CAIRO - How can a person that doesn't believe in democracy practise it just to achieve his/her goal of having a seat in parliament? And how could one trust that same person to continue practising democracy and accept other opinions when in parliament and accept possible defeat in subsequent democratic elections? These are the kinds of questions that occupy the minds of Egyptians who were shocked with the Salafists' ability to gain more than 20 per cent of the seats in the first stage of the elections. The Salafists did not participate in the January 25 revolution nor did they support it in the first place. On the contrary they kept warning the revolutionaries of Allah's punishment for their revolting against the ruler. However, when the revolutionaries succeeded and forced the former president to hand over rule to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the Salafists took a break from their criticism of the revolution. Later they started participating in the Friday 'one-million man' protests to show their power on the street. With the issue of the new law governing party formation, the Salafists managed to register An-Nur, their first political party, through which they began to propagate their ideas of strictly enforcing Islamic Sharia (religious law). Adopting extremist language in their speech and even extremism in their practice, they have caused the eruption of sectarian violence more than once in the Upper Egyptian town of Qena and the Gizan suburb of Imbaba, intending to demolish a church and set fire to another. Accordingly, the ruling military council should have rejected their demand of creating their political party on a religious basis. Instead, the perpetrators of these crimes escaped punishment and have never been referred to trial at the time when SCAF referred many revolutionaries to the Military Court for declaring criticisms of SCAF and the then caretaker government of Essam Sharaf. For these reasons, the revolutionaries and all secular and liberal powers have begun to detect a kind of enmity by the ruling generals towards them and clear bias towards the Salafists and to Islamists in general. For their part, the SCAF members have kept affirming their neutrality in running the political process and lack of bias. However, they have forgotten that policy and laws issued under their rule have enabled extremist Islamists, including members of the Islamic Group, which used to be involved in terrorist acts in the 1970's and 80's, and were correspondingly jailed, to form political parties, that will compete in leading political life with liberal and revolutionary groups. No one is asking the ruling military council to take the same oppressive stand against Islamists that was followed by the toppled regime. However, it is also unacceptable to treat them on an equal footing with the moderate and enlightened persons who led the revolution and sacrificed their lives for it. These revoluionaries removed a corrupt totalitarian regime to create a democratic civil state capable of adopting massive economic, social, educational and cultural projects to put Egypt in its proper place on the world map. With more than 40 per cent of Egyptians suffering illiteracy and with the wide influence of the religious satellite channels that keep spreading extremist versions of Islam amongst those citizens, the new party legislation should have included an article to ban the creation of any political party on religious ground. The creation of such parties has led not only to a state of sectarian division between Muslims and non-Muslims but also between Muslims seeking to create a religious state and those calling for a democratic civil state. The society, which miraculously witnessed great days of unity among Egyptians: Muslims, Copts, religious or secular citizens during the first 18 days of the revolution, has today split into two sides. They are trading accusations of infidelity and backwardness before celebrating the first anniversary of the great revolution that astonished the whole world with its peacefulness and ability to uproot a powerful and corrupt dictator. That is why the great joy and optimism the public felt for the first time in a democratic election process have turned into pessimism and concern about the results, which was reflected in weak turnout in last week's runoff on individual seats in the first election round. Most moderate educated people, who were eagerly anticipating the future of the country after it will have a new parliament, constitution and president, are now feeling very disappointed and fearful of the coming days. The cause of this pessimism is the irrational statements being made by some Salafi extremists about their intention to force Egyptian Muslim women to wear the veil, prevent women from driving vehicles and change the banking system and tourism regulations. What is more disappointing is that none of the candidates, who won in the elections has spoken of adopting any immense economic measures to help settle the chronic economic crisis hitting the country, nor has one expressed any vision on the reformation of the education system or the health services. In other words, these members of the new parliament seem busy turning Egypt into another Saudi Arabia or even Iran, where it is the ruler that compels the people to pray, fast and wear the kind of clothes he sees as appropriate for their Islamic culture. Though I am a conservative person myself and have worn the hijab (Islamic headscarf) since I reached the age of 16, I would not like anyone to force my daughter to wear the hijab, not even her father, not to mention the ruler or any authority. The questions of a woman wearing the hijab, working or driving her car in the street are not the centre of Islam and will not be the solution to any of the Muslims' problems. Besides, no one has the authority to force anyone to follow principles and instructions of the religion not even the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) himself. Allah the Almighty kept reiterating in His book that Mohamed is a mere messenger, conveying His message and is not the one entrusted with punishing them for their sinful acts or even for not believing in the One God in the first place. Of course, no one would come today and ask for the election process to be suspended or the results aborted to prevent Islamists reaching the parliament, as occurred in Algeria some 20 years ago with the Islamic Salvation Front, driving the country into a blood bath that lasted many years. One should not also underestimate the risk of letting Islamists in Egypt achieve similar percentages in the coming two stages of the 2011/2012 elections, by saying they could easily be removed in a subsequent parliament by the same democratic rule, if proved to be working against the public will. Herein, one should turn to the above-mentioned question of whether Islamists would accept their defeat in the coming parliamentary elections? Definitely not! If this happened they would accuse the society of infidelity and reject the principle of democracy they are accepting today as a means that would enable them to achieve their aim in clear adoption of the Machiavellian principle of the end justifying the means. However, there are still means of resisting this possible nightmare by insisting on bringing more liberals to the new parliament in the coming two stages. We should also focus on having a new president that does not belong to the Islamists groups. Most importantly, we should not accept a new constitution that does not ensure personal liberties and equal citizenship of Muslims and Christians and doesn't enable the easy rotation of authority between political parties.
