Conciliatory Tones From Egypt’s Islamist Leaders

Islamist candidates have surged in Egypt’s elections, but Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post cautions against regarding all Islamists as one and the same. Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood, banned by the Mubarak regime, has a history of violence. Yet many of the Brotherhood’s Islamists have abandoned violence in favor of democratic reforms, argues Jackson Diehl in an opinion essay for the Washington Post. Some Brotherhood leaders, unlike the salafists which won about 20 percent of the vote, may be more akin to freedom fighters, with political beliefs similar to those of Turkey’s ruling Islamist party – and “the ascendancy of parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood should not be as alarming as many in the West suppose,” Diehl contends. Election run-offs are underway, and an early test for how the country develops is what coalitions emerge, whether the Brotherhood-backed Justice and Freedom party seeks allies among the secular-liberal coalition, the military or the hard-core fundamentalists. – YaleGlobal