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**Riprincattiva** · 01-13-2011, 01:30 AM

The fact that the Egyptian parliament will be 65% Islamist is what concerns me.

Yeah yeah, and people were scared cause Kennedy was a catholic.

It's a more than Kennedy being Catholic. But you have to look at in the context of what already exists in Egypt. Egypt is not a liberal democracy and it never was. There were powerful liberal movements pre-war but they died with military rule that brought nationalism through wars and then led to disillusionment with the military and Islamization of society (in part because the military could not suppress religious institutions in the way it could other parts of civil society). There is a broad range of Islamist political parties. If the FJP is like the AKP then there's little worry that they're Islamist--it would be similar to Christian Democrats running Egypt. They're probably more conservative but there's only so much you can do within the context of Egyptian society. Egypt is not Afghanistan. You have an urban elite who wields a large amount of power. You have a military weakened but clearly has still survived the revolution still with some control. You have a youth movement still out in the streets who overwhelmingly voted more secular. You have labor unions whose strikes (against state run businesses) helped bring protest to the streets in the proceeding years. So while you have huge rural and rural-just-moved-to-big-city populations that are conservative and vote that way it's not going to be uncontested takeover. The FJP platform wanted to promote economic recovery on tourism so they're even bound by those economic necessities. So while Mubarak kept certain conservative, misogynistic social impulses under control it's not sustainable to do that through dictatorship. And all of these impulses which have always existed in Egyptian society will now play out in the politics of the country. It will be interesting to see what happens. It's not all going to look good but plenty about the Mubarak situation wasn't good.

01-13-2011, 01:30 AM	#7
Riprincattiva Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 539 Senior Member	The fact that the Egyptian parliament will be 65% Islamist is what concerns me. Yeah yeah, and people were scared cause Kennedy was a catholic. It's a more than Kennedy being Catholic. But you have to look at in the context of what already exists in Egypt. Egypt is not a liberal democracy and it never was. There were powerful liberal movements pre-war but they died with military rule that brought nationalism through wars and then led to disillusionment with the military and Islamization of society (in part because the military could not suppress religious institutions in the way it could other parts of civil society). There is a broad range of Islamist political parties. If the FJP is like the AKP then there's little worry that they're Islamist--it would be similar to Christian Democrats running Egypt. They're probably more conservative but there's only so much you can do within the context of Egyptian society. Egypt is not Afghanistan. You have an urban elite who wields a large amount of power. You have a military weakened but clearly has still survived the revolution still with some control. You have a youth movement still out in the streets who overwhelmingly voted more secular. You have labor unions whose strikes (against state run businesses) helped bring protest to the streets in the proceeding years. So while you have huge rural and rural-just-moved-to-big-city populations that are conservative and vote that way it's not going to be uncontested takeover. The FJP platform wanted to promote economic recovery on tourism so they're even bound by those economic necessities. So while Mubarak kept certain conservative, misogynistic social impulses under control it's not sustainable to do that through dictatorship. And all of these impulses which have always existed in Egyptian society will now play out in the politics of the country. It will be interesting to see what happens. It's not all going to look good but plenty about the Mubarak situation wasn't good.
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