never had a revolution.
‘I’ve been dealing with Egypt for a long time. Morsi has proven to be smarter than most of us thought,’ said one of Israel’s top Defence Ministry officials while the Ikhwan were in power. I asked him if Israel thought the Brotherhood had finally tamed the Egypt army. ‘Yes, he has Sisi and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces under his foot. What [Turkey’s] Erdogan only dared after five years, he has done it in six weeks. He deserves a medal.’ His last remark was dripping with sarcasm.
I put the same question to General Abdel Moneim Kato. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said indignantly.
On the contrary, Sisi’s loyalty is to Egypt and its army. In all his statements he always declares that the armed forces side with no one but the army. Therefore, all of the ongoing attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the army will not succeed. Tantawi took a decision for the sake of Egypt. He could have said you do not have this authority and then a coup d’état would have taken place.
Professor Olivier Roy told me in early 2013:
The Muslim Brotherhood is not a revolutionary movement, it is not an ideological movement. And the army is not ideologically minded, the army is not secularised and it is not democratic. The army, at least the new generation of its officers, know it is in their best interests to stay in the background. Then they can keep their economic power, they can keep their autonomy and they are in a position to negotiate with all the other political forces if they have a problem with the Brotherhood. I don’t see the army at all resenting the Brotherhood coming into power because Morsi, at least, has given to the army a lot of assurances and guarantees. So the attempts by the Saudis and the people in the Gulf to get rid of the Brotherhood by supporting the army are doomed to fail.
The long war between the Brotherhood and the army is over. It is over because a much more powerful foe has finally set foot in the arena, in the shape of the Egyptian people. These two old institutions will no longer be able to fight between themselves over the destiny of Egypt, because the Egyptians now have the deciding say in the matter.
‘No one can now oppress the Egyptian people any more.’ That, says Abdul-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, is the greatest legacy of the revolution. ‘They have taken back their country and broken the barrier of fear. Egyptians are now free, and when angry they can take to the streets to express themselves. I believe the Egyptian people will never go back to their couches to watch from a distance.’
The Muslim Brotherhood expected to be able to run the country the way it ran the Ikhwan; it wasn’t used to having to justify its decisions to anyone. Its imperious style, once it held the levers of power, began to infuriate people. As the second anniversary of the uprising approached, Egypt’s President Morsi tried to explain all the missteps by saying of the new democratic process: ‘It’s a first experiment, it’s a first experience for us in our history. So what do you expect? Things to go very smooth? No. It has to be rough, at least. Not violent, but rough. So, we have enough patience.’ 34 That patience had begun to run out for everyone else as soon as the Brotherhood’s new MPs started taking their oaths of office.
The question everyone in Egypt was asking, even though Morsi officially resigned from the movement when he was elected, was, did the new president govern for the benefit of the Brotherhood or the country? I asked the senior Brotherhood leader Mahmoud Ghozlan, in February 2013, how the relationship between the president and his old comrades in the Ikhwan was working. He told me:
The ideas and principles of the Muslim Brotherhood are part of who he is, but from the organisational point of view he has nothing to do with the Ikhwan, or the Freedom and Justice Party. However, I can say a person can leave his position but can
‘I’ve been dealing with Egypt for a long time. Morsi has proven to be smarter than most of us thought,’ said one of Israel’s top Defence Ministry officials while the Ikhwan were in power. I asked him if Israel thought the Brotherhood had finally tamed the Egypt army. ‘Yes, he has Sisi and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces under his foot. What [Turkey’s] Erdogan only dared after five years, he has done it in six weeks. He deserves a medal.’ His last remark was dripping with sarcasm.
I put the same question to General Abdel Moneim Kato. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said indignantly.
On the contrary, Sisi’s loyalty is to Egypt and its army. In all his statements he always declares that the armed forces side with no one but the army. Therefore, all of the ongoing attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the army will not succeed. Tantawi took a decision for the sake of Egypt. He could have said you do not have this authority and then a coup d’état would have taken place.
Professor Olivier Roy told me in early 2013:
The Muslim Brotherhood is not a revolutionary movement, it is not an ideological movement. And the army is not ideologically minded, the army is not secularised and it is not democratic. The army, at least the new generation of its officers, know it is in their best interests to stay in the background. Then they can keep their economic power, they can keep their autonomy and they are in a position to negotiate with all the other political forces if they have a problem with the Brotherhood. I don’t see the army at all resenting the Brotherhood coming into power because Morsi, at least, has given to the army a lot of assurances and guarantees. So the attempts by the Saudis and the people in the Gulf to get rid of the Brotherhood by supporting the army are doomed to fail.
The long war between the Brotherhood and the army is over. It is over because a much more powerful foe has finally set foot in the arena, in the shape of the Egyptian people. These two old institutions will no longer be able to fight between themselves over the destiny of Egypt, because the Egyptians now have the deciding say in the matter.
‘No one can now oppress the Egyptian people any more.’ That, says Abdul-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, is the greatest legacy of the revolution. ‘They have taken back their country and broken the barrier of fear. Egyptians are now free, and when angry they can take to the streets to express themselves. I believe the Egyptian people will never go back to their couches to watch from a distance.’
The Muslim Brotherhood expected to be able to run the country the way it ran the Ikhwan; it wasn’t used to having to justify its decisions to anyone. Its imperious style, once it held the levers of power, began to infuriate people. As the second anniversary of the uprising approached, Egypt’s President Morsi tried to explain all the missteps by saying of the new democratic process: ‘It’s a first experiment, it’s a first experience for us in our history. So what do you expect? Things to go very smooth? No. It has to be rough, at least. Not violent, but rough. So, we have enough patience.’ 34 That patience had begun to run out for everyone else as soon as the Brotherhood’s new MPs started taking their oaths of office.
The question everyone in Egypt was asking, even though Morsi officially resigned from the movement when he was elected, was, did the new president govern for the benefit of the Brotherhood or the country? I asked the senior Brotherhood leader Mahmoud Ghozlan, in February 2013, how the relationship between the president and his old comrades in the Ikhwan was working. He told me:
The ideas and principles of the Muslim Brotherhood are part of who he is, but from the organisational point of view he has nothing to do with the Ikhwan, or the Freedom and Justice Party. However, I can say a person can leave his position but can
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