In a movement saturated with ideology like the Muslim Brotherhood, it is difficult to accept this much dearth in model and appeal. Even if we accept the golden era of early Islam as the model of the Muslim Brotherhood, this is still not enough to sanction the group's ascent to power here or its participation in power there. Indeed, what is needed, with the case being as such, is to provide a small model proving that the larger-scale original model, regardless of its interpretation and critique, is still fit for our times. With the eruption of the 'Arab Spring' uprisings, and the explosion of Islamic forces, it appeared for a moment that the Turkish model of the Justice and Development Party would serve as the potential blueprint. This is the optimistic view some of us had, but this appears today to have been rather hasty. One argument for considering the above to be in haste is the fact that touting the Turkish model coincided with the collapse of one of its most prominent pillars, namely, Davutoglu's theory of "zero problems." To be sure, it was impossible to admire the zero-problem policy when at the same time problems were exploding from under our feet. After that, events rolled one after the other, and the Muslim Brotherhood-leaning administration in Turkey began to show signs of cracking, in Taksim Square and elsewhere, undermining its credentials to serve the solemn task of being the blueprint and the model. Yet one could say that the collapse of the model among Arab Islamists – and not just the Brotherhood – had probably started in Sudan. Indeed, the regime of Omar al-Bashir, which broke records in failure at all levels, turned within a few years from the pride of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists, to something that they wanted to distance themselves from, if not something they were ashamed of. The Sudanese Islamist movement itself split into two, one with Bashir and one with Hassan Turabi, before Sudan itself splintered under the tenure of the Islamist movement, into a northern part and a southern part. In the meantime, Hamas in Gaza was doing its part in achieving another resounding failure. In addition to its dismal administration of the Gaza Strip, Hamas today is a glaring example of confusion and faltering in its regional policies and alliances. While the policies of Mohamed Morsi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood do not justify the military coup against them, those policies appear closer to being follies that seemed incapable of understanding the ABCs of politics, administration, and the limits of democratic mandates. Instead of its experience – especially as it was based in Egypt – becoming a role model for the Muslim Brotherhood in other countries, it, in turn, became a burden on the latter. As for the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia, it seems that its grasp of the crisis is far less than it should be compared to the magnitude of the crisis itself, and the fact that any Tunisian shift to stability and political harmony will be contingent upon the Brotherhood-affiliated Ennahda losing some of its power, but certainly not upon the replication of their miserable unviable model. Thus, the Brotherhood seem today like they have attained, at record speed, what the nationalists in Syria and Iraq attained, when they went completely bankrupt and settled on the nightmarish model of Assad and Saddam's Baath, while Anwar al-Sadat, by reversing Nasserism, prevented a similar decline in the ranks of Egypt's nationalists. There is no Islamic model, no liberal democratic model of course, or any model of any kind then. This is bad news for all of us, and not just for the Brotherhood and the Islamists, and this reality will operate on a wide area extending from the autumn of the regimes to the spring of the uprisings.
