Be wary of the brotherhood

The need for extreme caution in handling the tumult unleashed in Egypt has been forcefully underlined by the way the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest non-official political organisation, has now emerged to cynically pledge support for Mohamed ElBaradei's efforts to negotiate an end to President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.

The Brotherhood have more than 600,000 members, many in the educated middle class. It is a hardline Islamist organisation, the Arab world's biggest, which espouses the imposition of sharia law and a bar on women being elected to high office. It is closely allied to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah, which has effectively seized power in Lebanon. Both are linked to Iran. The Brotherhood has thus far kept largely in the background as demonstrators have vented their rage over non-religious issues such as joblessness, food prices and police brutality. Now its strategy has become clearer, leaders indicating they are backing the highly regarded Dr ElBaradei as the best way, in the interim, to further the Brotherhood's political ambitions. We are trying to build a democratic arena before we start playing in it, a senior Brotherhood leader said yesterday.

The message is clear. So is the overwhelming need for caution, especially by the Obama administration. It is right to seek a genuinely democratic future for Egypt. But there is also need for clear-headed awareness that Islamic militants are in the wings waiting to exploit the situation and that few things could be more devastating to global security and the fight against extremism than the emergence of an Islamist regime in Cairo. The Brotherhood proclaims its opposition to the Israel-Egypt peace treaty that has sustained stability in the eastern Mediterranean for 30 years.

In 1979 we read reports similar to those now coming from Egypt. There was unbridled optimism (some might say naivety) about the flowering of democracy after the ousting of the Shah. Today, Iran is a ruthless theocracy run by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which hangs scores of people each year and is seeking to arm itself with an atomic bomb while it promotes the cause of global terrorism. History is replete with similar instances of misplaced hope. Remember the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon? Hezbollah is now in control. Remember the Bush administration's demands for democratic elections in Gaza? Hamas is now in control and no one is better off for that.

The portents in Egypt are not good. A recent poll found that, given a choice between Islamists and modernisers, the Islamists came out on top 59 per cent to 27 per cent. In the 2005 election the Brotherhood won 20 per cent of the seats. The sort of autocratic regime maintained by Mr Mubarak cannot continue. But the need is for real reform, not wholesale revolution. Otherwise the door could be opened to the Islamists, as it has been elsewhere.