Even though it did not display the clarity and insight of Mr. Shadid’s writing, a brief Associated Press notice last month revealed the causes behind one sequence of waverings in the Egyptian courts.
There were waverings, I claimed in the below post about Mr. Friedman’s piece, on the arrest and then release of certain foreign nationals affiliated with or employed by non-governmental organizations. But now the causes pushing in different directions no longer have entirely to be speculated upon. The AP found out the Moslem Brotherhood was cross with the military caretaker government for allowing – or maybe arranging – the release.
The interests in question don’t have to be guessed at either. The Brotherhood does not like foreign nationals “agitating” for reforms they themselves may or may not be prepared to endorse – particularly when the NGOs are aligned with the Brotherhood’s political rivals on the issues in question. But they are correct to insist that the right of political agitation over the form and substance of the Egyptian constitution belongs to the Egyptian people alone.
The military have their own reasons for accommodation with the United States, which has since affirmed the then-pending promise of military and economic aid – in the full amount. Between the military as caretaker government and the Brotherhood, it now appears, there was already sufficient tension to create the dialectical movement I was trying to explain.
So, even though the “specific causes, effects, and explanations to be made for these [waverings]… are not directly material to speculative philosophy,” it was wrong for me to attribute them to the influence of the big bourgeoisie. Or again, in this particular case, the conclusions of speculative philosophy were falsified by the facts. But that doesn’t make Mr. Friedman right about the “dragons.” On the contrary, subsequent events tends to confirm that the revolution in Egypt, among others is the Arab Spring, are bourgeois, and not Islamic, in nature and effect.
Some are succeeding and others are failing – have failed. The dialectical tally for the day might come as a surprise.
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