The Syrians tuned into what was happening in Egypt last week with a sense of anticipation, and the ouster of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi sent ripples across the country, perhaps even influencing the outcome of the elections to the opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC). There has been no question that the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has also been a blow to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, arguably the country's most influential and best organised opposition group. The political blow dealt to the Egyptian group has shaken the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to its foundations, possibly causing it to lose its grip on the SNC, an opposition umbrella group that encompasses a wide range of political and ideological currents. In its elections, the SNC chose most of its leaders from the democratic groups with which the Brotherhood has made alliances, a sign perhaps that the Brotherhood's role in the Syrian opposition is not going to be as prominent as many had once assumed. Most of the democratic, secular, and leftist Syrian opposition groups were overjoyed at the news of the overthrow of Morsi and his supporters, proof, they said, that the Brotherhood will no longer be allowed to impose its brand of religion and politics on the country's opposition. Some opposition leaders said that keeping the Brotherhood and religious fundamentalists at bay was vital for the future of the Syrian revolution. Copying the Egyptian model, the youth of the revolution also formed an opposition movement called Tamarod, a word meaning “rebellion” in Arabic. The aim of this movement is not only to bring down the Syrian regime, but also to replace the expatriate leaders of the opposition with home-grown ones. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was incensed at what it called the “military coup” that had taken place against Morsi in Egypt, saying in a statement that what had happened in Egypt “sends the wrong signal to the entire Arab region, because the return of the military to political life, under any pretext, is an assault on the dreams of the Arab Spring”. Syria's Brotherhood also denounced the abrogation of the constitution through what it described as a “stroke of a pen by an officer riding on a tank”. “The Egyptians should hold on to their democratic achievements and tackle their crisis through dialogue and without charges of treason or apostasy,” the statement said. The guide of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Riad Al-Shaqfa, said that the events in Egypt would have an impact on the future of Political Islam in the region and the prospects of the Brotherhood gaining power in any Arab country. “Egypt is a big country and what happens there affects everyone,” he said. Al-Shaqfa said that the Syrian Brotherhood would not object to the outcome of free elections after the fall of the Syrian regime. “Even if the Communist Party wins, we will allow it four years to rule, and then the people will decide whether to change it or not,” he said. The Syrian regime led by President Bashar Al-Assad was also overjoyed at the news, Al-Assad saying that what had happened in Egypt had “confirmed the failure of political Islam.” The Brotherhood's project, Al-Assad said, was a “hypocritical project designed to sow sedition in the Arab world”, and he railed against an earlier decision by Morsi to sever relations with Syria, saying this was a “big mistake”. The Syrian media and officials expected relations between the new Egyptian regime and the Syrian regime to improve. However, the official media voiced its disapproval of the Egyptian army, which has pledged to supervise the transition of power. A coalition of Syrian leftists blamed the decision by Morsi to sever relations with Syria on the “Brotherhood's narrow perspective.” The coalition said that the severing of ties “doesn't benefit the Syrian people or the Syrian refugees living in Egypt”. It said that the Syrian revolution had suffered as a result of the conduct of the Brotherhood from the start. The battle against the Brotherhood that had started in Egypt would continue in Syria, they said. Haitham Manna, president of the opposition National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, said that what had happened in Egypt was a message to the Syrians that change could only take place through the actions of the nation as a whole. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, Manna said that “what happened in Egypt reminds us of the national role of the army and of the fact that the army belongs to the country and not to any party. When any president puts the interests of his party first, he forfeits his patriotism.” “The Egyptian army took action because it had the largest peaceful popular mandate in history. The Egyptian people sent a message, and the president failed to listen to it, which is the same thing that has happened in Syria. Here, we have lost 100,000 lives as a result, and the Egyptian army was not going to allow that to happen in Egypt.” Asked about the impact of the events in Egypt on the Syrian revolution, Manna said that “a peaceful civilian action staged by more than 20 million people is proof that dictatorship is powerless and that no elected official is immune from accountability. We in the Syrian revolution need to learn the lessons of the Egyptian experience.” Sheikh Riad Derar, a moderate Islamist member of the Syrian opposition, told the Weekly that “political Islam is known for its manipulative methods. The Brotherhood's policies are pragmatic and exploitative, and they are not grounded in ideology. The Brotherhood has failed in Egypt, and it will fail in Syria.” Syrian writer and researcher Hazem Nahar told the Weekly that “what happened with Morsi doesn't mean that all the Islamists are now powerless. You could have another Islamist leader in power who would succeed, or a secularist who would fail.” “As for why this happened to Morsi, this is the lesson that all political currents should learn from. What happened was the defeat of the Islamist forces in Egypt, but it was not necessarily a triumph for the opposition groups.” “Morsi failed to understand that the great revolution that brought him to power necessitated a new way of action. So he acted as if these were ordinary times. Morsi and his supporters failed to understand that people don't stage a revolution for revolution's sake, or for reasons of ideology. They do so in order to have a country that meets their needs. Bringing down the regime was only the first step,” he said. Most Syrian opposition parties believe that the popularity of the Syrian Brotherhood is restricted, especially after nearly four decades of its being forced underground. But the civil and democratic groups are also weak, inexperienced, and sometimes opportunistic, and it is for this reason that they have largely failed to stop the Islamists in their tracks. Despite its strenuous political and military efforts to bring down the Al-Assad regime, the Syrian opposition, secular and Islamist, has not yet been able to agree on the nature of the state it wishes to establish. This is a question that needs to be addressed now, before the perilous coalition between the civil and Islamist forces founders in the same manner it did in Egypt.
