Political Islam Is A Dead End: Could Egypt Just Be The Beginning?

Political Islam’s solutions to complex economic, social, cultural, political, spiritual, and other problems comes down to one simple word: martyrdom. Death is all that political Islam offers to the countries in which it is the ruling philosophy. In a spiritual and warrior-minded nation like Iran that message is easier to swallow, but in a materialistic and secular country like Egypt that has historically been either in the Communist camp or the American-Western camp in global geopolitics, it is a no go.  

What’s happening to the Muslim Brotherhood was inevitable. Instead of improving the economy and tapping into the positive energies of the young revolutionaries, the MB offered Egypt new wars to fight. And Egypt simply does not have the stomach or the desire to fight a war. Not only have its citizens not been filled with passion for the Palestinian cause, but Palestinians are regularly demonized as terrorists in the state media.

Most Egyptians loathe the Muslim Brotherhood with an anger that exceeds that of right-wing, Christian Americans who are not existentially threatened by the MB like Egyptians are. One of the generals in Egypt has publicly talked about wiping out the Muslim Brotherhood for good, saying, “There are 90 million Egyptians and there are only three million [members of] the Muslim Brotherhood. We need six months to liquidate or imprison them all.”

Taking this stance is sheer madness and stupidity. There is no such thing as a military solution to what are essentially political, ideological, and spiritual conflicts. Egypt is in desperate need for strong political visionaries to take center stage and lead the nation in this crisis, not generals who view killing as the answer to every problem.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other political Islamist movements can ultimately only be defeated and pacified ideologically. In many ways, these movements defeat themselves when they come to power and expose how corrupt, incompetent, intolerant, deviant, hateful, and stupid they are.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s secret ties to the United States, which has been successfully demonstrated by the Egyptian people and media, is the biggest reason for the failure of the movement.

Also, the movement’s hubris is not based on real power but only on a fantasy of its power. It is impossible to Islamize a country when neither the army, the intellectuals, the media, or the majority of the population stands with you.

II.

Below is an excerpt from the article, “The Escalation of the Crisis in Egypt” by Boris Dolgov [Voltaire Network, August 20]:

The schism that Egyptian society has fallen into is a phenomenon which is nothing but unhealthy. Nevertheless, the majority of society, including the middle class, government employees, the intelligentsia and the rural population, along with virtually every liberal democratic, nationalistic and left-wing movement in which Muslims are well represented, support the actions of the army and law enforcement agencies. Egypt will not return to an Islamist regime, even with the support of external forces. The broad participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in political life is also going to be fairly problematic in the near future.

All evidence points to the fact that the defeat of political Islam in Egypt marks a new stage in the development of the «Arab Spring». The change in power in Egypt moves it into the ranks of countries like Algeria, Syria and Iraq that have experienced and are continuing to experience the pressure of radical Islamism. The battle is far from over. The unrest of the Egyptian example could move on to other countries of the «Arab Spring» starting with Tunisia, where political Islam has shown a complete failure in solving socio-economic problems, has aggravated interfaith relations and given life to terrorism.

The defeat of Islamists in Egypt is evidence of the collapse of Western policy in the Arab world with its support of Islamism. Such support only seems absurd at first glance; in reality, it is pursuing strategic objectives, including the removal of undesirable regimes and entire state formations. The nationhoods of Iraq and Libya have virtually been destroyed, while attempts to destroy Syria are still going on. The media is reporting on the seizure of maps during searches of a number of Egyptian NGOs financed by the US showing Egypt split into four parts. The old political formula of «divide and rule» is still going strong…