Over two and a half years after the Egyptian revolution, it doesn't feel like it worked out fine. So much so that a large portion of the population felt the need for another revolution, another phase of the revolution, a coup, or whatever you want to call what happened on June 30th. There are many reasons that the revolution of January 25th 2011 backfired so badly. But the main reasons are surprisingly self-evident and shockingly simple.
Reason number one is Islamism. Political Islamists introduced straw man arguments right after the revolution to turn the transitional phase into a murky insincere identity struggle. The level of genuineness in the Islamists constant obsession with "Shariia" and the "Caliphate" varies significantly. The MB, for example, fully believes that elections give it the right to reshape the identity and culture of the entire population of the country into the image they desire. This belief that the MB are masters of the country, and its crème de la crème was constantly hinted at by MB politicians in talk shows when the pressure increased. So in order to reach electoral hegemony, through which the MB would supposedly turn everyone into cultural and social drones, the MB had to resort to Sharia and Islam. An outside observer of Egypt in 2011/2012, and even now after the removal of Morsi, would imagine that Islam is a declining religion in Egypt, constantly under threat and persecution. Islam, of course, never stopped being a dominant and domineering religion in Egypt; affecting every aspect of life.
Which brings us to the Salafists. These guys, in fact, did believe that there was an identity crisis in Egypt. They did believe that Islam was beleaguered and persecuted. The reason is that Salafists consider only Islamists to be true Muslims. This is how Morsi became known as the "Muslim president" among Islamists even though all the leaders of Egypt since the Arab expansion have been Muslim. Salafists actually believe that medieval values and norms have to be restored and that Egypt should be recreated in the image of seventh century western Arabia.
Thus, thanks to the MB and Salafists, the transitional phase was entirely consumed in inane discussions. As a very simple example, instead of discussing whether the constitution should specify a parliamentary or presidential system for Egypt, we spent months fighting to prevent and amendment by Salafists to make child rape constitutional. And we failed. The Salafists got to amend the constitution so that sixty year old men could potentially rape seven year old girls, and we don't know whether the constitution was presidential or mixed.
I don't think it's still an open question that without Islamists, Egypt's transition would have been much smoother, much more productive, and more smooth. But Islamists are not the only reasons the revolution failed. Heightened expectations also played a role.
Right after the January revolution people had such high hopes for the country. These hopes were almost entirely unfounded. The expectations were based on two assumptions: *Mubarak stole Egypt's riches, *Mubarak suppressed superior talent for fear they would threaten his rule. Both assumptions turned out to be patently false. Whether Mubarak stole or not, Egypt turned out to be as poor and resource lacking as he always warned. Egypt's most superior talent pool seemed to revolve around the pool from which Mubarak picked his cabinets. As the parliament and the cabinet of Hisham Qandil showed, instead of suppressed talent, Egypt has a surplus of people with inflated qualifications and little worth. But again, this was not enough to fail the revolution.
The last piece of the puzzle that completed the image of failure is the constant insistence on deconstruction. The January revolution was a revolution against what Egyptians perceived they did not want, not a revolution for what they knew they wanted. The revolutionary youth, with a near constant presence in media, synthesized a narrative where Egypt's number one priority was excising the regime ancien from all aspects of public life. The narrative was based on antiquated notions of revolutionary justice and legitimacy that have been out of vogue since the Bolshevik revolution. The result was possibly one of the most ham-handed and unjust group excisions of modern times. Through constitutional, legal, media, and even public action the revolutionaries managed to effectively dissociate Egypt from a large group of technocrats who had always been essential to the state and who could provide an effective counterbalance to Islamists. Islamists, of course, seized the opportunity, expanding the definition of regime ancien at first to every and any technocrat who did not agree with them and then to every politician who did not belong to an Islamist party. Thus signaling the failure of both the revolution and the MB's regime.
June 30th was a natural reaction.
Reason number one is Islamism. Political Islamists introduced straw man arguments right after the revolution to turn the transitional phase into a murky insincere identity struggle. The level of genuineness in the Islamists constant obsession with "Shariia" and the "Caliphate" varies significantly. The MB, for example, fully believes that elections give it the right to reshape the identity and culture of the entire population of the country into the image they desire. This belief that the MB are masters of the country, and its crème de la crème was constantly hinted at by MB politicians in talk shows when the pressure increased. So in order to reach electoral hegemony, through which the MB would supposedly turn everyone into cultural and social drones, the MB had to resort to Sharia and Islam. An outside observer of Egypt in 2011/2012, and even now after the removal of Morsi, would imagine that Islam is a declining religion in Egypt, constantly under threat and persecution. Islam, of course, never stopped being a dominant and domineering religion in Egypt; affecting every aspect of life.
Which brings us to the Salafists. These guys, in fact, did believe that there was an identity crisis in Egypt. They did believe that Islam was beleaguered and persecuted. The reason is that Salafists consider only Islamists to be true Muslims. This is how Morsi became known as the "Muslim president" among Islamists even though all the leaders of Egypt since the Arab expansion have been Muslim. Salafists actually believe that medieval values and norms have to be restored and that Egypt should be recreated in the image of seventh century western Arabia.
Thus, thanks to the MB and Salafists, the transitional phase was entirely consumed in inane discussions. As a very simple example, instead of discussing whether the constitution should specify a parliamentary or presidential system for Egypt, we spent months fighting to prevent and amendment by Salafists to make child rape constitutional. And we failed. The Salafists got to amend the constitution so that sixty year old men could potentially rape seven year old girls, and we don't know whether the constitution was presidential or mixed.
I don't think it's still an open question that without Islamists, Egypt's transition would have been much smoother, much more productive, and more smooth. But Islamists are not the only reasons the revolution failed. Heightened expectations also played a role.
Right after the January revolution people had such high hopes for the country. These hopes were almost entirely unfounded. The expectations were based on two assumptions: *Mubarak stole Egypt's riches, *Mubarak suppressed superior talent for fear they would threaten his rule. Both assumptions turned out to be patently false. Whether Mubarak stole or not, Egypt turned out to be as poor and resource lacking as he always warned. Egypt's most superior talent pool seemed to revolve around the pool from which Mubarak picked his cabinets. As the parliament and the cabinet of Hisham Qandil showed, instead of suppressed talent, Egypt has a surplus of people with inflated qualifications and little worth. But again, this was not enough to fail the revolution.
The last piece of the puzzle that completed the image of failure is the constant insistence on deconstruction. The January revolution was a revolution against what Egyptians perceived they did not want, not a revolution for what they knew they wanted. The revolutionary youth, with a near constant presence in media, synthesized a narrative where Egypt's number one priority was excising the regime ancien from all aspects of public life. The narrative was based on antiquated notions of revolutionary justice and legitimacy that have been out of vogue since the Bolshevik revolution. The result was possibly one of the most ham-handed and unjust group excisions of modern times. Through constitutional, legal, media, and even public action the revolutionaries managed to effectively dissociate Egypt from a large group of technocrats who had always been essential to the state and who could provide an effective counterbalance to Islamists. Islamists, of course, seized the opportunity, expanding the definition of regime ancien at first to every and any technocrat who did not agree with them and then to every politician who did not belong to an Islamist party. Thus signaling the failure of both the revolution and the MB's regime.
June 30th was a natural reaction.
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