Barry Rubin: The Incredibly Significant Missing Element in Egypt’s Revolution

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The Incredibly Significant Missing Element in Egypt’s Revolution

As I always say, the most important stories about the Middle East–that really explain the region–are right there on the surface but are nonetheless neglected. Here’s one: there has not been a single, not a single, demonstration in Egypt against political Islamism.

Think about it. There is a powerful Muslim Brotherhood, openly seeking state power and Egypt’s fundamental transformation into an Islamist state. Then there are the Salafists–a new label applied to even more radical Islamist groups–that were in the past simply called by the name of the individual organization. There used to be two major ones. Why the use of “Salafist” now? Because there are too many to count.


And yet, despite this threat, not only to Egypt as a whole but daily life, there has been no organization of a demonstration, or a public campaign, or a Facebook campaign against the factor likely to produce a new dictatorship. True, the Christian Copts are defending their own rights, but that isn’t the same thing. Indeed, events only further underline that Muslims won’t speak out in any numbers against Islamism. Individual Muslims may courageously defend Christian rights publicly, but they are few and scattered.

Why is it that there is no anti-Islamist movement in Egypt? There are three reasons:

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press later this year. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

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