The MidEast Islamist Springboard

"The bullets came from a moving ambulance.  Mubarak's people were screaming from the vehicle that we had to go inside and stop protesting.  The bullets were fired randomly.  They thought that they could intimidate us.  But the entire neighbourhood came out in even greater numbers the next day  We were not going to be stopped."
Amr Seoud, Egyptian 100-metre champion

 Unfortunately the experience he related did not turn out well for the individual who was sitting on a parked car alongside other protesters.  The man who happened to be sitting beside Seoud died in the gunfire.  And Seud, who came to the opinion that Egypt deserved better than the autocracy it was living under decided to suspend his sport training.  He would join the protests.

"I was incredibly optimistic when I joined the protests.  I had seen the freedoms enjoyed by people in the rest of the world and wanted the same in my beloved Egypt.  When [President Hosni] Mubarak fell, it was as if the nation had crossed a threshold to a brighter future.  What we didn't realize was that other forces were already getting ready to hijack the revolution."

"I took a taxi with friends to the square.  We stood and shouted slogans.  The number of people just kept increasing and by the time we left at 2 a.m. we could feel that something incredible was happening.  My training for the Olympics just didn't seem important any more."

"We were naive.  We thought that Mubarak's exit would automatically usher in a new system.  Many young people were attracted by the Muslim Brotherhood when we had elections because they had been active during the demonstrations, protecting people.  But it was a front.  They are more interested in their own agenda than the future of Egypt. I have lost all respect for them since they came to power."

The Muslim Brotherhood initiated a sustained campaign to win the trust of the poor and the downtrodden.  They offered assistance in all spheres, from money to the destitute, food and shelter, medical care and legal support, while fostering within society a longing for a more pure, fundamental kind of Islam, attracting adherents impressed by their care for the oppressed and the indigent.  Their attention to this program gained them a wide support from the uneducated, the poor.

"Economically and socially, the revolutions have put the Arab Spring nations back by decades.  Islamists have effectively hijacked the coups and now have the ascendancy across the region.  They do not have majority support, but with low turnouts, they have gained disproportionate power.  And history suggests that once they gain power, they rarely relinquish it", explained John Bradley, a journalist living in the Middle East.

An example, said Bradley is what has occurred in Tunisia where socially liberal society there saw women with equal rights.  And where before their revolution women were discouraged from wearing the veil with the view that it was demeaning, where abortion was available on demand and prostitution regulated, sports participation by women was encouraged, that has all changed. 

Salafists have firebombed abortion clinics and brothels, and social intimidation forces women to wear the niqab. Islamist clerics abhor women's participation in sports and particularly in rural areas of Tunisia, women's rights are in deep reversion. Extremists called for the assassination of Habiba Ghribi when she became the first Tunisian woman ever to stand on the Olympic podium, winning silver in the 3,000 metre steeplechase in London, 2012.

In Libya, rival sectarian militias clash in bloody struggles for power.  Armed militias are "acting completely out of control ... there are hundreds of them across the country, arresting people without warrant, detaining them incommunicado, and torturing them", according to Amnesty International. 

In Syria, the ongoing clash between the regime and the rebel forces continue to take a heavy toll on civilian life.  In the background of the opposition lurks the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda affiliated militia. It is the presence of the Islamists in the forefront of the rebel attacks against the regime that has kept the West from intervening as they did in Libya and then regretted, witnessing the ascendancy of chaos and Islamism.

The world looking in from outside has been fascinated by what they believe has been upheavals motivated by young liberals, university graduates, socialists, minority and Christian groups agitating for equality and freedom and liberties traditionally withheld from them.  But what began in Tunisia and spread to other countries in the Middle East was motivated by economic stress; high unemployment, the rising cost of food and oil.

Complicated by sectarian and tribal animosities.  And all of it, the fear and determination to bring about change, the dedication to getting out on the streets and battling for change was stealthily and carefully infiltrated by and finally co-opted by Islamists, the Brotherhood and the more viral Salafists, to achieve their own goals.  Slowly but surely they are rising and taking their initiative.