Or as Raymond Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American Coptic writer, puts it: “Definitely, he’s hiding. He was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. If you are a leader or member of this organization, its logo is that the ‘Koran is our constitution.’ Whatever comes out of his mouth otherwise, you can’t be a Muslim Brotherhood leader and not want Shariah law.”
All of that is not lost on the U.S. Congress, which is considering a bill to give Egypt $450 million in emergency aid — even as the Egyptian government clearly sides with Hamas in its current conflict with Israel. Egypt recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv, and Morsi castigated Israel for what he called “wanton aggression on the Gaza Strip.” Neither he nor any other Egyptian official offered even glancing acknowledgment of the scores of rockets Hamas fired into Israel, igniting the current crisis, though on Sunday, Egypt was said to be involved in trying to broker a cease-fire.
For that and other reasons, the House, particularly, is rife with skepticism.
“We don’t know yet what this new government really is,” a senior House aide, clearly perplexed, said in an interview. “What we’ve seen so far is really mixed.”
Or as Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), put it: “This proposal comes to Congress at a point when the U.S.-Egypt relationship has never been under more scrutiny.” She’s chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid, and added, “I cannot support it at this time.”
Writing in the Washington Times last summer, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, noted that “Congress heard disturbing accounts last week of escalating abductions, coerced conversions and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls. These women are being terrorized and, consequently marginalized in the formation of the new Egypt.” He added that abductions have increased in recent months, “while recovery of women and girls has decreased.”
For decades, Egypt has been the United States’ staunchest ally in the Arab world — the first Arab country to make peace with Israel and home to an intelligence service that Washington officials depended on for reliable information about the region.
For more than 30 years, as a result of the Camp David agreement in 1979, the U.S. has given Egypt up to $2 billion in aid each year. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited the White House almost every year, until his overthrow in 2011. And the United States shared his fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Al Qaeda was more or less born in the Muslim Brotherhood.
Now, after Morsi’s election last June, Washington doesn’t know what to make of the new Egypt. That’s not surprising, since many Egyptians are uncertain, too. But many Egypt experts believe the Obama administration’s behavior toward the Morsi government is hopelessly naïve.
In Washington, “the theory seems to be that with kind gestures and intensified interactions, the Brotherhood will come around to see that its relationship with the U.S. is beneficial and will drop some of its hardline ideology,” said Eric Trager, Egypt specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But that has already been disproved — particularly after the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” in September. “Morsi didn’t even comment on it” until 24 hours afterward, when he posted a note about the attack on his Facebook page.
Later, Morsi offered an elliptic explanation for his inaction. “We took our time” to avoid an angry backlash, he said, apparently because he anticipated a bad reaction if he openly helped the Americans. His comment seemed to reassure no one.
All of this is from a man who is also an avowed Sept. 11 conspiracy theorist — one of those who believes the United States faked the attack to win sympathy and provide an excuse to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. Morsi doesn’t talk about that anymore. But in a 2010 appearance at the Bookings Institution in Washington, Morsi is quoted as saying: “When you come and tell me that plane hit the tower like a knife in butter, you are insulting us. How could the plane cut through steel like this? Something must have happened from the inside.”
If Morsi believes the United States is capable of such evil duplicity, why would he turn around and change his views at Washington’s request?
Just after the Muslim Brotherhood renounced its pledge last spring not to put up a presidential candidate, its first nominee was Khairat al-Shater. Last year, before he knew he’d be a candidate for high office, he gave a speech in Alexandria in which he disparaged the whole idea of Western democracy and its social conventions, including the concept of elections, calling them the enemy of Islam. Voting for your leader, he said, is un-Islamic. He was disqualified last spring because of a criminal conviction for money laundering, and Morsi, who was chairman of the Brotherhood’s political party, took his place.
Last month, the United Arab Emirates foreign minister, panicking about the Muslim Brotherhood’s growing clout, warned that the organization “does not believe in the nation state. It does not believe in the sovereignty of the state.”
So why, then, did Morsi run for office — contradicting the Brotherhood’s basic tenets?
“He thinks of elections and democracy as means toward an end,” Ibrahim said. “The concept of voting itself is considered for infidels only. But if it’s a mean to get you closer to Shariah law, then that’s okay. They see it as one man, one vote — one time.”
Trager agreed, saying, “in the short term, the Muslim Brotherhood is going to seem flexible and use the tools of democracy.” And to that end, the Brotherhood “is quickly distributing its members across the institutions of government — appointing ministers, governors, presidential advisers.
“But their long-term aims and agenda have not changed.”
For example, Morsi came to office promising to repair the nation’s ailing economy — the first demand of most Egyptians. In August, he asked the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan, but since the IMF asked for a plan to overhaul the economy — a requirement for an IMF loan — Egypt has declined to respond, so far. That leaves analysts wondering whether the Morsi government is unwilling to take out a loan because paying interest violates Islamic law.
Financial assistance from Washington is hung up indefinitely. And Egypt’s economy is a wreck. Egyptian doctors went on strike last month, complaining about rundown facilities and meager wages. Doctors in public hospitals make $46 a month, on average.
Soon after taking office, Morsi dispatched hundreds of Brotherhood youths to collect the garbage, fix traffic problems, hand out food and gasoline, provide public security and solve as many of society’s problems as they could.
“They thought that would be enough; they could circumvent the government,” the Brotherhood’s larger plan for governance, Trager said. “But it didn’t work.”
The government transition “isn’t going to be smooth,” Helen Clark, administrator of the United Nations Development Program, said in an interview. “You can’t remake a society in the image of the West. But if Egypt could invest in its young people, that could bring great dividends.” The median age of Egyptians is 24.
“If you don’t create opportunities for the young, you won’t move forward.”
So far, the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t seem to be providing opportunities for anyone but its own members. And as al-Shater put it in that speech last year, after Egypt adopted a Western education system, courts and a capitalist economy, “the various aspects of our lives are no longer based on Islam. Every aspect of life is to be Islamized.”
Abu-Zeid said she voted for Morsi precisely because she knew he would likely fail as president. The Muslim Brotherhood has no experience with national economic issues.
“I gladly voted for Morsi,” she said, “because I figured, once confronted with political and economic issues they would get exposed.”
That’s happening now, Trager said. “It’s becoming a very theocratic state,” and yet, “American engagement is continuing without any acceptance that things are heading in a bad direction.
“You talk to U.S. officials, and they make excuses for Morsi. It’s frightening.”
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Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. © 2012 POLITICO LLC