The military intervention in Egypt and the ousting of the democratically elected Islamist regime has been hailed by some as a victory of a popular revolution. Amidst the euphoria, however, we must ponder the larger implication of this trend for the future of liberal democracy in the Middle East.
It is true that the Islamist regime of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood promoted an exclusive Islamic agenda at the expense of a more secular and liberal agenda. It alienated many constituencies within Egyptian society.
However, the unilateral ousting of the regime by the military sets a dangerous precedence that may return to hunt the country. Democracy cannot be agreeable only when the “good guys” win. The ballot must be sacrosanct. Impeach the president; recall the parliamentarians through constitutional means rather than the barrel of the gun.
The so-called “doctrine of necessity” which some have invoked to justify the military coup is a slippery slope. Anyone can invoke it. Today it is the “good guys” but tomorrow it may be the “bad guys.”
As one commentator put it, the greatest danger is that the military coup will be interpreted by many political Islamists as sending a blunt message: it doesn't pay to choose the ballot over the bullet. More may now turn to the bullet with grave consequences for the fragile political order. Democracy is a messy business but to endue and thrive it must be founded on principles not the politics of convenience.
I wonder, must ‘democracy’ take the same Western form, can we really ascribe to it universality? What I mean is that, as pro-Western as it may sound, we can probably generally agree that some form of democratic governance (inclusiveness, equal representation, etc.) is valuable in a society. But the history of that society must also play a role in the forming of its democracy – I do not think that ‘democracy’ or some other political philosophy should be absolutely entrenched in its Western form, at the expense of regional histories, values, and so on. So here in lies my question: In Egyptian thought (Here I’m citing Albert Hourani) the ‘ulama’ is one with political life, and the ‘leaders’/politicians are to administer in accordance with the ‘ulama’s’ wishes. The ‘ulama’ is an active political body and not merely a neutral social body whose sole aim is to ensure a neutral state, for example: as in some industrialized countries where ‘being political’ is merely a means to an end: to ensure that the pursuit of private life is respected by the state (any ‘political life’ then falls into the sphere of professionalism: human rights lawyers, politicians, etc., and loses its organic social dimension, which again translates into the perpetuation of the status quo – giving rise to things such as the latest controversy as the NSA, and so on). So in this latter sense, where ‘private life’ is prioritized, then it is understandable why democratic procedure is prioritized precisely ‘for its technique, its procedure’. But in the former, if the civil society is actively and regularly engaged, in the organic sense, i.e. as the prioritization of the whole, the ‘community above individualism’, and so on, then it would seem that democracy would become a means to an end in another way: not in some logical purely technical manner, where ‘reason’ and procedure is king, but in a human manner, where solidarity and the will/spirit of the community is prioritized over ‘procedure’. Arguably, those are the two most important sides of democracy (its spirit and its technical form)
In this sense, I come back to my original point, that the form of democracy itself shifts, and that we witness not a ‘failure’ to establish legitimate democratic practice, but in fact a success: democratic procedure ensured Morsi’s victory; and likewise, democratic ‘spirit’ also prevailed by ensuring the people’s will, the will of the whole (i.e. when he was ousted). There is, of course, your point about military intervention or politics by the bullet. I agree whole heartedly on this, and we have already seen some violence as a result (clashes btwn the army and Morsi supporters). But short of military intervention, revolutionary violence would be the only means to remove him; that or he would remain, and the people’s voices and spirit liquidated under the heavy drone of technical apparatus (the case of much of Western civilization)
For my part, I think it would be a shame for Middle Eastern society to adopt ‘universal’ Western values in their universal form. Middle Eastern culture is rich and organic, and rightly it should be protected from the sort of ‘social-atomization’ we see in industrialized nations. One of the ways to ensure this, I think, is that if Western values are going to be adopted, then it must be done not wholly universally, but with a flavour of that place’s own cultural heritage, and so on
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