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Egypt’s Muslim Brothers: An Early Suicide

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Published Friday, July 12, 2013

 
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood faced a wide array of opposition to its rule from political, religious, and ideological spheres. Figures from these realms played a key role in toppling the old authoritarian regime, and have now succeeded in convincing the country’s silent majority to take to the streets in some of the largest demonstrations Egypt has seen.

Over the past year of Brotherhood rule, an opposition political current coalesced against the Islamist party’s disastrous stint in government, drawing in people from all backgrounds and uniting intellectuals, workers, Nasserists, secularists, Christians, the armed forces, and even loyalists of the Mubarak regime.

It appears that Egypt’s Brotherhood is headed for an early suicide, unable to accept its removal from power, and somehow failing to see the sheer mass of people arrayed against it.

How Brotherhood members respond to their ousting may very well influence the course of events in other countries where their counterparts rule, like in Tunis, Yemen, Libya, and Turkey. It may also push the Brotherhood in Syria to undermine all attempts at a political solution to the country’s crisis.
The first round of presidential elections over a year ago provides an indicator of the Brotherhood’s support in Egypt. Their candidate, Mohamed Mursi, won only a quarter of the vote. He was able to get the additional 25 percent in the second round due to the fact that the other option was Mubarak leftover Ahmad Shafik.

Those forces standing against the Brotherhood today represent an overwhelming majority, particularly if you count in those who did not even bother to vote in the presidential elections for various reasons, but were present in force on the streets between June 29 and July 2 calling for Mursi to step down.

So the army’s role in the second wave of the revolution was one of simply completing a step unequivocally taken by the mass of Egyptians – ending the constitutional legitimacy of those institutions that the president and his party control.

Ibrahim al-Amin is editor-in-chief of Al-Akhbar.

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.

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