Why Egypt Will Not Revolt...by Jamil Shawwa

The Egyptians never revolted against their rulers. For thousands of years the Egyptians learned to cope with their rulers, to manage them, to make jokes about them, to play the system, to work around the system, and to get by without violence. The Egyptians, the masses, like to play the superhero, but in fact, they are not like that, they are hard working people but when they talk loud, it is just like that, loud, and only loud. The Egyptians in fact are among the most peaceful nations in the Middle East. The biggest example is the historic peace with Israel when their late president Sadat took the initiative and visited the State of Israel and broke or crossed what he accurately described as the psychological barrier between Israel and the Arabs. The Egyptians were behind him, in general, and since then all the Arabs have been trying to follow his footsteps. Egypt's role as the biggest Arab country, requires it to do things that the rest of the Arab countries feel relieved that they do not have to be the first to do or they do not have to pioneer, one of them that is coming is the painful transition that Egypt might be required to succumb to which is being the first Arab country that will actually experiment with the Muslim Brotherhood as the elected government with the military as the guardian of the secular society. Egypt has pioneered almost every field in the Arab countries, and if the trend continues, it will again be the first to introduce the inevitable, which is the participation of the group that the political system in Egypt and the Arab world have been fighting for almost ninety years. *The Egyptian scholar Murad Wahba, and he is just one of many but one of few that still talk freely, confirmed in an interview with Nile TV that Memri carried, what other people and I have mentioned before that the Muslim Brotherhood would win any free election in any Arab country, maybe with the exception of Lebanon that that has a Shia version of the Muslim Brotherhood but Iranian style, which is the militant style that you do not have in any other Arab country, but that is Lebanon. Lebanon  plays in the Shia/ Iranian/ Iraqi side of the business rather than the Egyptian side, which is dominated religiously by the Muslim Brotherhood. Recently, Egypt and Jordan held parliamentary elections and both countries one way or the other had “asked” or “made sure” or arrested or chased members of the biggest political group and most influential right now in the Arab countries, The Muslim Brotherhood.  In Egypt, there is right now a sense of despair across all classes and the atmosphere there ranges from very skeptic to very cautious or very weary of the Egyptian president Mubarak. He is 82 years and does not want to leave the chair. Mubarak may feel it is an insult to leave the presidency early, maybe early to him means as long as he is alive. I predicted before that Mubarak would not be president of Egypt beyond 2012, but who am I to say or decide, I am just predicting based on logic and as we all know logic and politics are not on good terms and never will be. Hosni, as the Egyptians like to call him, has the tact, the shrewdness and the thick skin that needed to govern Egypt. This situation anyway cannot last forever; there must be a new president for Egypt soon. The change in Egypt will not be violent no matter what, it is just against the nature of the Egyptian people and it never happened before in their history that the people just jumped or revolted and changed the political system. Change has always been either internally from within the ruling class or the military. The only way for the Muslim Brotherhood to govern will not be other than by winning an election.  The armed forces will not allow a revolution and the Muslim Brotherhood will not ignite one. The Brotherhood knows that violence means their end and the end of their claim to have legitimacy.  I personally do not have a problem with the Muslim Brotherhood ruling countries in the Middle East as long as the group embraces the secular society and civil liberties and the historic choice of having two viable states in the holy land, The State of Israel and the State of Palestine in the West Bank and the Gaza strip with Jerusalem as capital of both, an open and vibrant city for the three divine religions and the city of peace to the whole world. Jerusalem is the only city on earth that is revered among the three divine religions; no other city has such a majestic and divine status.  It is ok to have Islam as an inspiration to political parties; we have the same thing in Turkey, Israel, Europe and the United States where some political parties embrace the religion, Islam, Judaism or Christianity, as a general inspiration or for overall moral guidance.

*Check Facebook post 01/03/2010