I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the differences, not just the similarities, between 1979 Iran and 2011 Egypt. The fear, of course, that connects the two is that Islamic Radicals will come to power in Egypt just as they did in Iran. Charles Krauthammer said it very well recently; essentially that we fear that democracy will be short lived, that it will be “one man, one vote, one time.” Fundamentalists will be elected and a dark age of religious oppression will follow.
In 1979, America had a friend in the Shah, Â but we were fairly sure that the alternatives would not be good. Popular uprisings were not democratic movements, but tended to be socialist or communist ones. At the height of the Cold War, many in the West felt more comfortable with Islamists than with “socialists.” Any socialist or communist government was going to become a friend of the Soviets. Who knew with whom the Muslims would ally? Probably not the anti-religious oppressive USSR!
The US helped the Mujahadeen against the USSR in Afghanistan because America felt that the Muslim radicals would at least be neutral.
The fall of the USSR changed the dynamic. Even socialist protesters these days are not necessarily going to be allied with Russia. Venezuela maybe. Russia? China? Not necessarily. And there is a possibility of actual secular democratic movements gaining a foothold today even though they face a difficult road. Islamists are stronger, but they are still no friends of China or Russia. In fact, both China and Russia face Islamic terrorism within their borders.
Today’s dynamic is one in which there is hope for secular democratic movements to gain strength, perhaps even to create democratic states, but it would be very naive to think that they are dominant political players in most nations in the Middle East. The primary dynamic is one between two forms of government opposed by America. The first is form are nationalist governments. Largely fascist, nationalist movements have installed dictatorships in most of the nations in the Middle East. Elections in those countries tend to be among groups loyal to the regime and the leader of the dominant party may even run unopposed or nearly so. The second form of government are Islamic theocracies. These governments are also fascist, opposed to liberal reforms and other Western values.
Supporters of Western style democracy are in a tiny minority in most nations in the Middle East and have even less power than their numbers might indicate.
Too often the media tends to represent one side as evil with the assumption that the alternative must be better, even good. The reality is that in the Middle East, oppressive dictatorships are often opposed by even more oppressive and even dangerously so, theocratic movements. The Muslim Brotherhood is such an alternative for Egypt. Filled with hatred of the West, not only of its political influence, but of its values, the MB coming to power in Egypt would not make the nation more free, but instead simply install a new kind of oppression and fear.
This is a case of pick your poison. What needs to happen, and the Muslim Brotherhood will oppose this with all it is worth, is that secular democratic reformers need to work with the nationalists to end their fascism and to create a moderate secular democracy. Any alternative other than that is going to result in tyranny of one sort or another.