Democracy in Egypt?Not if the Muslim Brotherhood Can Help It

Democracy in Egypt
Not if the Muslim Brotherhood Can Help It
February 10, 2011 Chuck Colson
In a recent column, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Timesproclaimed
that "today we are all Egyptians!" Well, hyperbole aside, it's easy to
be inspired, even carried away by the images coming from Cairo. And
images are all most Americans have to go by.
After all, who isn't for democracy? What well-meaning person wouldn't
prefer to see an autocrat and his family leave power?
Unfortunately, those aren't the only considerations. It's far from
certain that what follows the reign of soon-to-be ex-president Mubarak
will be democratic in any sense you or I would recognize.
As we have learned the hard way in places like Iraq and Afghanistan,
deposing a dictatorship is a lot easier than creating a democracy.
Places that have no tradition or experience of democratic rule often
wind up replacing one kind of despotism for another. Or, the brutal
order of tyranny is replaced with the tyranny of chaos and disorder.
While Egypt, thanks to its military, may not descend into Iraq-like
chaos and mass killings, it has no history of the kind of traditions we
associate with democracy--traditio ns that themselves spring from Western
Christendom and the Christian worldview.
Democracy is about more than elections: as Yale law professor Amy Chua
described in her bookWorld on Fire, elections in many countries are a
preface for oppression. The majority, finally getting a chance at
running things, decides that the first order of business is to persecute
and deprive a despised minority.
In Egypt, that despised minority are Coptic Christians. For the Copts,
whose ancestors debated the Trinity long before ours even heard of
Christ, discrimination and harassment are the best they can reasonably
expect from the Muslim majority.
The sad truth is that while Mubarak can't be called a "friend" of the
Copts, he at least tried to reign in his and their common enemy: the
Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is the original and still most
influential Islamist group in the world. Its progeny include al-Qaeda
and Hamas.
While the Brotherhood has participated in the electoral process, it's
with an eye to creating an Islamic republic at the center of the Arab
world. To call the Brotherhood a force for democracy is insane-and
dangerous.
In its vision of a society where the Qur'an is the "sole reference
point" for the ordering of family and social life, there is no room for
the Copts. The Brotherhood has been implicated in the burning of
churches, seminaries and Copt-owned businesses, as well as the murder of
Coptic Christians.
All of this makes talk about "democracy" in Egypt and "everyone being an
Egyptian" a bit premature. It's not at all clear whether Copts, whose
ancestors have lived there since time immemorial, would be recognized as
"Egyptians" in a new government.
This isn't to say Mubarak ought to be propped up. As Johns Hopkins'
Fouad Ajami put it, Mubarak is a pharaoh whose time is over.
The real question is, who and what will replace him? As Christians, we
ought to pray for peace in Egypt and for a transition to true
democracy-as difficult as that is, it's a transition that indeed,
requires divine intervention.
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/16379