Egypt’s Islamists assert power

Reversing an earlier pledge, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood announced it will field a candidate for next month’s presidential election.

Reversing an earlier pledge, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood announced it will field a candidate for next month’s presidential election. It named Khairat el-Shater, 61, a top leader of the Islamist party who was jailed several times under the Mubarak regime. The Brotherhood already controls both houses of parliament—even though it had previously promised to run for just a few seats. It also reneged on a pledge to allow liberals and Christians a hand in writing the new constitution, and instead packed the committee with Islamists.

The announcement of el-Shater’s candidacy “sent an earthquake through Cairo’s already wildly careening political scene,” said Marc Lynch in Foreign Policy. For months, the Muslim Brotherhood was vehement in its insistence that it would not field a candidate—even going so far as to expel a reformist member who insisted on running. Many Egyptians will surely see this as part of a “long-hatching conspiracy” to turn Egypt back into a one-party state.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

You know who’s not worried? The U.S., said Tony Karon in Time.com. The Brotherhood, after all, is less extreme than Egypt’s other prominent Islamist group, the Salafists. Without a Brotherhood candidate, the entire Islamist vote would go to the Salafist candidate, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, “who talks of emulating Iran’s theocratic political system and of ending the peace treaty with Israel.” U.S. officials vastly prefer el-Shater, a millionaire businessman and father of 10 who is seen as “a pragmatist and modernizer.” In fact, many observers believe the Brotherhood broke its pledge because it was worried that the Salafists would take the presidency—“an outcome as unpalatable to the Brotherhood as it would be to Washington.”

Explore More