The Polarized Narratives on Egypt

The Polarized Narratives on Egypt
By Cathy Young

The American response to the events in Egypt has been polarized between competing narratives that aren't always split along customary political lines. The first narrative is dominant in left-of-center commentary but also popular in the democracy-promoting corners of the right, such as The Weekly Standard: the protests that have toppled the presidency of Hosni Mubarak after three decades of repression are a stirring expression of people power. President Obama hailed it as a triumph akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The second narrative, common among those to the right-of-center, expresses deep reservations over abandoning a close U.S. ally. They warn that the fall of the Mubarak regime is not necessarily a victory for liberty but may instead turn out to be a victory for radical Islamism, and thus a grave peril to the United States and our allies.

On the fringes of the right, the "Islamist victory" scare often borders on paranoia, particularly in its Glenn Beck rendition with talk of the rebirth of a "caliphate." If allowed to dictate U.S. policy, it would also leave us stuck in morally dubious alliances with authoritarian regimes -- alliances which, in the long run, are also neither reliable nor practical from a "realist" point of view. But the starry-eyed celebrations ignore not only some disturbing present-day facts but some sobering historical lessons.

According to the "victory for freedom" narrative, any concerns about the possible outcomes of Egypt's mostly peaceful revolution stem either from an irrational fear of the Islamist "bogeyman" (as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof terms it) or from a selfish fear that the new democratic government in Egypt will not do the bidding of the U.S.: why else would anyone question a triumph of popular self-determination? Yet even a cursory acquaintance with history tells us that all too many "people's revolutions," from France in the 18th Century to Russia and Iran in the 20th, ended in the rise of regimes far more brutal than the ones they displaced. To succeed, democracy needs favorable cultural preconditions.

What are the preconditions in Egypt? "We are all Egyptians now," Kristof has proclaimed in one of his columns. Well, yes and no. Americans and Egyptians share the desire for a just, honest, democratic government. Liberty? Not necessarily. In a Pew poll released in December, a frightening 84% of Egyptian Muslims said that converting from Islam to another faith should be punishable by death. (This is far from a universal Muslim view: it is held, for instance, by only about 5% of Muslims in Lebanon and Turkey.) A similar number supported death by stoning as punishment for adultery.

Optimists argue that some poll data have been skewed by naysayers: thus, it has been reported that 59% of Egypt's Muslims support Islamists while only 29% back "modernizers" -- but in fact, those figures refer only to the 31% of the Muslim respondents who saw a conflict between Islamists and modernizers over the future of their country, so that only 18% of the total favored Islamists over modernizers. But while this is somewhat reassuring, the high level of support for religion-mandated barbaric punishments remains a cause for concern. What's more, some of the polls cited by the optimists may be misleading as well. A survey in which only 12% of Egyptians picked the implementation of Sharia law as their top priority for Egypt in the next decade -- with democracy, regional power, and development far more popular choices -- was conducted only in Cairo and Alexandria, large urban centers where the population is far better-educated and more cosmopolitan than the rest of the country.

It is very likely that, in fact, the average Egyptian is far more concerned with employment, social services, and a decent life than with religious ideology. That does not preclude the possibility that people and groups with an extremist ideological agenda may take advantage of the situation. One such group may be the Muslim Brotherhood, by all accounts the only organized opposition in Egypt.

There has been much debate in recent days about how extremist the Brotherhood really is. Yet even some of the group's defenders such as Emory University political science professor Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, who asserts in Foreign Affairs magazine that to portray the Brotherhood as a dangerous force seeking to impose Sharia-based tyranny is a "caricature" that underestimates the organization's evolution and its more progressive elements, admit that there are reasons to be wary. While Wickham insists that the Muslim Brotherhood must be a part of the democratic transition in Egypt, she also notes that "it remains to be seen" whether the group will agree to accept a constitution not based on Sharia, respect freedom of thought for all Egyptians, recognize equal rights for women and non-Muslims, and modify its proclaimed opposition to any cooperation with Israel and the West.

Islamic fundamentalism is no "bogeyman" but an all-too-real force whose effects, both internationally and domestically where it prevails, can be devastating. Last month in Bangladesh, a 14-year-old rape victim died from a lashing ordered by a local Sharia court which judged her guilty of sexual misconduct. (Fortunately, the perpetrators are being prosecuted because Bangladesh's highest court recently outlawed such punishments.) In Egypt, fundamentalists are seeking to revive the practice of "hisbah," banned under the Mubarak regime, that would allow any citizen to start a Sharia court prosecution against anyone he deems in violation of Koranic law. In 1994, before this practice was prohibited, it was used to declare a leading liberal Muslim theologian, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, an apostate and to forcibly annul his marriage to his Muslim wife, forcing the couple to flee the country.

Does it follow that, as some supporters of the pessimistic narrative on Egypt argue, the United States should have continued to prop up the Mubarak regime in order to stick with the devil we know? No. For one, American efforts to prevent regime change in Egypt might well have proved futile -- and backfired by depriving the U.S. of any influence over the transition. What's more, authoritarian governments in the Muslim world often contain radical fundamentalism with one hand only to stoke it with the other: under the Mubarak regime, the state-controlled media freely peddled Islamist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American propaganda.

What's needed is a clearheaded awareness that the democratic transition may have its pitfalls; that the West should do what it can to encourage genuinely pro-freedom forces; and that the West's ability to do so may be limited. Such a clearheaded approach should not be based on rosy scenarios, or idealistic declarations that people who have won their rights will not surrender them. Euphoria may be an uplifting emotion, but it is a bad guide to policy.

Cathy Young writes a weekly column for RealClearPolitics and is also a contributing editor at Reason magazine. She blogs at http://cathyyoung.wordpress.com/. She can be reached at cyoung@realclearpolitics.com