; this sums up the difference between the revolutionaries, who unleash their anger and frustration through the latest inventions in modern communications technology, and ruling authorities that send in camels and mules to crush them in Tahrir Square. At one point the beasts of burden retreated, carting off the remnants of Hosni Mubarak's men to dump them in the dustbin of history. However, they soon returned with new men in the saddle. These ones wear stone-age timepieces and huff and puff clouds of desert sand with which they seek to bury the fertile silt of the Nile and drag Egypt and its people back to antediluvian centuries. Camels versus computers epitomises Egypt's chief dilemma, now, two years after the revolution: a clash of “time zones”. In one time zone stand those who believed from the outset that our revolution must bring radical change and sweep away the cumulative layers of corruption and despotism. In the other are those who seized upon the revolution as a historic opportunity to secure power for themselves, after which they would turn their back to everything: the blood of the martyrs, the needs of ordinary people, the opinions of wise men and the dreams of poets. The former understand progress as moving forward in time and moving upward, elevating ourselves and our country with the knowledge, know-how and awareness that will enable us to vie effectively for leadership in great affairs and concerns. To the latter, progress is a flight backwards into depths of time; the return to tents, the dust-laden winds of the Arabian Desert, and the rattle of sabres; the reversion to tribal chauvinism and to the notion that creed needs guards who will kill on its behalf. There is another major difference between the two sides. One believes that the Muslim Brotherhood should subordinate itself to the state; the other feels that it has the power to envelope the state in the cloak of the Muslim Brotherhood. The first option is natural, especially in a huge and ancient country such as Egypt that, throughout its long history, has always been able to absorb and assimilate cultures and to isolate and defeat malign designs and void them of their substance. It is also understandable and justifiable to those who had thought that the only barrier between the assimilation of the Muslim Brothers into the state and the body politic was a corrupt and despotic regime that officially banned their organisation and harried its members. However, the Muslim Brothers clearly had different ideas, because here they are today in the seats of the former regime while their organisation remains above the state and out of its reach as though it is a state within the state. Moreover, they also insist that the state must come crawling to them, eyes averted and bowed in submission, and extending its arms to don their cloak. That they, themselves, cannot see or are indifferent to how narrow, ill fitting and obsolete that cloak is stirs ridicule and disgust. While their presumption in remaining above the state and bending it to their will speaks of ignorance, a ruthless imperiousness and voraciousness for control and monopolisation of power that is impossible to satisfy. The Muslim Brotherhood does not have a project capable of assimilating or even administering the state. It does not have sufficient expertise or the capacities to make wise and informed decisions, or to order the affairs of society in accordance with the laws of sufficiency, justice and prosperity for the people. In fact, their campaign slogan, “We bring good for Egypt,” has become a source of scathing humour now that their old slogan, “Islam is the solution,” had done its job on the political terrain, regardless of how divorced it was from any substance in terms of principles, values and the public welfare. Moreover, they appear driven by an obstinacy and tenacity of a scale that breeds sin. After decades of showcasing figures capable of projecting a moderate image for their organisation, they cast these aside, turned their mental clocks to retrograde and allied with the ultraconservative Salafist trend that reverts everything to a stagnant place or perspective in which the world is divided into two camps and camels are once again unleashed against computers. The Muslim Brotherhood won't admit this, as usual. They vehemently deny that they are so deeply mired in antiquity. Then, for show, they inch their pocket watches a little more toward the present and roll out an old-fashioned “thresher” which they will try to make do the job, oblivious to the fact that mankind has already invented modern agricultural machinery. But if those who are impassioned with dreams of mounting charges on camels, horses and mules for the sake of conquest, the glory of victory and the establishment of empires stir terror and revulsion, those who insist on putting old threshers back to work arouse anger and wonder. Protest as they might, they are still denying the needs and demands of the present and behaving in accordance with a logic that the rest of the world has long since abandoned. This is why they jar so starkly with the modern mindset of Egypt's revolutionaries as epitomised by their calls for “bread, liberty for all, social justice, human dignity”. In its campaign to turn the clock back, the Muslim Brotherhood's propaganda machine reveals its orchestrators' inability to appreciate that the world has shrunk to an accessible size and that the Goebbels method of spreading lies, slandering adversaries and terrorising political opponents no longer has the ability to force the popular genie that arose for the cause of freedom back into its bottle. At the same time, the type of propaganda that seeks to create an aura of sanctity around the powers that be and that portrays the president as a paternal guardian who must be obeyed for better or for worse can no longer be swallowed by a people who are following the ignominious fate of a former president who is now languishing in prison after years of having imagined that he was above the law, immune to accountability and all-powerful. Nor does the “Mamluk model” of divvying up the state among soldier-princes have a place in a society that dreamed of building modern institutions. A country that longs to strengthen the legacy of the modern state the foundations of which were laid by Mohammed Ali and subsequently built upon by his successors, cannot allow itself to be dragged back into a medieval mode of management and organisation or tolerate the creation of private militias on the pretext of defending the offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political party. The time zone difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and the revolutionaries is particularly apparent in the former's attitude on the form of the state. The Brotherhood appears unable to grasp the very concept of the modern state. Whereas this requires a clear separation of authorities, the Brotherhood seeks to revive the status and power of the medieval ruler vested with all powers, as was evident in Mohamed Morsi's bid to add judicial authority to the executive and legislative authorities he already possessed. A Salafi preacher felt this was perfectly justified. He said, “The prophet (PBUH) appointed and dismissed judges and the caliphs followed the same course.” The pronouncement is typical of Salafist rhetoric in support of the president. But the Salafi supporters of the president will often go to further extremes in their language and behaviour, likening themselves to the first Muslims and the president's critics and those who differ with them ideologically and politically to the heretics of Mecca or the Jews of Medina. Such attitudes help explain the primitive manner in which the Muslim Brotherhood has managed its political disputes. It dispatched its hordes to blockade the Supreme Constitutional Court in order to intimidate the judiciary and prevent judges from convening sessions. Another horde was dispatched to surround Media Production City to intimidate the press and the media while militias were sent to break up a peaceful sit-in in front of the presidential palace. It then threatened to raid the headquarters of opposition parties and burn the offices of opposition newspapers, and it drew up lists of writers, intellectuals and media figures to be targeted for assassination. Since the revolution that toppled the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood has made it blatantly evident that it has no genuine desire to move forward into the future through a national partnership with civil and revolutionary forces. Instead, it took a quantum leap backwards by allying with the Salafis, whether because it hopes to take advantage of their organised forces or because the Brotherhood leadership, itself, has become Salafist enough to find it natural to link arms with groups that propound ideas that are alien to Egyptian culture and ways of life, civilisational values, and the spirit of religious moderation and tolerance. In acting in this manner, the Muslim Brotherhood has again demonstrated that it is worlds apart from the youth who were the leading force and guiding spirit of the revolution and that it's sole preoccupation is to gain full control of power even at the expense of whatever remains of its so-called “renaissance” project. The time gap was crystallised in the draft constitution, which was an explicit legalistic translation of the plan for “empowerment” that the Muslim Brotherhood drew up in the 1990s and that included a package of measures for slowly and gradually taking over one institution of the state after the other. After having been taken by surprise by the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood rallied and then seized upon the opportunity to accelerate the implementation of that plan, through whatever means and at whatever cost. One result was a constitution that was steamrolled to completion, one that did not reflect the aims, demands and aspirations of the revolution that sought a modern civil democratic state for all constituent segments of the Egyptian population and longed for a constitution that would establish such a state clearly, without caveats, loopholes or circumlocutions. However, time is working against the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, Egypt is in the time of the revolutionaries, whose ranks are growing by the day with the youth and young-spirited people ranging from the teens to the age of 40. These are the people who constitute the majority of the Egyptian population. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood insists on treating this demographically youthful society with the mentality of its Guidance Bureau, which suffers the plights of old age in its generational composition and ways of thought. The time difference is enormous. This fact appears to elude all who come to power, whether in the form of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or the Muslim Brotherhood. Both have turned a blind eye to the fact that there exists a real revolutionary force. This force cannot be circumvented, co-opted or eliminated. Anyone who is unable to grasp this or to readjust their mental clocks to it is certain to fail.
