Early Egyptian election returns confirm Islamist trend

Egypt
Monday and Tuesday saw the first of a 3-phase election process in Egypt. The early results showed strong performance by the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. They also show a surprisingly strong performance by the Nour Party, an ultra-conservative, ultra-fundamentalist party representing the Salafi  school of Islam.

The FJP took about 40 percent of the vote, and analysts predicted that the Nour would take between 20 and 25 percent of the vote, thus giving the Islamist block about 60-65 percent of the total. The New York Times summarized the results thus:

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following. Poorly organized and internally divided, the liberal parties could not compete with Islamists disciplined by decades as the sole opposition to Mr. Mubarak.

What is especially worrisome is the fact that this week’s phase of the elections took place in Egypt’s most liberal provinces, including Cairo and Port Said. It is safe to assume that the vote for the two Islamic parties will only be higher in the more rural provinces of Egypt where vote will take place in the next two phases of the process.  

The strength of the Islamist block and the weakness and disunity of secular, liberal parties mean that Egypt will pivot to a more Islamic stance both domestically and in its foreign policies. The New York Times writes:

The unexpected rise of a strong ultraconservative Islamist faction to the right of the Brotherhood is likely to shift Egypt’s cultural and political center of gravity to the right as well. Leaders of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party will likely feel obliged to compete with the ultraconservatives for Islamist voters, and at the same time will not feel the same need to compromise with liberals to form a government.

In sum
There are two questions raised by this trend toward a new Islamic political order in the Arab world:

On the domestic front, it will be interesting to see whether the new rulers in Morocco and Tunisia, and those soon to assume power in Egypt, adopt a more moderate, pragmatic approach exemplified by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, or try to impose more conservative policies which would see these countries retreat on issues like the rights of women, the contents and quality of education, openness to Western influence, and more.

On the international front the news is not all bad for the United States. These Islamist parties use anti-American rhetoric, but their rise to power also means an increase in the influence of Saudi Arabia in the region. This will likely mean a more robust Sunni Arab containment posture vis-à-vis Iran and its Shi’a and non-Sunni allies (Hezbollah, Syria).

On the Palestinian-Israeli front things are complicated, too. These Islamist parties are no friends of Israel, but if the pragmatic elements within these parties come to the fore, then a concerted Israeli effort to end the occupation of Palestinian lands and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by allowing an independent Palestinian state to emerge will go a long way toward resolving the broader Arab-Israeli conflict along the lines proposed by the Arab League, under the leadership of Saudi Arabia, in 2002 and 2007.

There is little doubt, though, that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not resolved, then the new Arab world will likely be more impatient with the continued occupation of the Palestinians by Israel.

In sum, the new Islamic trend in the Arab Middle East introduces new complications into U.S. calculations, but it is not necessarily a disaster for the United States and the West: if moderates stay at the helm of political Islam, and if the United States leads the way in reducing the areas of friction between the West and the Islamic world (chief among them: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), then attention can be focused on three areas on which there is a congruence of interests between the West and political Islam: the containment and eventual de-fanging of Iran and its regional agents; opposition to violent, al Qaeda-inspired fundamentalist movements; and domestic economic development.

The immediate results of the Arab Spring so far have complicated the manner in which the United States protect its interests and negotiate regional issues, but these results also offer new opportunities.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire