KNOWING YOUR ALLIES:

Egypt's Islamists Will Rise Again (Reul Marc Gerecht - July 26, 2013, WSJ)

[I]t is highly doubtful that the Islamist critique of Egyptian society has been routed by marches that we now know were planned by the tamarrud (rebellion) movement and the military. The Westernization of the Egyptian poor has been in retreat for more than 40 years. The vast slums of Cairo--the broken-concrete-and-cracked-brick neighborhoods of low-rise apartments with open sewers, where only mosques and local clerics offer a sense of community and order--are hothouses for Islamism. [...]

Mr. Morsi obviously didn't handle his short term in office well. He alienated allies needlessly, including powerful fellow Islamists in the Nour Party. But many of Mr. Morsi's problems were either orchestrated or encouraged by the army, security services and the police (the sometimes fractious triad of the Mubarak-era police state) and by the secular business elite.

Many of Mr. Morsi's problems will now be confronted by the army-appointed government and any "democratically elected" administration that may follow. Saudi cash has been pouring into Cairo since the coup--the Saudi royal family fears the Brotherhood's populist Islamism--but the money won't last forever. An economic judgment day is coming, and it is by no means clear that the secular crowd will do any better than the Morsi government did.

They may well do much worse. Economic revitalization in Egypt won't happen unless the poor accept the pain that will come with shrinking the country's unsustainable subsidies and state-owned enterprises. Buying in now, after the coup, will be much more difficult for those who support Islamist causes.

It also isn't clear that the secular crowd is economically more adept than the Muslim faithful. Socialism has been a hard-to-kick drug for Egypt's legions of nominally college-educated youth, who came of age expecting government jobs. Capitalism has probably got firmer roots among devout Muslims, where Islamic law teaches a certain respect for private property.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 27, 2013 11:23 AM
Tweet   

Follow @brothersjudd