A failing revolution
As Egypt descended into violence this past week you can’t help but ask: What happened to the revolution? Surely the young men and women who toppled Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorial regime didn’t intend to replace him with the authoritarian regime of Mohammed Morsi.
The Egyptian army was deployed this week after rioting broke out in various Egyptian cities. Dozens have died in the violence. Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has warned that the confrontation between Islamists and the more liberal-minded, secular-oriented protesters “could lead to the collapse of the state.”
All this squeezes Morsi into a tight corner, of course. He has to suppress the riots, appease his own supporters and, at the extreme, avoid a civil war. Yet, Morsi can be faulted for having fostered the conditions that engender violence. He and his Muslim Brotherhood backers rammed through a pro-Islamist constitution with little regard for Egypt’s large secularized population, or much concern for women’s rights and religious minorities. Morsi’s recent attempt to give himself greater powers also did not go down well with many Egyptians.
Perhaps even more crucially, Morsi’s regime has done little to improve the economic prospects of Egypt’s young — 45 million are under 30 years old. Rising food prices and high unemployment were the dry tinder that sparked the Arab Spring. Yet, two years later, unemployment among those between 19 and 24 hovers at 41 per cent, while, according to one report, 86 per cent of Egyptian households don’t have enough income to cover monthly food and shelter costs. An explosion was almost inevitable.
Certainly, no one expected Morsi to turn Egypt around overnight. The problem, though, is that he’s been more concerned about ideology than the economy. He and his backers seem to want to ensure the Muslim Brotherhood’s dominance in order to remake Egypt as a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Revolutions tend to turn violent when they fail to deliver on their promises. But they also tend to breed totalitarianism because they demand the total identification of individuals with the state. There can be no dissent in a totalitarian state because that casts doubt on the new order’s legitimacy. This happened with the Russian and French Revolutions. For those who questioned the remaking of society into the revolutionary image, well, there was always the gulag or the guillotine.
Liberal political orders have generally avoided or overcome this totalitarian inclination because civil society — everything from churches and Rotary Clubs to Neighbourhood Watch and environmental groups — mediates the relationship between the state and the citizen. Civil society creates spaces between the state, the market and the family that allows people to exchange ideas and act to satisfy their political, social, psychological and spiritual needs. The state is not a “total” presence in citizens’ lives.
After decades of near-totalitarian rule, Egypt’s civil society is much weakened. Unfortunately, the Morsi regime appears bent on weakening it more.
How might the West respond? Tough-mindedly, using money as leverage. Morsi wants to borrow $5 billion from the International Monetary Fund, and seeks financial concessions from countries such as the United States and Germany. The West should grant loans only on condition that Morsi abandon the Islamist agenda, recast the constitution to foster civil society — guaranteeing religious freedom and rights for women is a good place to start — and find consensus with secularist advocates. The West should not prop up another would-be theocratic dictatorship.