HAVING Islamists reach rule in the Arab Spring countries, especially Egypt, has raised world concern over the future of these countries whose young people led a revolution against totalitarian regimes, with the sole aim of creating democratic civil states along the lines of the world's developed countries. Most of the public anxiety about the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) rule in these countries lies in their forcing their fanatic vision of the Islamic Shari'a (religious law) on society. Of especial concern was their insistence on seeking to amend the constitution to include an article considering rules of the Islamic Shari'a as the main source of legislation. Fortunately, strong civil revolutionary opposition and the prestigious institution of Al-Azhar together with the patriotic army have helped Egypt contain the ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood and their fanatical supporters the Salafists. These ambitions include as well as imposing the rules of the Islamic Shari'a (religious law) on the constitution, allowing the forming of armed militias from these groups to enforce discipline on society according to their own vision. However, no one inside Egypt feared that those Islamists achieving rule in Egypt would trigger sectarian war in the region. In Egypt, the fanatic thinking of those Islamists failed to incite Egyptian Muslims to rise against their Christian brothers and sisters. Thus, all the sectarian events that have taken place in Egypt since the toppling of the Mubarak regime, even those involving some violent assaults on citizens or places of worship have ended in failure. This is thanks to the solidarity of Egyptian citizens – Muslims and Christians – in the face of extremists, and the wise heads of the Coptic Orthodox Church and Al-Azhar co-operating to head off any plot against the social peace of the Egyptians. Meanwhile, the Egyptians have continued to see the threats presented by Islamist rule of the country, not only in their failure to obtain economic growth but also their insistence on dominating all state institutions and governmental departments, so threatening the rotation of authority at the country. Herein, emerged the campaign Rebel! led by some young revolutionaries, urging the citizens to sign a petition calling for early presidential election and expressing their withdrawal of confidence in President Mohamed Morsi. However, there is another reason that should prompt the Egyptian to speedily seek the ending of the MB rule of Egypt other than the Egyptian domestic affairs, that is the Syrian conflict. Since its eruption, Egyptian society has been supporting their Syrian brothers and sisters who revolted against Bashar al-Assad's regime with the aim of replacing it with a civil democratic government. However, no one considered meddling in the affairs of the Syrians and all Egyptian efforts were directed towards offering moral and financial support to the Syrian refugees to neighbouring countries as well as those flooding into Egypt. The utmost the Egyptians seek from their regime and from the other Arab rulers is to find a way to pressurise al-Assad's regime into ceasing military offensives on civilians and stepping down to accommodate rule by the revolutionary powers. Unfortunately, the uprising in Syria has been prolonged by having some foreign powers offering armed and political support to the Damascus regime at the cost of the revolutionaries. Just as the Islamists leapt in to rule in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, they started dominating the free army in Syria, so raising the concern of the Western countries, particularly in providing revolutionaries with weapons. Herein, the Syrian uprising started turning to a sectarian civil war, especially with the announced intervention of the Shi'ite Hizbollah party of Lebanon to offer support to the Damascus Alawite regime. Through its involvement in the Syrian conflict on the side of al-Assad's totalitarian regime, Hizbollah has turned from a pan-Arab movement resisting Israeli occupation into a sectarian war machine in eyes of most Arabs. The problem is that this involvement of the Lebanese Shi'ite Party in the Syrian conflict threatens the peace of Lebanon whose society suffers polarisation between different parties and sects. Similarly, having the Muslim Brotherhood and their Salafi supporters announce their siding with the revolutionary army on the basis of being Sunni party would also spill more oil on fire and make the Syrian civil war turn into a sectarian regional conflict between the Muslim Shia and Sunnis. One problem is that, under MB rule in Egypt, the Salafi Jihadists, which have a close relation with the al-Qaeda movement, dared to announce jihad on the Syrian Shi'ite regime and called upon young Muslims to join Sunni rebels in Syria to unseat al-Assad's regime. Apparently, this is the last thing the Arab revolutionaries wanted of their uprising against the totalitarian regimes. The only way to defuse this plot that would serve no one but Israel and the other enemies of the Arabs and Muslims is to have the civil revolutionary powers resume their struggle to restore rule of their countries and minimise the influence of the Islamist powers in our societies. Egypt has always been the centre of the Arab world and the most effective power in the region, so that any development in its political or economic system would reflect on the Arab states. Similarly, any setback in Egypt's political drive would weaken the entire Arab world. So the start should be from here if we are really serious about aborting a sectarian war in the Middle East.
