With the Egyptian uprising entering its second week, secularist and Islamist parties are struggling to control it.
So far, the largely spontaneous movement has failed to create a leadership — either to fight the regime in the streets or to start negotiating transition terms.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist group, joined the uprising five days after its start. The main faction, led by “Supreme Guide” Muhammad Badi’e, hopes to use the uprising to obtain major concessions from the regime. Yesterday, it announced that it had held talks with Vice President Omar Suleiman but found the reforms the government proposed “insufficient.”
The Brotherhood also declared it wouldn’t contest the presidential election in September. It believes that the election of a Brotherhood candidate as president would isolate Egypt internationally and mean the loss of the $2 billion in aid that America sends Egypt each year.
The Brotherhood’s strategy — to contest the parliamentary elections and, if possible, win control of the parliament and the government — is called “the Turkish scenario,” after the success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. By shunning Islamist slogans and offering a “democratic” and “European” agenda, the AKP seduced 41 percent of the Turkish voters to win control of the government.
The Brotherhood, which belongs to the same ideological family as the AKP, hopes that once it has won control of the government it can use the tactic of infiadh (“permeation”) to fill the administration with “good Muslims” while purging it of secular elements. But the Brotherhood isn’t the only Islamist outfit in Egypt that is trying to reap what it has not sown.
Two other, more extremist, groups have also entered the race.
The first is the Gamaa al-Islamiyah (Islamic Society), which has ordered its militants to infiltrate the demonstrations to try to push them toward violence.
Last Friday, Gamaa called for invading the presidential palace in Cairo in the hope of forcing the army to react, thus producing a bloodbath. Only a few dozen people took part in the abortive attempt.
The second is Islamic Jihad, which released an ominous statement threatening “attacks on sensitive targets” to avenge “the martyrs.” The statement, issued by Tharwat Salah Shehata, an Islamic Jihad leader in exile in Tehran, reads: “We, in the Islamic Jihad, in solidarity with our Muslim brothers in Egypt, humbly pray to Allah Almighty to accept their dead as martyrs and heal their wounds. We wish we could be in the forefront of their ranks and share in their honor.”
Hours after Islamic Jihad issued its statement, on Friday Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei appeared at a mass prayer rally to describe the Egyptian uprising, as well as Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution,” as “part of our global Islamic movement.”
Khamenei insisted that this Islamist revolution targeted America and that regime change in Cairo would be “a bitter defeat for Washington.”
This was the first time in years that Khamenei appeared publicly at the weekly prayers. His presence was part of an attempt by the Khomeinist leadership to claim that Islam, not democracy, was the Middle East’s rising trend. Dozens of Islamic Jihad exiles in Iran were present at the ceremony, cheering Khamenei with cries of “There is No God but Allah!”
The Egyptian Brotherhood’s supreme guide promptly rejected Khamenei’s claim.
“This is not an Islamic uprising,” Badi’e said in a statement. “This is a popular uprising that belongs to all Egyptians.”
Fears that Islamic Jihad, backed by Tehran, might attack “sensitive targets” has led to increased security throughout Egypt.
The first terrorist attack on a “sensitive target” came hours after Khamenei’s speech, when the pipeline that supplies Egyptian natural gas to Israel via the Sinai desert was sabotaged in two locations. There was little damage, and the pipeline was back in operation on Saturday.
Injecting a dose of terrorism into what has been a largely peaceful movement might give the Egyptian regime an excuse to revert to what it knows best: massive repression.
Especially vulnerable to terrorist attacks are the Suez Canal and, alongside it, the Sumed oil pipeline, through which more than 3 million barrels of crude oil reaches world markets each day.
The canal itself has been put under army protection. However, some of the hundreds of small boats that ply the waterway represent a clear risk.
Egypt’s democracy movement is caught between the threat of violence and the promise of a negotiated transition.