The ex-regime liked to scare people on the prospects of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover. Soon we will know if the warning held water, writes Abdel-Moneim Said I believe it was the well-known political scientist Saadeddin Ibrahim who first referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as the "bogeyman" of the Mubarak regime. This regime, like other Arab regimes, included various alarmist arguments among their tactics for perpetuating their rule. "It's either us or foreign occupation," or "We [the regime] are the only bulwark against chaos," they would warn. The list of "bogeymen" was long, but the crudest and most frequent was the one that went that the alternative to the existing regime is the Muslim Brothers followed by a long line that led from Salafis through jihadists to Al-Qaeda, which is to say that whole panoply of groups and organisations with assorted religiously inspired names that claim a divine right to rule and to control the people in the name of Islam. There was also a long list of sobering examples to point to: Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, the experiments of the Taliban and similar groups that ruled by terror, usurped the rights of women, and crushed the rights of minorities, whether from within the Muslim fold or without. It was not long before Saadeddin Ibrahim's assessment gained widespread currency among liberal circles, not only in the Arab world, but in the US and Europe. An entire academic establishment, such as the US-based Carnegie Foundation, came to believe that the only barrier between Arab societies and democracy was a dictatorial regime that wielded the threat of political Islam, as embodied in the Muslim Brotherhood above all, as a means to remain in power. Study after study held that the movement was a moderate political force that was the victim of a systematic smear campaign and that, in all events, there was no solid evidence that it would come to power through free and fair elections in Arab societies in which there were liberal, socialist and secularist forces that would keep the Muslim Brotherhood within bounds. Then when a succession of revolutions ushered in the Arab Spring and ended the Arab exception to the universal rule, this was taken as proof of the diversity and plurality of Arab societies, for when these rose up and bared their souls, the bogeyman not only turned out to be not that scary at all; indeed, it even boarded the revolutionary train at the 11th hour. But the Arab Spring passed through summer and into fall and a season of free and fair elections. In Tunisia, the Nahda Party emerged from the polls with the lion's share of seats in the Constitutional Assembly and in Morocco, after elections were held without a revolution, the Justice and Development Party is now set to form a government. Then we came to Egypt, where the results of the first round of the elections fulfilled the prediction of the former regime, or at least the first half of that prediction which held that the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist organisations like it would be its heirs. The second half of the prediction held that these movements would be even more tyrannical and despotic than the former regime. Iran was most frequently used to illustrate the point. There, the revolution waged by liberals, communists and progressive Islamists against the Shah was hijacked by Khomeini and his fundamentalist cohorts (albeit of the Shia brand of Islamist extremism) who, after the expulsion of the Shah and victory, drew up a constitution for an Iranian theocracy. The Nahda Party's victory in Tunisia and the Justice and Development Party's victory in Morocco inspired considerable speculation as to whether they might emulate the Turkish experience of a moderate Islamism that adheres to the conditions and demands of a democratic state. But the Egyptian case has always been totally different. The Egyptian Muslim Brothers never concealed their distaste for the Turkish model, a sentiment that they expressed quite succinctly when Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Cairo recently and spoke of how Islam can flourish in a secular state. And if that was not explicit enough, on the way from the Arab Spring to autumn there were the "Kandahar" Fridays in which threats to their political allies were no less veiled than their threats to the government. Those Fridays were about resistance to consensus on a set of constitutional principles intended to preserve the civil nature of the state. The Muslim Brotherhood will accept no more than a set of "guidelines" while the jihadists and Salafis reject all notions of such principles out of hand, bent as they are on the application of Sharia law in its Taliban version. The first round of the Egyptian elections handed the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis combined more than 60 per cent of the vote. There is nothing to suggest that the next two rounds will produce anything different or that any surprises will alter the Islamist thrust from Casablanca to Cairo. No one can deny, of course, that this is the people's choice. However, the real question is whether the people will continue to have the power to choose or whether these elections were a singular historical event after which there will be no more choice. A lot has happened since the onset of the Arab Spring. Perhaps the most important question along the way was whether Arab youth could channel their "Facebook" energies and expertise from mobilising mass rallies and sit-ins in public squares into the broader fields and avenues of democracy in action. Unfortunately, when it came to the test, the Arab youth has shown that it still has a lot to learn about the difference between mass uprisings and revolution. The first can overthrow a regime, but it stops there. The second can overthrow a regime and move on to build the democracy to which it aspires. Now it appears that the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and, perhaps, in Libya, Syria, Yemen and other Arab countries, are on the brink of a test of a different nature. Their leaders will demonstrate by their actions whether they will help steer their countries towards the Turkish system or whether the Iranian system is inevitable. Most likely, Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen will insist that their movement seeks to forge a purely Egyptian model. In that event, the second half of the old prophesy will gain credence, for what is purely Egyptian is the 6,000 year-old legacy of deified -- or nearly deified -- autocracy, the most recent manifestation of which acquired the label "political Pharaonism". Most likely the innovation that the Muslim Brotherhood will introduce will be to remove the Pharaoh but keep the Pharaonism. Unless some miracle happens and it honours previous agreements and pledges. In this case, a civil state will remain a possibility when it comes time to draw up a constitution and prepare for the handover of power to a civil authority in June, as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has promised. In short, the "bogeyman" argument has yet to be truly laid to rest. But it looks like it won't be long now -- perhaps no more than a few months -- until we know the truth. At that point, the "bogeyman" will either prove bogus, for he will be steering the country towards true freedom and democracy, or he will live up to the direst predictions as he drags Egypt and the rest of the region towards a brutal and terrifying nightmare.
