The Muslim Brotherhood’s ability to maintain power will depend upon their ability to prove themselves to voters and make significant strides that reflect not only the aims of the party, but also the demands of the revolution and the will of the people.
The high expectations that accompanied Hosni Mubarak’s resignation last year have not come to pass. Egypt’s current Presidential election will be critical in determining whether Cairo’s future will bring democracy or merely democratic window-dressing.
When violence broke out last month between Israel and Palestinian militants, Egypt once again stepped in to mediate a truce. In the wake of the Arab Spring and Iran’s rising power, however, Cairo and the parties to conflict will find it increasingly difficult to contain the fallout.
Egyptian progress towards democracy is still in doubt amidst a backdrop of deep social and economic troubles. Providing effective democratic structures are created and upheld, it is likely the Muslim Brothers and other Islamic forces will gradually lose support.
Even while the prospects of reconciling Hamas and Fatah’s conflicting visions for the future are dim, Egypt has emerged as the only Middle East mediator trusted by both sides.These achievements represent the efforts of the transitional military regime to lift Egypt’s regional status out of the slump of the Mubarak era.
It is no small irony that while Egypt’s ‘new’ leadership is being lauded for making sure the Mubarak trial is not being rushed through a military court where standards of proof are lower and pressures on the defense can be higher, pro-democracy activists and protesters are being dragged through those same military courts in ever-greater numbers.
The so called “Arab Spring” has been a popular notion in American media. US academics, journalists and politicians speak of the most recent Middle Eastern revolutionary movements as a single and similar wave of reform that they deem as one that could be defined along racial lines. Not only is this approach methodically flawed, but it also overrides a sense of remarkable national pride for individual nations.
Much was made of the changes in Egypt’s foreign policy in April when the Egyptian foreign ministry announced it would begin the process of normalizing relations with Iran and Hamas. For the moment, Egypt’s foreign policy is trying to toe a middle line and become something new for a major Arab state in the region’s cold war: a non-aligned state.
In August 2010, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad al-Badie set forward a new Muslim Brotherhood policy. Badie departed from the historic position that the group was still in the base-building stage and openly called for jihad and revolution.
This collection of articles offers insightful and diverse perspectives on the Arab uprisings, and expands to consider political unrest outside the Arab world.
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