What are Egypt's Lessons for Iraq?
Having less to do with regional sectarian Sunni-Shiite disputes, Iraq’s political players should focus on the failure of political Islam in their analyses of the June 30 events in Egypt.
The June 30 events in Egypt deserve to be carefully and attentively interpreted at all levels, as far as Iraq is concerned.
The rapid political change in Egypt did not take place against the old political leaderships, which had spread like cancer in the Arab countries for decades and required the eruption of the Arab Spring uprisings to be undone. This time, the Egyptian popular movement was against political Islam movements, which were the biggest winners in the Arab revolutions.
Contrary to the tendencies that attempt to describe Egypt’s June 30 events as a “military coup,” in reality it was a popular movement par excellence, before the army intervened in determining its options.
In this regard, it is right to say that isolating the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated former President Mohammed Morsi would not have happened by popular will alone without the army’s intervention. The same is true for former President Hosni Mubarak.
