The Brotherhood Bogeyman

Keep your friends close, and your ideological enemies in government.

In the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders asks the question “Who’s afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood?” and on the National Post’s blog, Charles Krauthammer responds with an emphatic “Me!”

“We are told by sage Western analysts not to worry about the Brotherhood because it probably commands only about 30% of the vote,” writes Krauthammer. “This is reassurance? In a country where the secular democratic opposition is weak and fractured after decades of persecution, any Islamist party commanding a third of the vote rules the country.” Like many other commentators he fears that Egypt will go the way of Iran or Gaza, where Islamic radicals used popular uprisings to implement their own agendas. Krauthammer is even suspicious of opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei, who he says is being used as “a useful idiot” by the Brotherhood to put a “cosmopolitan face” on their radical beliefs. ElBaradei and the Brotherhood were involved with negotiations with the government this weekend, but Krauthammer somewhat counter intuitively suggests that the clearest path towards democracy is via a military takeover that would see the Egyptian armed forces shepherd the country towards elections.

Brotherhood leaders say they would be perfectly happy forming part of an Egyptian government that renounced violence and recognized Israel, and Saunders takes them at their word. He argues that instead of worrying about what will happen if the organization gains power in the new government, we should be worrying about what will happen if they don’t. “When these popular movements are repressed, as Egypt has done brutally for six decades, the frustrated adherents have switched to non-political, violent means,” he writes. “When these parties are allowed a role in democratic government, there’s a pattern. Remember, however alarming their ideas about women and Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood and its neighbouring parties represent the people who explicitly rejected the violent option.” Saunders says a pertinent example is Turkey’s AKP party, which was founded as an Islamist movement but in order to get elected purged its more radical factions and once in power became an ally to Israel.