Not to grant him guru status or anything but I’m glad that Reuel Marc Gerecht has at last weighed-in on the Egypt Question. I’ve mentioned his writing before and think him one of the most interesting, and in some ways provocative, middle-east analysts. Even if you disagree with him, his ideas are worth serious consideration. His view that President Obama could usefully say “We are not scared of muslims voting” seems persuasive to me. So too his conclusion that it is time to “put an end to the West’s deleterious habit of treating the Middle East’s potentates respectfully and the Muslim citizenry like children.”
He writes:
Mr. Bush’s distastefulness helped to blind Westerners to the momentous marriage of Islamism and democratic ideas. Men and women of devout faith, who cherish (if not always rigorously follow) Shariah law increasingly embraced the convulsive idea that only elected political leadership was legitimate. Islam puts extraordinary emphasis upon the idea of justice — the earthbound quid pro quo that a man can expect in a righteous life.
This sense of justice, which Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani expressed so forcefully in 2004 against an American occupation fearful of letting Iraqis vote, has been irreversibly welded to the ballot box. Democracy for the faithful has become a means for society to affirm its most cherished Islamic values.
The Egyptian revolt against President Hosni Mubarak and his regime has caused many in the West to foresee a calamitous, unstoppable rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother ship of Sunni fundamentalism. The Brotherhood is frightening. Prominent members have sanctified suicide-bombing against Israeli women and children, espoused the vilest anti-Semitism and affirmed the holiness of killing those who would slight the Prophet Muhammad.
But the Brotherhood, like everyone else, is evolving. It would be a serious error to believe that it has not sincerely wrestled with the seductive challenge of democracy, with the fact that the Egyptian faithful like the idea of voting for their leaders.
[…]The Brotherhood is trying to come to terms with the idea of hurriya, “freedom.” In the past, for the Muslim devout, hurriya had denoted the freedom of a believer to worship God; for the Arab nationalist, the word was the battle cry against European imperialism. Today, in Egypt and elsewhere, hurriya cannot be understood without reference to free men and women voting. The Brothers are trying to figure out how to integrate two civilizations and thereby revive their own. This evolution isn’t pretty. But it is real.
[…] Once President Mubarak is gone, and if his minions don’t try to maintain the military dictatorship, a quick transition to democracy is likely to produce a plethora of parties, with a few in position to form a coalition.
The Brotherhood will undoubtedly be one of the big players, but it will have to compete for votes. And, as the Brotherhood’s aborted platform clearly reveals, the organization is going to have to do better than chanting, “Islam has all the answers,” the easy retort of men who know they don’t have to compete for power.
This last point seems vital: even if the Muslim Brotherhood were to take control of Egypt are there any grounds for supposing they can meet the economic and political demands any new government must address? Islam does not have an answer for poverty or frustrated opportunity. If it pretends to and then fails then it too will surely and eventually be seen as yet another bogus bill of goods.
Again, the satus quo has failed and should be over. The future will be uncertain and sometimes daunting but it need not be disastrous. If we, and more importantly Egypt, are lucky…
For a longer exposition of Gerecht’s thinking, consult his essay in the latest edition of the Weekly Standard.
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