I debated Kamal El Helbawy, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, on The Daily Politics yesterday, pointing out that the Brotherhood has a chequered past, including links with the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s and a long history of virulent anti-Semitism. If Mubarak stepped down and elections were held in Egypt tomorrow, isn’t there a danger that the Muslim Brotherhood would win an outright majority? And if that happened, what guarantee do the Egyptian people have that the Brotherhood would preserve the democratic freedoms that the Egyptian protestors have been clamouring for? The lesson of Iran is that a popular revolutionary movement that begins with the hope of democratic reform can quickly lead to the establishment of a despotic, theocratic regime which is far more oppressive than the secular regime it has replaced. As my colleague Douglas Murray puts it, the danger is that if elections were held in Egypt tomorrow it would be one vote, once. In light of this, it might be in the long term interests of the Egyptian people if Mubarak didn’t step down immediately, giving them sufficient time to properly scrutinise the different groups vying for power, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Be that as it may, it now looks as if the moment for such a compromise has passed.
The Brotherhood claims to be a moderate party but it makes no bones about the fact that it would try and impose Shariah law on Egypt. A taste of what this might mean for the Egyptian people was recently provided in Bangladesh where a child was beaten to death on the orders of a Muslim cleric. Fourteen-year-old Mosammet Hena was found guilty by a makeshift village court of having an illicit relationship with her 40-year-old cousin and sentenced to 100 lashes. According to the report in today’s Guardian, “Mosammet was dragged inside a house by about 20 to 25 people, including four women. She collapsed unconscious halfway through and was taken to hospital, where she died a week later.”
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