From the mouth of Mubarak to the Muslim Brotherhood

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood borrows the language of Mubarak and his National Party to the T, they don’t change a word. They alone know what is in the best interests of the Egyptians and whoever opposes them is either “a remnant of the old regime,” or “an ignoramus.” These are the words they use to describe the swathes of Egyptians who happen to lie outside their circle. Their paternalistic tendencies are Mubarakesque in nature, Sadatesque, even. The believer-president, the family man, the moral code of the village- this dominates their discourse. It’s a discourse which centers around one objective: Give the president absolute power and trust that he will use it in the best interests of his “big family.” This not only disregards the rules of the democratic game, but the new laws of governance, circulation of power, constitutional principles, the foundations of the social contract and the values of the glorious January revolution. Their rivals are secularists, liberals, leftists and pan-Arabists. From this Takfirist platform fatwas are issued, if not directly from the Brotherhood then by their allies Egypt’s Salafists (who are ready to issue fatwas every which way). Therefore, opposing Morsi is forbidden and demonstrating against him is a sin against God. Never mind the flood of trite fatwas against women, minorities and the constitution issued by the Brothers’ allies that elicit no response from the former, their silence a kind of acceptance or agreement. Underestimating the street and failing to see the signs of concern and revolt on faces and in mouths are no longer characteristics exclusive to the overthrown regime. Here are his Brotherhood successors behaving similarly. ‘There is nothing going on in Egypt,’ they claim. Demonstrators are only a handful of opportunists, Mubarak loyalists, people with criminal records and criminals. Demonstrators receive funding from abroad to protest. Did the mouthpieces of the ousted president not say these things? Are the Muslim Brothers themselves not faced with similar accusations everywhere? Then why do they insist, as soon as they rise to power, on resorting to the discourse of their predecessors, borrowing their language and using their vocabulary? Pride, pig-headedness and turning a blind eye to opposing and dissenting voices were all characteristics of the old regime, especially in its Sadatist and Mubarkist eras, and they are today encompassing the Brotherhood’s regime, whose spokespeople appear before the masses gathered in Tahrir Square expressing insistence on the constitutional declaration and the absence of an intention to roll it back or reach a settlement with the various opposition factions. They see no factions to begin with; they see nothing but their own faces and hear nothing but their own voices. The vocabulary that was amassed in the pre-Arab Spring regimes’ dictionary, which we had thought was now gone and forgotten, is being reintroduced by the Muslim Brotherhood. All the pre-prepared and neatly-packaged accusations which were often levied by the Mubarak regime against the press, the judiciary, opposition parties, civil society, the intelligentsia and artists, are again being hurled by the Muslim Brotherhood at the same targets. Only now in more violent terms, tinged with charges of treason and even apostasy. If the Brotherhood think they can ride on the revolutionary steed to reproduce the old regime with new names and figures, they are riding down a one-way street. They have controlled the media and accepted a constituent assembly that includes no other group except the Salafists. They have formulated Egypt’s new constitution singlehandedly. They have bullied the judiciary and are seeking to hijack it. So after less than five months in power they are showing an even larger appetite for despotism and domination than their predecessors displayed. What Egyptian will trust the Brotherhood after today, other than the Brothers themselves and some of their Salafist allies? Who will trust the Brotherhood in the Arab and Muslim spheres? Who will believe that the Brotherhood speaks and promises honestly? A pattern has emerged during this last year of experiment in Egypt, a pattern record of broken promises, actions that contradict words. Is not a fact that the president is himself one of the most outstanding pieces of evidence for their broken promises and faithless pledges? They said they would not take part in the presidential election and did. They said they would not dominate and they did. They spoke of a civil-democratic state, and here we are before a Salafist-Brotherhood alliance that sees nothing beyond the horizon of the religious state. What they did in such a brief time period qualifies them to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. Powe, and nothing else, is the Brotherhood’s alpha and its omega, even if the path leading to it passes through the revival of Camp David and great-friend-Peres and secret articles in the lull on the Gaza front. Power is the object and the end game, even if it arrives riding on the back of a NATO tank. Power is the first and last dream of the Brotherhood. They have no problem with attacking the allies of yesterday or joining hands with their assorted rivals. The time has come after the Brotherhood’s months in power to raise our voices in preservation of the Arab revolution and the Arab democratic project if we do not want our democracies to come to the same end as those that came before us in Germany and Italy in the 1930s. The rest is history. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.