CAIRO, EGYPT - JULY 03: Egyptian opposition protesters celebrate as news is announced of Egyptian... [+]
The Egyptian military’s ouster of President Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood is, to play with Lenin’s famous expression, one step back (away from democracy) in order later to take two steps forward (for democracy).
The Muslim Brotherhood electoral victories that brought Morsi to power with a parliamentary majority show the ability of a disciplined minority to gain power over an undisciplined majority. The Bolsheviks gained power in October of 1917 through their greater discipline (and their willingness to use force) despite garnering only a quarter of the votes for the constituent assembly at the peak of their power and popularity. It is noteworthy that Morsi ran on an electoral platform that promised a secular Egyptian state. It was this electoral promise that he was backing off when he was ousted.
The Egyptian people, with their long history of secularism, were simply not ready for a religious order imposed on them by a minority party. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood came to understand that they could achieve their vision of an Islamic state, contrary to the will of the people, only by non-democratic means. Thus Morsi began tightening the screws on other civil and administrative institutions with the main goal of achieving authoritarian rule. As the Egyptian people grasped what was happening, they took to the streets. They looked at him as a budding dictator not as the leader of a democratic state.
The relatively peaceful overthrow of a Muslim leadership by popular uprising illustrates two points: First, a secular society with a large educated middle class is not ready for a fundamentalist Islamic state. Second, a Morsi-like rule can endure only if it resorts to dictatorial rule, as in the case of Iran.
The Egyptian secular uprising worked in Egypt. It would likely succeed in a similar fashion in Muslim countries to the north of Egypt, but it would have little chance in the Afghanistans, Pakistans, and Sudans that lack an educated middle class to take to the streets. Russia’s Putin and China’s Communists must be viewing events in Egypt with alarm, as their middle class grows.
Although the early press accounts refer to a military coup, the military seemed to be acting upon its sense of what the Egyptian people wanted – rather than against the will of the people as in many military coups. It was a strange sight, as if the military rather than the ballot box were carrying out the popular will.
In the Bolshevik case, the Russian army had been destroyed in World War I. Some soldiers and sailors joined the Bolshevik cause with their weapons. Most returned to their home towns and villages. Egypt had an intact military despite Morsi’s efforts to emasculate the generals. In accepting Mubarak’s overthrow, the Egyptian military showed its willingness to hand power over to democratic rule, but those democratically elected officials must be in tune with the people.
Egyptian society and its military must prepare for the backlash of supporters of an Egyptian Islamic state. We do not know how many there are or how violent their reaction will be. The military faces the daunting task of preparing for taking the two steps forward sometime in the future towards a democracy that the Egyptian people can accept.
Today’s events represent the greatest single defeat of those who long for and fight for a fundamentalist Islamic order that governs political, social, and religious life. They send a strong signal to Prime Minister Erdogan to step carefully in dealing with his citizens who want to keep Turkey secular.
