After the June 30th revolution, or, the third wave of January 25 if you will, succeeded in achieving it’s goal to oust ex-President Morsi we have to ask ourselves an important question: do we have to include the Islamic Current or can we just dismiss them from the political process?
Before answering this question, we have to thank the Army and it’s role in helping the nation to get rid of a Muslim Brotherhood authoritative government. No one can deny that the Army played an important role towards the ousting of Morsi. Can we imagine if this didn’t succeed in happening, Sisi would have been the first one to be executed, and then his group?
This also returned the trust between the Army and Nation back, after it had been lost in the events of the January 25th revolution.
Back to our first question. I believe that the answer of this question should be to including the Islamic Current, not as a religious party, but as a part of the new political attitude we should acquire. If we didn’t work to contain this Islamic Current, two things will be the consequences.
Firstly, this current could resort to the violence again because they are not involved in the political process. This is something we don’t want to happen. Secondly, they will work under the table, which would be a dangerous scenario also. So, from my point of view, the best solution for the Islamic Current is to include them in the political process. We have to tell them that we are welcoming them to join in on the political process but should make clear that they need to play according to the game.
This means that there should be no mixing between politics and religion. Politics is politics, and religion is religion. It doesn’t mean that we are preventing them to take the Islamic principles as their basic foundation for their parties, but, when it comes to elections, or any competitions, they shouldn’t say, “If you chose this you will be a believer, but if you chose that you will be an infidel.” In this case, the Islamic current will be dismissed from the process.
Dismissing, or not including the Islamic Current as previously mentioned could cause a lot of troubles. It’s better to involve them in the political process and force them to respect the differences and variety of Egyptian culture. Containing them in Egypt will bypass a lot of problems and in the case that they don’t respect the rules of the political life, they will be showcased on the global stage that they don’t respect the rules of democracy and of civil society.
