The uprising has also put the role played by the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist groups in Egyptian politics in perspective. It now emerges that the threat of an Islamist overtake of power has been magnified on purpose, both inside the country and outside it. During the last few years, I often wondered why the state media often gave an enormous amount of space to fundamentalist elements to air their views when the official line was that the government was fighting their influence. The reason why this was happening is only beginning to emerge. Because a regime can only define itself by its enemies, so the Islamists in general served the purpose of scaring not only the Coptic population, but ordinary Muslim Egyptians who would loathe to see a theocracy in place, while at the same time scaring the west into aligning their forces behind the regime.
The events of the last two weeks have exposed the Brotherhood for what it really is: a self-serving, opportunistic faction. They did not join the protests right away, but dragged their feet later after they realised the enormity of the event. They probably feared they would be left out in the cold. When the newly appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman extended his invitation to some opposition groups including the Muslim … >>>
