Right, so you and I and the guy next door are freaked out that Egypt will become another Afghanistan, with girls forbidden from going to school and bearded guys lining up to blow up the Pyramids and Sphinx because they are symbols of infidel civilisations. Or become another Iran, with enforced veiling of all women and no freedom of speech unless you are speaking the party line, in which case, all freedom to you. We're afraid that Christians will be persecuted, non-observant Muslims will be ostracised and thieving hands will be cut off (personally I wouldn't mind it too much if a few thieving hands were cut off; it may stop other grubby hands from reaching into the pot). More importantly even, perhaps you are afraid that if we were to become Afghanistan or Iran, the world will shun us, foreign investors will back off, tourists won't step into a plane headed towards a booze-free, bikini-free Egypt, and the powers that rule the world will look at us and frown. Seems to me the main reason for this worry is that people are afraid of the MB “taking over the country”, whether that means control of parliament, or worse, fielding (and God forbid, succeeding with) a presidential candidate. I don't think that's going to happen and here's why. 1.There are ten times as many Christians (let alone secular Muslims, agnostics, atheists and religious Muslims who are not MB supporters) as there are MB members. The MB has been so demonised over the past decades that even your average Muslim is wary of them. Furthermore, the severity of the demonization necessitated that the magnitude of their influence be blown out of all proportion. If you point to the referendum results as evidence of their popularity, I would have to disagree. The referendum's results were not really about MB vs non-MB. The majority of the voters (rightly or wrongly, I think wrongly) cast their votes over security, stability, moving on with the economy and other issues close to all Egyptian hearts. The MB may have wanted a Yes vote too, but this was not about them. Just because people get sunstrokes on hot days, and people tan on hot days doesn't mean the sunstrokes cause the tans! When push comes to shove, when the vote is clearly to MB or not to MB, I am convinced that the voters will not put the MB in power. 2.The Egyptian army is highly secular. For superficial evidence, note that army officers whose wives wear the veil are rarely promoted, niqab is forbidden in Army clubs and officers are not allowed to grow beards. For a little more solid evidence, just yesterday, Field Marshall Tanatawy said it outright “we will not allow religion to take over political life in Egypt.” Like him or not, that is a clear statement of intent. On the other hand, Iran's army is far from secular, Afghanistan has no army as such, and what armed forces they do have are nowhere near as powerful as Egypt's. Add to that the fact that our army in Egypt is also very close to the Americans, (about $ 1.3 billion worth of closeness per annum) who for their own reasons don't want the MB or any other Islamic rule in Egypt, and you have an army that will not allow the MB or any M into power. 3.Iran is Shiite and the Shiite concept of Welayat al Faqeeh (Rule by Religious Scholars) doesn't exist in the Sunni world. The idea that the head of state should or could be a religious man just doesn't exist in our brand of Islam. The other massive difference is that Iran's clerics are state-sponsored, state-supported, not so in Egypt. The only clerics supported by our government, now or before are the official, ministerial mosque Imams who are fairly harmless in terms of political influence. 4. Egyptians at large, even religious ones; are moderate, tolerant people. We are not fanatic by nature, except when it comes to Ahly and Zamalek. You might ask, if we are so tolerant, what about the Salafys, who are clearly intolerant of anybody who differs with them. Well, two responses to that: a.Those commonly dubbed Salafys are a tiny minority in Egypt, and every rule has its exceptions. b.More pertinent to our discussion, none of them has ever expressed any interest in politics. What all this means IMHO, is NOT that there will be no religion in politics, not at all. I think there will inevitably be religious influence in our politics for a couple of key reasons: 1.We are by and large a religious people, Muslims and Christians alike. Of course there are exceptions, but I believe that we are fairly religious, at the very least at the level of tradition. Muslims go to mosques (in their millions on Fridays), Christians go to Church. We have posters with Quran or Bible verses, pictures of Virgin Mary or of Aksa mosque on the walls in our homes and shops or dangling from our cars' rear-view mirrors. We refer things to God very frequently, thanking Him (Muslims and Christians alike say Alhamdulillah with regularity) and asking for His help (Muslims and Christians alike say Ostor ya Rab or Rabenna yesahel all the time). It is in our language, in our culture, in our day to day lives. How will it not be in our politics? 2.It makes sense that in a society where some of the most organized, structured, funded, attended institutions are the churches and the mosques, religion will play a part in political life. Our student unions are no breeding ground for political participation and neither are our syndicates or unions (not until a few weeks ago anyway). One of the most heinous acts carried out with the most revolting success by the previous regime was to kill all paths to political participation. Such was the political landscape in Egypt that any organization or body, or in some cases individuals, which seemed remotely to have any political potential was immediately attacked. Churches and mosques (and the MB of course) were not immune to this, but the three of them have managed to maintain cohesiveness because of our “natural” religiosity as Egyptians and because they have all worked hard (not discussing intentions here, so why they worked hard is off-topic) to maintain and nurture links with their flocks. And so, while I believe we will not turn into another Afghanistan or Iran, I believe religion will play a role in our political life. What I think (and hope) is that we will move towards a Turkey or Malaysia kind of model as a first medium-term stage, then, assuming all goes well, we will develop our own unique, model of the involvement of religion in politics. The idea that we will become as secular as Europe is equally ridiculous to me, but that's another story.
