First, there is the Islamism of Al-Azhar: Moderate, inclusive, with legitimacy going back 1050 years ago. That was when the Fatimides, the Shii reign which established Cairo itself, in 975 AD, then built Al-Azhar University. Its scholarship covers Sunni as well as Shii schools of Islamic thought.
Second, there is the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by a charismatic school teacher, Hassan El-Banna, in 1928 in Ismailia on the Suez Canal. Born as a reform movement, it soon spread from Egypt to other Arab countries east of Suez and west of Alexandria. As of 1947, its suppression became a tool by the pre-Nasser and the post-Nasser governments for the maintenance of Egypt as a secular State. Its ideology fluctuated between militancy and moderateness in accommodation of the complex nature of cosmopolitan Egypt.
Third, there is Islamism of the Salafis, who are to the extreme right of the Islamic spectrum in Egypt. For inspiration, they look to Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. Their rise to notoriety in Egypt could be dated to the early years of the Mubarak regime in the early 1980's. That defunct dictatorship, wishing to keep the Muslim Brotherhood under check, encouraged the rise of the Salafi movement as a counterpoise to the vastly bigger and more articulate Brotherhood.
Thus it could be said that the Salafis constitute the extreme right of Islamism in Egypt, with the Brotherhood occupying a centrist position, and Al-Azhar constituting the most liberal, the most neutral, and the most influential in matters of faith interpretation, as compared to the other two types of Islamism in post-Mubarak Egypt.
When it comes to decision-making in Egypt after the January 25, 2011 Revolution, it could be said that Al-Azhar provided quiet guidance through its Rector, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Taiyeb.
But the Brotherhood, through its recently-formed political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, was able to gain 50% of the seats in the lower house of Parliament. Subsequently it gained the upperhand in the presidential run-off of late May 2012. As a result, its candidate, Dr. Mohamed Morsi became Egypt's President. The Salafis were able to muster enough votes in the Parliamentary election of March 2012 to gain 20% of the seats in the lower house. Now Parliament has been dissolved as a result of a judicial decision enforced by the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (SCAF).
As of June 30, 2012, the SCAF turned to President Morsi the reigns of government, if not the reigns of actual power. Yet there are indications of gradually clothing President Morsi with specific prerogatives and other symbols of presidential powers. Examples on this trend are multiplying.
The SCAF invited Morsi this month to hand the new graduates of the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy their commissions upon graduation. Morsi has been left free to select his Prime Minister who is expected not to be from the Brotherhood. He has been able to declare that he intended to have a Copt (Christian) and a woman as two VPs. The Salafi opposition in this regard was to no avail. Even prior to the drafting of a new Constitution, he has decreed the formation of a high commission to investigate and hold accountable those who might be charged with causing the death of nearly 1000 Egyptian demonstrators in various parts of Egypt, as of January 25, 2011.
And if beards have become ID cards for Islamists in Egypt as well as elsewhere, the Court of Administrative Justice has disallowed the freedom of members of the Police force to grow beards as being against regulations.
A presidential decree was also promulgated by Morsi on July 4, 2012 constituting a committee to scrutinize all judgements issued by the military from January 25, 2011 until the SCAF retirement on June 30, 2012 against civilian detainees. The jurisdiction of the Committee, under that presidential decree (Decree No. 5, 2012) also extends to judgments issued by civilian courts against detainees during the same period indicated above. The Committee is required to submit to President Morsi its findings within 2 weeks dating from July 4, 2012.
In a further assertion of his presidential powers, Morsi, in a bold move whose consequences are not yet clear, decreed the convening of the Parliament dissolved by SCAF prior to its retirement on June 30. The move does not seem to be a challenge to the Supreme Constitutional Court which ruled that one-third of Parliamentary seats was bereft of a legal basis. Morsi is now challenging the SCAF interpretation of that judicial decision whereby the entire lower chamber was dissolved.
Commenting on the general trend of the Islamists accommodation of secularism in the new Egypt, Dr. Abdel-Monim Abo-Elfotouh, one of the presidential candidates prior to Morsi's selection, and a former leader within the Muslim Brotherhood declared: "In Egypt, there is now no religious State nor a military State."
It also seems that Tahrir Square is gradually losing its magnetism to the demonstrators following Morsi's taking the oath of office for the first time in the Square. On that occasion, he declared that "Tahrir Square is the source of popular sovereignty, and that sovereignty resides in the Egyptian people."
Now those who want to voice their grievances do not go to Tahrir. They congregate before the Qubba Palace in Cairo, Morsi's official residence, which is the equivalent of the White House in Washington D.C.
From the three flavors of Islamism, emerges a democratic value - FREEDOM OF CHOICE!!
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