One of the leading causes of polarization in Egypt today, and to some extent in other countries of the Arab Levant, is that no one wants to sacrifice what they see as a non-comprisable principle, or to tolerate what appears strange or unfamiliar to them. For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood in power opted to adhere to Islamization, albeit to a lesser extent than their opponents would claim. In doing so, the Muslim Brotherhood put loyalty to their ideological tenets above the richness of reality, its pluralism, and what their presence at the head of a worldly polity otherwise requires. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood's opponents and enemies could not tolerate their presence in power, even when their authority was faltering and likely to collapse at any moment. Their intransigence reached such an extent that they sacrificed their democratic claims, and rallied around the army as their savior. They have fought the Brotherhood and their president Mohamed Morsi based on "what they may have done," more than for what they had done. Needless to say, tyranny is a strong feature of both positions, while the willingness to tolerate, accept, and endure the other, is very weak indeed. If anything, this displays, in a recursive manner, an understanding of the Arab Spring that holds that tyranny must be treated with tyranny. Naturally, this is not the only understanding we have seen in the past two years. It was not even the dominant perspective when the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions erupted, led by urban middle-class youths. However, it is not enough to stress non-tyrannical tendencies that have weak internal origins and a weak connection to the local culture and heritage. We can notice after that how defining oneself as anti-something, rather than pro-something, began to take hold. This is how, for example, the demands for freedom, bread, and dignity were withdrawn, and this is how, at least in Egypt, we are seeing an anti-Brotherhood bloc pitted against an anti-army bloc. As for the Asian part of the Arab Levant, the loudest voice belongs today to the Sunni enmity for Shiites and vice versa, trailed closely by other enmities, for example against Kurds, fundamentalists, Alawites, and Christians. It is in this context that we have seen vindictive calls for the disbandment of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, made by Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi himself, after a series of allegations against Morsi, including "collaborating with the enemy"! Needless to say, accusations of treason are the secular equivalent of accusations of blasphemy. Moreover, the disbandment of a political organization that dates back to 1928 is at best a form of forced political uprooting, which the Iraqi regime gave us an example of with ‘de-baathification.' But there is another form this contrarianism and detachment from all norms of politics has taken: To be sure, the Brotherhood does not hesitate today in quoting U.S. and European attitudes to stress that what the army did was a coup against legitimacy. However, the Brotherhood at the same time does not hesitate to accuse the army of collusion with the West and Israel against the Muslim Brotherhood. For its part, the army, when it addresses the West, summons the discourse of Bashar al-Assad in asserting that it is fighting a battle against terror. The army also does not hesitate to invoke ‘Egypt's dignity' against the West, which it accuses of backing the Brotherhood for its diabolical reasons! Every side wants to achieve the maximum amount of gains for itself, regardless of the logical soundness or the falsehood of the language used to argue for this quest. All this is expulsion and monopoly, but definitely not politics that would lead, though compromise, to partnership in the homeland.
