Nope. But it's time to revise our assessments.
The deterioration of Egyptian politics has spurred an intense, often vitriolic polarization between Islamists and their rivals that has increasingly spilled over into analytical disputes. Some principled liberalswho once supported the Muslim Brotherhood against the Mubarak regime's repression have recanted. Longtime critics of the Islamists view themselves as vindicated and demand that Americans, including me, apologize for getting the Brotherhood wrong. As one prominent Egyptian blogger recently put it, "are you ready to apologize for at least 5 years of promoting the MB as fluffy Democrats to everyone? ARE YOU?"
So, should we apologize? Did we get the
Brotherhood wrong? Not really. The academic consensus about the Brotherhood got
most of the big things right about that organization ... at least as it existed
prior to the 2011 Egyptian revolution. U.S. analysists and academics correctly identified the major
strands in its ideological development and internal factional struggles, its
electoral prowess, its conflicts with al Qaeda and hard-line Salafis, and the
tension between its democratic ambitions and its illiberal aspirations. And
liberals who defended the Brotherhood against the Mubarak regime's torture and
repression were unquestionably right to do so -- indeed, I would regard
defending the human rights and political participation of a group with which
one disagrees as a litmus test for liberalism.
But getting the pre-2011 period right doesn't let us
off the hook for what has come since. How one felt about questions of the
Brotherhood's ability to be democratic in the past has nothing to do with the
urgency of holding it to those commitments today. Giving the group the chance to
participate fully in the democratic process does not mean giving it a pass on
bad behavior once it is in power -- or letting it off the hook for abuses of
pluralism, tolerance, or universal values.
That's why I would like to see Egypt's electoral process continue,
and for the Brotherhood to be punished at the ballot box for their manifest
failures.
So what did we say about the Brotherhood, and
what did they get wrong or right? I wouldn't presume to speak for a diverse
academic community that disagrees about many important things, but some broad
themes do emerge from a decade of literature. For one, most academics viewed
the Brotherhood of the 2000s as a democratic actor but not a liberal one. That's
an important distinction. By the late 2000s, the Brotherhood had a nearly two-decade
track record of participation in national, professional, and student elections.
It had developed an elaborate ideological justification for not just the
acceptability but the necessity of democratic procedure. When it lost
elections, such as in the professional associations, it peacefully surrendered
power (and, ironically given current debates, it was willing to boycott when it
saw the rules stacked against it). By 2007, it seemed to me that there was nothing more the
Brotherhood could have done to demonstrate its commitment to democratic
procedures in the absence of the actual opportunity to win elections and
govern. I think that was right.
And of course it had developed a well-honed electoral
machine ready for use whenever the opportunity presented itself. Nobody in the academic community doubted that
the Brotherhood would do well in the first wave of elections. Academics also
pegged public support for the Brotherhood at about 20 percent, not far off the
25 percent Mohammed Morsy managed in the first round of the presidential election. They
correctly identified the organizational advantages the Brotherhood would have
in early elections, which would allow them to significantly overperform that
baseline of support against new, less-organized opponents.
The Brotherhood's commitment to democratic procedures never
really translated into a commitment to democratic or liberal norms, however. It
always struggled with the obvious tension between its commitment to sharia (Islamic law) and its participation
in democratic elections. Not being able to win allowed the Brothers to avoid
confronting this yawning gap, even if they frequently found themselves enmeshed
in public controversies over their true intentions -- for instance, with the
release of a draft political party platform in 2007 that hinted at the creation
of a state committee to review legislation for compliance with sharia and a
rejection of a female or non-Muslim president. As for liberalism, nobody ever doubted the
obvious point that this was an Islamist movement with deeply socially
conservative values and priorities. The real question was over their
willingness to tolerate different points of view -- and there, deep skepticism
remained the rule across the academic community.
