and proudly assert that their governance does honour to and reflect democratic values.  They are agreeable to consultations with their detractors, but the opposition doubts that.  Doubting it, they walked out of the constitutional assembly, leaving the final version of the constitution to the Islamists.

Egypt needs stability.  It desperately requires a financial uplift.  Security has ebbed to a pathetic state.  Unemployment eats at the heart of pride and ability to fend for oneself, to feed families.  Pride in self and independence and an aspirational future depends on the polarities reaching a point of mutual agreement, without resorting to outright civil strife.  Egypt has no intention of reflecting a failed country like Lebanon or Syria.

But the suspense is terrific, and the fear is real, and the imagination is steeped in deep gloom.