By COLlive reporter
An estimated 40 percent of the vote in the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections, the first following the fall of Hosni Mubarak, went to the Muslim Brotherhood, the party that founded modern political Islam and is known for its slogan “Islam is the solution.”
But the unexpectedly strong showing by the Salafis fundamentalist Sunni Muslim parties surprised Israeli officials as much as the rest of the world, reports Karl Vick for Time Magazine.
It could put a group that rejects modernism in a pivotal position in Egypt’s new democracy.
“This is even worse than we predicted,” a senior Israeli security official was quoted telling the daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
In other words, events are unfolding much as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned they might in the heady first days of the “Arab Spring,” which Netanyahu said could well turn into an “Iranian winter,” Vick reports.
The metaphor draws from the history of Iran’s 1979 revolution, which began as a popular uprising united in opposition to the despotic Shah, and thanks in part to the organization and motivation of religious activists, produced the radical theocracy that has controlled the country since, the magazine pointed out.
“In February, when millions of Egyptians thronged to the streets in Cairo, commentators and quite a few Israeli members of the opposition said that we’re facing a new era of liberalism and progress,” Netanyahu told the Knesset last month, before polls even opened in Egypt.
“They said I was trying to scare the public and was on the wrong side of history and don’t see where things are heading.”
