The Egyptian people and many of their intellectuals are stunned by US and European reactions to the developments in Egypt from 30 June, when a couple of dozen million took part in mass demonstrations calling for the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime, through the dismissal of president Mohamed Morsi to the “Week of Departure” that brought an end to the Muslim Brotherhood's bid to turn back the clock and fulfil that portion of their vision of “empowerment” that entailed the establishment of a state that would have been neither “civil” or “democratic” or “modern”. Egyptians knew that the Muslim Brotherhood was leading their country to yet another major setback in its historic march — which has lasted far longer than it should have — towards the realisation of the dream of the founding fathers of the Egyptian state. The Egyptian people had a vision totally different to that of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is why they took action to reclaim a revolution that had been commandeered and turned in the direction taken by Iran and other theocratic states. Therefore, Egyptians were surprised by the reaction in the US and Europe where intellectuals, writers, media figures and politicians debated whether what had occurred in Egypt on 3 July was a popular revolution or a military coup. The bias in Washington and major European capitals in favour of “coup” was obvious from the outset, as was the intent to propel Egypt back to the pre-30 June status quo by means of various enticements and threats. Soon after followed a second debate, sparked by developments that, in the West, were reduced to the narrow focus of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya and the Nahda sit-ins, despite the fact that it was evident that those squares were only bases for an escalating campaign to paralyse the state and forestall the realisation of the roadmap to democracy and that the architects of that campaign were prepared to use all available means of intimidation and violence, including terrorist jihadist elements that are known to rub shoulders with well-known terrorist groups in the world, not least of which is Al-Qaeda. Once again, the European and US position inclined in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood, which cynically cried foul in the name of a “democratic legitimacy” which, in reality, had very little democratic substance given that it was based on a blatantly theocratic constitution and a one-time-only democratic election. It took no great intelligence or familiarity with Western history to realise that the Muslim Brotherhood was bent on reproducing Germany and Italy's experiences with Nazism and fascism. Nevertheless, the general run of opinion from one side of the Atlantic to the other was that the “ballot box” had had its say and that the Egyptian people had to bow to this and accept its consequences even if that meant that all avenues to real democracy and to working for real democracy would soon be closed off to them. So, on top of verdict one, which pronounced “coup”, came verdict two, which ordained that the return of the Muslim Brotherhood through negotiations and inclusiveness was the best route back to the political path espoused by civilised nations. Then followed not an elaboration on this logic but rather punitive measures and threats of worse to come. Shipments of planes and arms that were about to be delivered were halted and heads of state that had once described their relations with Egypt as “strategic” spouted a rhetoric that is normally frowned upon in international relations. Egypt's political response to that assault is one thing; trying to understand it is another. The latter is what concerns us here because it is impossible to formulate a successful response without an understanding of how “democratic” nations would turn against “popular will” and what brought secularist liberal capitals, whose skyscrapers and metro tunnels had been bombed to smithereens, to side with terrorism and call upon the Security Council to “discuss” the Egyptian situation. In spite of the many fine expressions and turns of phrase used by Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, in particular, one might think that they took personal affront at the fact that the Egyptians of 2013 had succeeded where the Germans of 1933 and the Iranians of 1979 had failed. It is difficult to understand this oddity without an appreciation of the “political paradigm” that has governed the thinking and behaviour of Western nations in recent years. Modern nations, in their approach to national security, apply what has been called the “military doctrine” — a methodology for identifying sources of threat and how to respond to these through diplomatic, political or economic means, and by recourse to arms (war) if necessary. In like manner, their foreign policy design is governed by a “concept” in accordance with which friends and allies are identified and other nations are ranked from close to distant, and that determines how those countries are to be understood, how they can be influenced and the means to be brought to bear towards this end. The behaviour of Western nations in recent times was the manifestation of such a “political paradigm”, one that could not withstand the fallout of events on the ground. When faced with this reality, the response was either to remain entrenched in this paradigm and interpret new developments in a manner consistent with it, to grope blindly for an opening that might lead to another governing concept, or to embark on a series of follies of historic magnitude. The “political paradigm” that the West applied to the Arab world has mutated twice since the beginning of this century. The original paradigm was a response to the rise in Islamist terrorist groups and their attacks in New York, London, Madrid and Paris and it held that this phenomenon was the product of the “authoritarianism”, especially of the militaristic stripe, that prevailed in Arab countries. The solution was to overthrow such regimes, even if it took direct military intervention (as occurred in Iraq), and to replace them with a “civil society” that would receive every sort of moral and material support. However, with the failures of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the paradigm took a qualitative shift. It was no longer civil society that needed support as much as it was the moderate Islamist groups that seemed more in tune with Western culture and that the authoritarian regimes were using as a bogeyman to perpetuate their power. The first paradigm was promoted by the Bush administration; the second dominated the thinking of the Obama administration. In both cases, Europe followed the American cue. Many political and intellectual forces in both the West and the Arab world played a part in formulating and promoting the second paradigm. Among them were secularist liberals who had despaired of the possibility of democratic reform and who believed that the Turkish experience could serve as a model to emulate in this part of the world. The trend was fed by the widely held belief among such circles that the Muslim Brotherhood, when in power, would mature democratically and “naturally evolve” into a political force akin to the conservative Christian democratic parties that exist in some European countries. The experience in Egypt proved diametrically opposed to this concept. The leaders of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whom experts on their movement agree were steeped in radical Qutbist thought, amply demonstrated that they were willing to ally with more extremist jihadist and takfiri (fundamentalist militant) forces if that served their ends. Moreover, last November they used a quasi-legal artifice, in the form of a dictatorial constitutional declaration, that provided cover for the passage of a constitution that had no consensual basis and that was clearly tailored to the establishment of a theocratic state. In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood was diverting Egypt from its evolution as a modern state and in the opposite direction of a civil and democratic form of government. The Muslim Brotherhood movement was built on the concept of “empowerment”, which is to say the empowerment of its organisation and it's particular vision for the state and society. As everyone with eyes could see, this meant to the Muslim Brotherhood that the ballot box was to be used only once, for the sole purpose of putting them in power, after which all voices of opposition would be stifled and all avenues to positions of authority in the “Brotherhoodised” state would be closed to everyone but Brotherhood loyalists. Egyptians saw all this unfold before them just as they saw that the Muslim Brotherhood would cling to power even if that involved setting the whole country on fire as, indeed, some Muslim Brotherhood elements did. In the West, meanwhile, realities on the ground in Egypt shook the accepted paradigm. The initial response was denial. The second was to revert to the paradigm of militaristic authoritarianism. The third was to grope for another concept that would somehow fit the former in order to come to terms with a phase in Egypt characterised by massive unrest. On this occasion, liberals both in the West and in Egypt hit upon a formula that confuses “liberalism” with “pacifism” and in accordance with which recourse to force, in and of itself, is tyrannical and unjust, as though Western liberalism had not waged a world war in order to combat fascism, Nazism and communism.
