Egypt at the polls
On the weekend, I blogged about how Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's attempt to quell dissent in his country has led to a better-than-expected showing for Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood.
Here's some more insight into the emergence of the Brotherhood as the parliamentary elections continue, and a lot of it is due to Mubarak's ham-fisted ways.
As the intellectual capital of the Islamic world, it's important that legitimate democracy takes root in Egypt, not the cynical kind that Mubarak promotes.
I hope the United States steps up to tell Mubarak that these kind of tactics are unacceptable.
posted by Road Hammer @ 12:54 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
The intellectual capital of the Muslim world is not democracy, it is Islam.
Capital in the geographic sense, that is.
Yes, that is the downside of expanding democracy in the Middle East (see my earlier post titled "Be careful what you wish for ..."). Now, ideally, the form of Islamic democracy you mention would hopefully not be based in any kind of religious zealotry ... but that's not likely to be the case, unfortunately. Not good for the US/Israel at all.
So this paradigm is essentially flawed then. The risk of implementation far outweighs the stability assured by the status quo.
This was not visible before March 2003. It is now. The problem posed by the Iraq debacle has complicated matters more. This is a H U G E strategic quagmire.
I think (hope?) Iraqi democracy would be different than Egyptian democracy. I think democracy in Iraq would produce a more "modern" result. In Egypt, I'd say that is less likely.
On the whole, though, things are far from lost. It is very early days.
To draw a parallel, it's similar to the dangers of implementing democracy in Russia. Despite a few minor scares in the 90s, Communists were not voted back in.
These things take time and are fraught with growing pains.
I don't think the West is going to give up hope any time soon.
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