Don’t Blame Islam for the Failure of Egypt’s Democracy

July 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Arab Spring started in Tunisia,and within a few weeks it had spread to neighboring Egypt.Today, 2 1/2 years later, Tunisia is close to ratifying ademocratic constitution with well over two-thirds’ support inthe constituent assembly. Egypt, as the world knows, is in thethroes of a military coup that removed the democraticallyelected president. The obvious -- and crucial -- question is:What’s the difference? Why has democratic constitutionalismworked relatively well in one North African Arab country whileit has crashed and burned in another? And what will the answertell us about the future of democracy in the Arabic-speakingworld, from Libya to Syria and beyond?

You might think the answer has something to do with Islam.But remarkably enough, it doesn’t. In both Tunisia and Egypt,the first democratic elections produced significant pluralitiesfavoring Islamic democratic parties. Ennahda, the Islamistmovement whose political party won in Tunisia, is ideologicallysimilar to the Muslim Brotherhood, and is a kind of associate ofthe Brotherhood’s loosely affiliated internationale. Bothparties believe in combining Islamic values with democraticpractice. Both accept a political role for women and equalcitizenship for non-Muslims, even if in practice they are bothsocially conservative and seek the gradual, voluntaryIslamization of society.