Suppose Egypt held free and fair presidential elections tomorrow. Suppose Mohammed Mursi was free to contest, and suppose he won. What then? Would the millions of protesters who urged the military to depose him be suddenly converted? And if not, what would we make of their cries, knowing as we would that despite their impressive numbers, they represent an electoral minority?
The fact is that if such an election were held tomorrow, it would take someone very brave, or very partisan, to guarantee Mursi would lose. And yet the military holds him under arrest, ostensibly on behalf of the people.
There's no doubting the popular impetus for this but let's not pretend this is anything other than a military coup. The millions of Egyptians cheering the military's action don't change that. There's a difference between something that is popular and something that is democratic. And democratic change doesn't occur pre-emptively with the help of tanks.
It's important to be clear on this point because for decades the great fear of Middle Eastern democracy has been that it would deliver an Islamist government that would then proceed to dismantle that very same democracy. "One man, one vote, one time," goes the saying. But the rich irony is that so much of the region's recent history points in the opposite direction, where a secular military has attempted (sometimes successfully) to subvert Islamist democracy. Think Turkey. Or Algeria. Now, Egypt.
The problem with this line of thinking has always been that it plays to Islamism's strongest, and most dangerous, suit. It deprives Islamists of all democratic hope and positions them as liberators against an authoritarian regime. Islamist politics always works best in opposition, when it can talk the language of resistance and not be held to the test of delivering on its ideals.
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood can now talk that language once more. Its take-home message now seems to be that the entire system of democratic governance is stacked against it. Even when it wins, it loses. As the Algerian experience shows, that is hugely dangerous. In that case, the military dissolved parliament and annulled elections once the Islamist party looked set to win. The result was a decade-long Islamist insurgency that took about 150,000 lives.
Now consider the Brotherhood's next move. Already it has decried "the repressive practices of the police state" and declared it will "refuse to participate in any action with power usurpers". It can't see its way to being involved in the political transition because it rejects the very fact of its existence. Maybe it will change its mind but what if it doesn't? Does anyone seriously expect it will give up on its pursuit of power after more than 80 years of trying and only one year of authority? More likely it will continue its involvement in politics by other, less democratic or conventional means.
The fall of Hosni Mubarak was such a monumental moment in the region's history because it sent two colossal messages. First, that autocrats could be removed by the mobilisation of ordinary people without resorting to the revolutionary violence Islamist movements often declared necessary. Second, that if Islamists wanted political influence, they could have it by buying into the democratic process. In a stroke it seemed militant Islamism had run its course, having achieved no revolutionary change in its decades of carnage and having been left behind by the democratic impulse of the masses.
As much could be seen in al-Qaeda's limp reaction to the uprisings. It was compelled to celebrate the fall of these dictators but could claim none of the credit. But in the past week, both these messages have been undermined.
It's not true to say Egypt is simply back where it started two years ago. With what looks suspiciously like the military firing on a crowd of Islamist protesters in prayer, and with the Brotherhood leadership arrested, the truth is the country has now gone backwards. Then it was at least unified by a dream. Now it is hopelessly divided, apparently without even the most basic agreement that its differences will be resolved periodically at elections. Mursi made some enormous mistakes. Perhaps his first was to nominate for president in the first place when the Brotherhood promised it would not field a candidate.
Once in power, he promised an economic recovery that was never going to happen. He issued, then retracted, a decree that made his executive decisions above the scrutiny of the courts and shoved through a constitution (via a hasty referendum) with an unnecessarily partisan flavour.
This immediately alienated those sectors of society not sympathetic to his cause, guaranteeing a political environment of perpetual suspicion and protest. And that's to say nothing of the violence against religious minorities that occurred on his watch.
But he should have been allowed to crash at an election. He might then have ended up a symbol of the Brotherhood's political failure. Now, to many, he'll be a symbol of democratic failure, with all that entails. In the meantime, the depth of Egyptian division means those who called for Mursi's head will eventually start calling for each other's, while the depth of its economic disaster (which was hardly Mursi's making) means no new president will be its saviour. If so, we'll be left to ask precisely what has been gained by all this. What will be much clearer, though, is what has been sacrificed.
