Western dreams and Egypt’s reality

By Gideon Rachman

In retrospect, it was all desperately naive.
Remember all that excitement about the Facebook revolution? The image of hip young Egyptians, organising through social networking sites, to overthrow a military dictator was irresistible to many in the west. We were down with the kids in Tahrir. They were using our ideas and our gadgets to overthrow a crusty old dictator. Bliss was it on that dawn to be watching CNN.

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On this story

• In depth Egypt in transition
• Islamists’ win puts Egyptian army in retreat
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• Roula Khalaf Brotherhood faces Egypt’s awkward new reality
• Islamists get two-thirds of Egypt votes

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• Islamists ahead in early Egypt poll count
• Egypt’s Islamists demand power for parliament
• Egypt polls open for second day

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Now the results of the first round of voting in the Egyptian elections are in – and we are discovering that things are a bit more complicated. Islamist parties have won around two-thirds of the vote: the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have got about 37 per cent; the Salafists, whose puritan version of Islam is much harder line even than the Brotherhood, have won about 25 per cent. Parties representing Egyptian liberals are trailing in third – despite the fact that the first round of voting took place in their strongest areas. When the rural south of Egypt votes in the next rounds, the Islamists are likely to do even better.
Just after the revolution, Wael Ghonim, the young Google executive who organised the first Facebook protests against Hosni Mubarak, was put at the very top of Time magazine’s list of the 100 “most influential people in the world”. As a US official commented to me drily this week: “He may be the most influential man in the world, but unfortunately he doesn’t seem to have much influence in Egypt.”
It wasn’t just western observers who failed to understand the nature of Egyptian society. Many Egyptian liberals were also operating in the dark, after decades of authoritarian rule that had forced all sorts of social and political forces underground.
Back in April in Cairo I met Mohammed ElBaradei, the man who many liberals still hope (forlornly) will emerge as president. With commendable honesty, he admitted that he had barely heard of the Salafists, until they had emerged after the revolution and begun to give interviews. He was clearly horrified. “Some of them, well there is no common ground,” lamented Mr ElBaradei, an urbane international civil servant. “They want a completely theocratic state.” Returning from Egypt, I wrote that Salafists might get up to 10 per cent of the vote – and was worried that this might be considered hysterical.
A lot of Salafist funding comes from Saudi Arabia and that is reflected in the ideas their spokesmen discuss – including bans on public entertainment and alcohol, advocacy of women wearing the niqab, and the suggestion that a special tax might be imposed on Christians, an idea that is deeply alarming to the Copts who make up 10 per cent of Egypt’s population.
It is a measure of how much things have changed that Muslim Brotherhood members – once regarded as bogeymen by many liberals – are now being talked up as moderate centrists. The Salafists may or may not be invited into a governing coalition. But the fact that they have done so well in the elections could well drag the Brotherhood in a more conservative direction.
That matters because the Brotherhood is a broad coalition. In the aftermath of the election, its Freedom and Justice party put out a statement guaranteeing to protect the rights of all citizens, regardless of religion or gender. But some of the party’s spokesmen have frightened liberals by ruminating about extreme versions of Islamic law – like the chopping-off of hands, as punishment for theft. It is also official party policy to maintain Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel – but many Brothers do not need much prompting to rage against “Zionists” and Americans.
So should western governments and Egyptian liberals be panicking? The core message put out by the Muslim Brothers during the election suggests not – or, at least, not yet. Aware of the political and economic challenges it faces, the Brotherhood has emphasised an inclusive message that stresses reforms that will improve the lot of ordinary Egyptians, rather than a headlong rush towards a strict interpretation of sharia [Islamic law].
The risk of an Egypt that combines the worst traits of Saudi Arabia and Iran still seems remote for now. The real danger is more subtle. It is that an economic crisis and an unstable international environment will undermine a new government’s initial moderation – and allow more radical elements within the Islamist movement to come to the fore.
Egypt’s economy is at a virtual standstill. Foreign reserves are falling and the IMF is waiting in the wings. Tourism has slumped and many leading businessmen are caught up in anti-corruption cases, dating from the Mubarak era. The hopes for a better future that brought many Egyptians on to the streets last year look likely to be thwarted – at least in the short term. The Brotherhood lacks people with experience of governing. A background in community organisation is not necessarily a good preparation for high office.
Meanwhile, from Morocco to Iraq, much of the rest of the Middle East is in turmoil. A conflict involving Israel could easily break out in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon or Iran. An inexperienced Egyptian government, dominated by Islamists and facing an economic crisis at home, would be under pressure to respond with radical measures.
These are real dangers, but western governments and Egyptian liberals are bound to respect the results of the ballot box and to hope for the best. They have little other option.