Saudi Journalist: Let's Just Call It the Muslim Brotherhood Spring, Already

Saudi journalist Mshari Al-Zaydi wonders in an Al-Arabiya commentary why we don’t dispense with the euphemisms, and call the Arab Spring what it is quickly becoming: the Muslim Brotherhood Spring.

That should not have been a surprise, Al-Zaydi notes:

Shock is acceptable if one is surprised by something completely unexpected…

I recall how many Arab writers at the beginning of this year – the year of the Arab Spring – prophesied that what we were witnessing were uprisings staged by non-political civilians and youth, and claimed that not a single radical or ideological slogan was chanted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, or any other Arab public square…

Now, these same well-intentioned writers – or at least many of them – have returned to warn against the Arab Spring being hijacked and despoiled. They have expressed their confusion about the presence and popularity of these radical Islamists who are overwhelming the political scene, and are asking: where did the Facebook youth go?

The Islamist political forces were always there, Al-Zaydi says, despite the promise of a new era after the old tyrannies had been destroyed.

Now, he says, the question is whether the Muslim Brotherhood Spring will honor the democratic hopes with which many of the revolutions were launched:

…[W]hat guarantee do we have that these religious fundamentalists will relinquish power once their failure is revealed, particularly as all the elements of power will be in their hands? Did this work out in Iran which has been ruled by Khomeneist disciples for over 3 decades?

It is not certain that the Arab Spring will lead to new tyranny, even if Islamist parties win elections across the region. But without new protections for human rights, without constitutional structures that restrain democracy’s excesses, without independent courts and institutions, Iran’s recent political history may well be the Arab world’s political future.