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.
Morsi would be happy to oblige them: “It was for the sake of the Islamic sharia that men were…thrown into prison,” he recalled at a recent rally. “Their blood and existence rests on our shoulders now. We will work together to realize their dream of implementing sharia.” In an ugly hint of what might happen if he loses, Morsi’s supporters have pelted Shafiq with stones and shoes, and set fire to his campaign headquarters. Campaigning for Morsi, Muslim preacher Safwat Hegazy warned Egyptians: “If you choose a man who corrupted the country, you will be responsible with him for his corruption and will be held accountable with him [before God]. But if you choose a man who abides by the law of God and establishes justice, you will be rewarded with him. Everyone will be held accountable [by God] if the next president is ill-chosen, and we should not blame but ourselves.”
A Muslim cleric, Shaykh Usamah Qasim, was clearer about what this meant when he warned of violence if Islamic supremacists were denied power and Shafiq or anyone else but Morsi were elected president: “The fate of any of them who reaches the presidency will be like that of former President Anwar al-Sadat, who was assassinated.”
Egypt’s Coptic Christians are understandably worried. Yousef Sidhom, a Christian newspaper editor, said flatly: “There is a Brotherhood strategy to work toward building an Islamic country.” He said, according to the Associated Press, that Christians were concerned that “the Brotherhood will keep Christians out of some government positions, tax non-Muslims, base education around Islam and create a foreign policy that favors Muslim over non-Muslim nations.”
The Brotherhood and the Salafis may still get a chance to do this, despite the Egyptian high court’s Thursday action. The court may have just been trying to stave off the inevitable.
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