 "The Muslim Brotherhood")
DISPATCHES FROM THE ARAB SPRING: UNDERSTANDING THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
Edited by Paul Amar and Vijay Prashad
Publisher: Leftword Books,
Pages: 415
Price: Rs 550
Author: Carrie Rosefsky Wickham
Publisher: Princeton Press
Pages: 360
Price: Rs 1,887
Was it a coup? Some call it an "atypical" coup. Anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters who backed Egyptian military's intervention to remove elected President Mohamed Morsi from power on July 3 term it a "recolution" (a mix of revolution and a coup). Ask John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and he will say the "military did not take over".
Call it a coup or some other term, but what happened in Egypt is that it has slipped under another military regime, at least for now. But the roots of the present crisis go back to the Brotherhood's government days. When the Freedom and Justice Party - the political wing of the Brothers - mistook its electoral victories for a mandate for Islamising Egypt even as the economic worries of the country remained unaddressed, it set the stage for the second phase of mass uprisings in the country.
Carrie Rosefsky Wickham might have thought about the possibility such a full-blown crisis in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country, when she wrote the book, The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement, in 2012. In the book, Wickham, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, the US, warned the brotherhood of similar dangers. She lists out the challenges and dilemmas a Brotherhood government would face in Egypt. "What does it strive to be? A missionary organisation that seeks to remake society in its own image, or a group content to be one voice among many, on an equal footing, that respects the rights of individuals who do not share its vision to answer to their own conscience?" she asks.
While writing about Morsi's June 2012 election victory, Wickham warned Islamists of facing "growing pressure to define the extent of its support for free political, intellectual and artistic expression, as well as its willingness to allow citizens to make their own choices with respect to styles of dress, leisure activities, gender relations, and sexual orientation". They faced these tests, but failed miserably. Instead of addressing the challenges before his administration, Morsi attempted to grant himself immense power through a presidential decree that triggered huge protests in Cairo. Despite mounting opposition, he hurriedly got the new Constitution draft approved by the Constituent Assembly, from which most non-Islamist members had already resigned, citing the Brotherhood's sectarian plans. On the foreign policy front, too, Morsi offered no alternative, while the economy was free falling during his stint. This set the stage for the anti-Brotherhood rebellion.
The public anger against the Brotherhood turned into mass demonstrations in late June, offering a perfect pretext to General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief, to step in. Sisi removed Morsi from power and set up a provisional government headed by Adly Mansour, the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court of the country. The Brothers resisted, but the Egyptian army, known for its brutal methods in dealing with opposition, unleashed a wave of repression against the Brothers in which at least 850 people have been killed so far.
When the dictators fell in Tunisia and Egypt in the wake of mass protests in late 2010 and early 2011, respectively, many liberal historians were hopeful that the "Arab Spring" would usher in a new era in region long regarded as "culturally unfit" for democratic changes. But the Spring did not last long. And the Egyptian crisis is a continuation of what's now called the "Arab Winter".
What went wrong? Given the complexities and contradicting patterns of these uprisings, one cannot expect quick answers. But there were scholars who foresaw and warned of an early "Arab Winter". Paul Amar and Vijay Prashad were among the lot. Dispatches From the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East, the book edited by the duo, tells us what the Arab Spring was and how the "expectations of the renaissance withered" in the wake of foreign intervention in Bahrain and Libya, "irresistible repression in Syria and the Israeli bombardment of Gaza". In Tunisia and Egypt where the regimes were toppled, the Islamist parties that came to power doused hopes of radical changes.
"The appeal of Egypt's January 25, 2011 revolution - for social justice, a civil state, gender parity, economic equalisation, the end of police brutality and security forces' impunity, the strengthening of worker and welfare rights, and the establishment of a newly independent foreign policy - has been described by many as a 'third way' between Islamic conservativism and military secular authoritarianism," writes Amar, an associate professor at the University of California, in his chapter on Egypt. Was the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Morsi able to walk this third way? Even a quick look at the one year Morsi was in power tells us his government was closely tied to the ideology of the Brotherhood. In this chapter written well before the recent dramatic developments in Egypt, Amar says "military authoritarians and the Brotherhood were not distinct regimes vying with each other to provide alternative futures".
While Wickham traces with academic vigour the history, ideology and internal dynamics of the Brotherhood, which is one of the widely debated topics of our times, the book by Amar and Prashad offers a comprehensive historical perspective on the Arab Spring and the crisis it was going through. Wickham sees progressive changes taking place within Islamist movements in the region, but argues these changes are not organised in a linear order. Such movements have both conservative and progressive elements, where one could gain prominence over the other any time given the socio political conditions the movement goes through. If one applies her logic to the present-day Brotherhood, it's not difficult to foresee that the Egyptian army's repressive tactics would only strengthen the hardline elements within the movement. On the other side, Amar and Prashad identify external intervention in the protest-hit Arab countries as a key threat to the forward motion of the Spring itself. At a time when the Western countries are preparing for another war, this time on Syria, the warnings of Amar and Prashad need to be taken seriously.
It's a grim picture. In Tunisia, the secular-Left opposition is being violently targeted; in Egypt, people are stuck between Brotherhood's sectarianism and the military's authoritarianism; Syria is under war clouds and Libya is in chaos. Is this the end of the story? Probably not. What the last two years of Egypt's history tells us is that anything can be changed abruptly in today's Arab societies. Islamists are not the only forces in the Arab Spring. As Dispatches… tells us, "new mobilisations, solidarities, resistances, revived histories and state transforming process" have also emerged. These factors promise the spirits and structures of the Arab Spring would continue to animate revolt and revolution". One can remain hopeful.
