Egypt considers dissolving Muslim Brotherhood

[Igel]

21. Yes and no.

There's a long line of examples of people who despised the Ikhwan. They did so for two reasons.

The first and best is that the Ikhwan used violence to try to achieve their vision of social justice. Violence is a bad answer to most questions. It's not a good answer now--unless we like being hobbled by interpreting everything through a historical lens. "The Germans were facists in 1940, so the Germans must still be facists." The world's changed. Change with it.

The second is that the Ikhwan is intrinsically opposed to the idea of Egyptian nationalism, as ordained by the Egyptian 1%ers of yore and encouraged by the West. Egyptian nationalistic views are compatible with the higher education and training that the rabble's "betters," the generals and jurists, have.

This says that Egypt is special. It's people are one, united around a great language that is the only one to be used; an official history aggrandizing the state and the people; a glorious culture that must be defended; and a sound economy that is the first among its peers. It's a nationalism that favors a strong unifying state in which the central government has a strong hand in guiding private enterprise to support the government and in the the state is glorified and must not be criticised. There are elements of Arabism in it, but not sufficient to make Egypt not special. (Try applying this to the US. Go ahead, say it's a grand and glorious thing.) The result of this is that Egypt is pretty much the only Arab state in which tribalism isn't a serious factor. Of course, Egypt's far from being averse to playing the tribalism card, as long as the tribal boundary that serves to stoke calls to "rally the wagons" can be framed in nationalist terms--anti-Israeli propaganda or even anti-Jewish propaganda. Jews were never really Egyptians because they had their own sense of "ummah-hood".

This is also historical, but was true in 2010 and those who are in charge of the coup were important in 2010 and it's never been renounced. It's not like the Ikhwan's violence, which was renounced quite a while ago for very well-stated theoretical reasons (whether or not you believe they were telling the truth, note that the last month gave them ample opportunity to revert).

The Ikhwan come back and say that the ummah is paramount in serving Islam and not al-watan, the state. Egypt rejected pan-Arabism after toying with it for a while. It has to reject Islamism because it would divide groups in society.

The Ikhwan also retort that Islam is the way, and the secular, higher-ed, 1%er views of the Army and judges are misguided. Better to be pure than educated, observant than rich, faithful than chauvinist. They're not Boko Haram, but there are vague similarities. Then again, there are similarities with a lot of Democrats in rejecting the primacy of higher education and nationalism, so it's the extent of the analogy that's important not the mere fact that you can draw the analogy.


BTW, Saddam's "people" didn't abandon him in full. Many saw him as weak when he vanished--don't forget all the "strong horse" talk, so it's not an entirely false claim. But he was sheltered by "his people" for a long time, and he still had a lot of support among the Sunni tribes that he fostered and supported. It was only after some of his supporters got out of hand--infiltrated by Salafists out for shari'a and not Saddam--that they were rejected and the US had to come in and protect and train their men, clearing the field so they could be mop-up crews and peacekeepers.