In FrontPage this morning I discuss the implications of the Egyptian high court’s dissolving of Parliament:
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday
that one-third of the parliamentarians had been elected illegitimately;
as a result, “the makeup of the entire chamber is illegal and,
consequently, it does not legally stand.” The court dissolved the
parliament entirely, dealing a major blow to the pro-Sharia forces in
Egypt that had dominated it since elections last November.Will the court’s action be enough to prevent Egypt from becoming an
Islamic state? For that, it may be too late. Many see the upcoming
runoff presidential election between Muslim Brotherhood candidate
Mohammed Morsi and secularist Ahmed Shafiq, a longtime friend and
associate of Hosni Mubarak, as the great showdown that will determine
whether Egypt will embrace Sharia and become an Islamic state, or
whether it will continue on the relatively secular path it has been on
for decades. But in reality, even if Shafiq is elected, it is unlikely
that the Islamization of Egypt is going to be stymied in any significant
way.The transformation of Egypt from a Western-oriented state to one
dominated by Islamic law has been proceeding for decades. The Muslim
Brotherhood’s societal and cultural influence has long outstripped its
direct political reach, and shows no sign of abating. One highly visible
example of this influence is the fact that while in the 1960s women
wearing hijabs were rare on the streets of Cairo, now it is rare to see a
woman not wearing one.Meanwhile, since the presidency of Gamel Abdel Nasser (1956-1970),
the Egyptian government has practiced steam control with the
Brotherhood, looking the other way as the group terrorized Coptic
Christians and enforced Islamic strictures upon the Egyptian populace,
but cracking down when the Brotherhood showed signs of growing powerful
enough actually to seize power. Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat
(1970-1981) not only released all the Brotherhood political prisoners
who had been languishing in Egyptian prisons, but also promised the
Brotherhood that Sharia would be fully implemented in Egypt.Sadat didn’t live long enough to fulfill that promise; he was
murdered by members of another Islamic supremacist group that was
enraged by his peace treaty with Israel. Sadat’s successor Hosni Mubarak
didn’t keep that promise to the Brotherhood either, and so it remains
unfulfilled to this day, and the Muslim Brothers still want to see
Sharia in Egypt.So do most Egyptians. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in Spring 2010,
before the Arab Spring and the toppling of Mubarak, found that no fewer
than eighty-five percent of Egyptians thought that Islam was a positive
influence in politics. Fifty-nine percent said they identified with
“Islamic fundamentalists” in their struggle against “groups who want to
modernize the country,” who had the support of only twenty-seven percent
of Egyptians. Only twenty percent were “very concerned” about “Islamic
extremism” within Egypt.Another survey in May 2012
found little difference. 61 percent of Egyptians stated that they
wanted to see Egypt abandon its peace treaty with Israel, and the same
number identified the hardline Islamic kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the
country that should serve as Egypt’s model for the role Islam should
play in government. 60 percent said that Egypt’s laws should hew closely
to the directives of the Qur’an.