The new year in Egypt has ushered in a new parliament, dominated for the first time in Egypt’s history by Islamists. And with that comes the question of just how those newly empowered Islamists — led by the Muslim Brotherhood with nearly half the seats — will run the country.
Some activists and politicians have predicted that a violent confrontation will ensue between the military and the Islamist bloc, as a tug-of-war for power and influence, particularly in the drafting of Egypt’s new constitution, engulfs the months ahead. They say the Islamist parties, who together hold roughly 62% of parliament, will push forward with the implementation of Shari’a — Islamic law — as well as legislation to curtail the military’s power and immunity. And they predict that the military will do everything in its power to stop them. “This would give us a new Algeria,” says Islam Ahmed Abdallah, a follower of the ultra-conservative Salafi interpretation of Islam, who runs a center geared toward combatting “Christian evangelism.” Egypt’s Islamists have a history of violent struggle against the regime, he reasons. And if the military challenges their rightfully won authority, Egypt could deteriorate into the kind of violence that wracked Algeria in
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