The Arab Spring gave a sense of hope to idealists in the west and in the Middle East about the region’s future: We had the sense that these uprisings were the beginnings of real and permanent change. There were so many positive signs that democracy as it is enjoyed in the west — true, secular democracy — was finally being demanded by the people.
Where western nation building efforts had failed time and again, the Arab Spring was an organic revolutionary movement, led by young people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere. They were tech savvy, intelligent and educated. Most notably, it was the women who played an essential role in the Arab Spring protests, particularly in Egypt, where women marched in the streets of Cairo and Tahrir Square and called for the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.
The issue of women — their rights and equality — has long bedeviled those seeking progress in the Middle East, where the systemic inequality of women is rooted not just in tribal traditions or legal codes, but in scripture as well. (In a region where so many national powers are theocratic, issues of religious doctrine are of legitimate concern to those seeking social change.)
This is why Arab Spring activists were so enthusiastic for this movement, because it wasn’t another case of violence motivated by sectarian conflict, but rather a populist thirst for democracy in which women were fully participant.
As Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for global women’s issues, said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 2011:
“What we know from other societies in transition is that when women play an active and inclusive role in societies — from participating in the drafting of new constitutions to rebuilding economies — the whole country benefits. As we saw in South Africa, Rwanda, and elsewhere, women’s full participation improves governance, reduces conflict, and increases economic prosperity.”
While the Arab Spring successfully ousted former tyrants and dictators, it has failed to bring the democracy so many were expecting and moreover, it has failed the women who risked their lives to bring about change.
The case study for the disappointment of the Arab Spring’s aftermath (termed by some in the international foreign policy community as the Islamist Winter) is Egypt, a nation of supreme importance during the Arab Spring. (Egypt, under Mubarak, was a critical asset for the United States, party to the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty and non-hostile.)
But during the months leading up to Egypt’s first post-Mubarak election, troubling patterns began to emerge: While the activists responsible for propelling the Arab Spring were educated, democratic secularists, possible party candidates began to be marginalized on the streets of Cairo by a larger, more organized force: The Muslim Brotherhood, a conservative Islamist organization.
The group, long outlawed during the Mubarak years, played no role in the Arab Spring, but capitalized on the post-revolutionary power vacuum it left behind. First, they allied themselves with Mubarak’s military, then, over the course three rounds of parliamentary elections, their Freedom and Justice Party won nearly half the seats in parliament (the Salafis, an ultraconservative Islamist party, won the next largest share of seats — giving Islamists 70 percent of the parliament overall).
Then, in June of this year, Mohamed Morsi — a member of the Muslim Brotherhood — won the presidential elections against his only opponent, a former Mubarak general. Since then, he has chipped away at the military establishment left behind by Mubarak, the only serious threat to his power, forcing out the most powerful military chiefs and leaving the Muslim Brotherhood the single most powerful political entity in Egypt.
Since the Brotherhood’s rise to power, the original forces behind the Arab Spring have been largely silenced, and with them any hope for true democratic change in Egypt.
Now that Islamist authority has been secured, their religious values have begun to seep into the party’s social agenda. Family House, a charity financed by the Brotherhood, promotes conservative values about a woman’s subservient role and offers workshops and courses at universities such as “Bride and Groom Against Satan.” Social outreach programs like these have proliferated since Morsi took office.
This is part of a broader effort by the Muslim Brotherhood at shaping Egyptian society in its own image, an effort that began long before the Arab Spring when the Brotherhood was still in opposition. President Morsi’s ambitions as a political leader fall very much in line with the Brotherhood’s ideals — though he resigned from the Brotherhood when he took office, his political platform is borrowed from his mentor Khairat Al-Shater, an ideological leader within the Muslim Brotherhood whose “Renaissance Project” has been fully adopted by Morsi as president.
A foundational part of this “renaissance” plan is to emphasize woman’s role as wife and mother, and the course materials propagated by the Brotherhood follow this theme. The promise of the Arab Spring has been buried under the drifts of Islamist Winter and, as always, women are bearing the brunt of the fallout and the disappointment.
—
Apolitical is a blog that covers current events, politics and culture from a progressive perspective—bringing the world at large to the Malibubble, one post at a time.
