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The open-ended showdown between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Army-Tamarroud [Rebel] Movement alliance has showcased an alarming implosion of the Egyptian society into two main camps with their radicalized narratives and competing strategies. The removal of elected president Mohamed Mursi from office July 3rd has solidified the divergence of hard-line positions among Egyptians, and triggered deeper concern over a nightmarish slide into a civil war. The resilient mega-protests and counter protests in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt, backed by their political interlocutors and media pundits, have energized an unsettled debate about democracy, electoral legitimacy, populism, religiosity, and militarism. This cycle of contentious Egyptian politics, as an intriguing transformative Arab Uprising 2.0, implies several complexities that will add to the protractedness of the conflict. It will also push forward a misguided claim of popular “representation” by both sides, and mobilization of growing numbers of supporters outstaying each other in the public squares.

First, the current battle of public narratives has pivoted around two well-structured claims of "legitimacy" with deep moral and cultural underpinnings: 1. A backward legitimacy, or "legitimacy of the ballots", embraced by the Muslim Brotherhood crowd who insist on the imperatives of democracy theory and the respect of the electoral outcome of 2012. Their be-all and end-all condition for entering any dialogue or reconciliation framework with the Army-Tamarroud alliance remains the return of ousted President Mursi to power. Their intellectual defense and emotional attachment to their electoral victory, as their main driving force in post-Mubarak Egypt, reinforces their rejection of giving up an eighty-five-year-old dream that was crushed suddenly by the Army Chief and Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi after one year of Mursi's presidency. This Egyptian scenario has also shown how politics is all personal. In the first half of 2013, Mursi and Sisi devoted much of their focus to their plans to eliminate each other from the public office. Ironically, Sisi joined forces with the liberal circles and a few anti-Islamist businessmen to topple Mursi after a surprising forty-eight ultimatum announced on the Egyptian media June 30th.

2. A forward legitimacy, or "legitimacy of the people", as advocated by the secular/liberal/mainstream Muslim camp working in harmony with the army since early 2013. This newly-constructed version of legitimacy derives from the charges of Mursi’s “failing” policies and a fait-accompli assumption based on the turnout of the anti-Islamist protestors on July 30th. It has also sought to establish a new status quo imposed by a revival of the political realism orchestrated by Gen. Sisi, newly-appointed Deputy Prime Minister, who favored the pragmatism of economic reform and the promise of security as a selling point of his termination of a short-lived Islamist democracy in Egypt. One of his tactics to bypass the democratic vacuum was the utility of the pre-packaged counter-terrorism narrative against resilient Islamists who reject the "abortion" of a post-Mubarak young democracy.

Wearing dark sunglasses and full military regalia during a military graduation ceremony in Cairo July 24th, Sisi aimed at mobilizing a wider base asking "that next Friday [July 26] all honest and trustworthy Egyptians must come out. Why come out? They come out to give me the mandate and order that I confront violence and potential terrorism" [emphasis added]. The Army-Rebel-Liberal Alliance has positioned their new legitimacy within the merits of a Google-Earth captured democracy that highlighted the body count of protesters during the turbulent days of June 30th and July 25th. Sisi has also resorted to the growing trend of performative politics. As Neo-functionalist Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander wrote In his Performative Revolution in Egypt [2011], "[the Egyptian Revolution's] ability to project powerful symbols and real-time performances, plot-compelling protagonists and despicable antagonists; to stimulate and circulate powerful emotions; to organize exemplary solidarity; to create suspense; and finally to minister ignominious defeat to dark and polluted adversaries while purifying the nation through a stunning victory that lifted citizens to new hope and glory."

Sisi was chanted as the “savior of the nation”; and, on the same day, the Obama Administration opted for not declaring Egypt's government overthrow a "coup", and decided to maintain $1.5 billion in annual military and economic aid to the Arab World's most populous country. For the last six decades, the Egyptian military officers have benefited from most privileges and still control 40% of the national economy. Unlike other countries around the globe, the military leaders remain among the top-rated economic elite in Egypt. However, the Brotherhood sympathizers have shown an unwavering defiance against Sisi's show of force in Tahrir Square. Essam El-Erian the acting leader of the pro-Brotherhood Freedom and Justice party accused "the putschists'' of trying to recreate a "police state", and vowed, in his televised news conference, "this state will never return, and Egypt will not go backwards.''

Second, the public sphere has been polarized, inside and outside Egypt, by the growing semantic gymnastics: "Coup" versus "The New Revolution", and the symbolism of Rabia Al-Adawiya versus Tahrir Square as the two epicenters of rival protests sustaining a fierce battle of narratives "Legitimacy of the Ballots" versus "Legitimacy of the People". The Egyptian summer of 2013 has been hot and well-heated with an extra endurance effect of the fasting month of Ramadan, which tends to add a deeper emotional and spiritual dimension to the mix. The Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Mohamed Badie told his supporters that the Army's decision to topple President Mursi was "a worse crime than even destroying the Kaaba [Islam’s holiest shrine in Saudi Arabia]." As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues in his research The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology (2007), humans attain their extreme group solidarity by forming moral communities within which selfishness is punished and virtue rewarded.

This pair of contested legitimacies seems to have fed some political steroids to the narratives of both camps, and energized their appeal on two parallel tracks. Consequently, Egypt is entrapped now in a vicious dilemma: dual-democracy and the challenging question whether democracy originates in the ballots or in the streets with no apparent prospects of rapprochement, let alone national reconciliation. Mohammed Abdul Aziz, a spokesman for the Tamarroud Movement, vowed "Tomorrow [July 26th] we will cleanse Egypt. There are men carrying guns on the street. We will not let extremists ruin our revolution." From the other end of the spectrum, Mohamed Beltagi a Brotherhood former member of the parliament told his sympathizers to "prepare for a second of jihad [holy war]." In short, the Islamists have considered the election results to mean everything, whereas the Liberals have interpreted those ballots outcome to mean nothing, and the showdown continues with frequent incidents of violence and small massacres of protestors. The religious lexicon remains at the service of the fallen who are honored by the glorious label of "martyrs" bestowed upon them by their Islamist politicians.

Third, this Egyptian scenario highlights the emergence of new identities at the turbulent episodes of social change, and offers a social lab for the construction of the "friend" and "foe" amidst growing identifiers of difference and exclusion. This birth of new sub-identities remains under-studied in Conflict Resolution and other social sciences while the highly-celebrated 'identity turn' is still preoccupied mainly by the contrast of fully-developed identities and the categorization of the Self and the Other across a static enmity system.In most Middle Eastern countries, polarized citizens have embraced alternative identities: "Sunnis" versus "Shias", "Islamists" versus "Liberals", and "Nationalists" versus "Westernized". In a previous article 'Muslims’, ‘Islamists’, and ‘Islamics’: The Dilemma of ‘Sacred’ [May 2010], I argued that "this Islamist-Islamic meta-conflict also entails the dynamics of failed structural ‘national’ identities in 57 Islamic countries, and opens up space for a collective agent of a “we” who can do something in the name of the “true” and therefore only Islam." So far, the first two years of the Arab Uprisings have energized a sense of an Islamist Exceptionalism before it was upstaged by a rival Exceptionalism of the People in Egypt.

The fourteen-century identification of Muslims has taken a downturn toward a sub-categorization of "Islamists" and "seculars/liberals". Similarly, most Egyptians have become entrenched in a "We" and "They" divide across the political-religious spectrum. Unlike the overwhelming religious Sunni-Shia distinction in Iraq, Lebanon and the Gulf States, Egyptians have formulated their we-ness and other-ness markers on the basis of political affiliations, acceptance or rejection of Mursi's Islamist government, and the role of the army in national politics.

German sociologist Carl Schmitt's (1888-1985) following observations are imperative in understanding this dilemma. He argued for the primacy of the political in shaping up social change; “in politics, the core distinction is between friend and enemy. That is what makes politics different from everything else,” he wrote in his book the Concept of the Political. The current Egyptian developments have apparently reaffirmed the supremacy of the political power over the pursuit of democracy and pluralism. Moreover, The Egyptian Ministry of Interior announced that the anti-military protests would be cleared “soon and legally” after a bloody Friday of protests and counter-protests on July 26th and disputed death toll between 38 [Interior ministry} and 150 [Muslim Brotherhood] casualties. Unfortunately, the new military leader Abdel Fattah Sisi's pursuit of combating violence and terrorism against his opponents has only reinforced a we/they divide and more suspicion of a perceived 'enemy' within Egypt, with no serious initiative of national dialogue and inclusion. Unfortunately Egypt has made an unfortunate turn toward instability under the rivalry between an Islamist thesis and a liberal antithesis. The Hegelian expectation of a compromising political synthesis remains out of reach in the foreseen future. Egypt's new government has announced its Road Map toward some promised stability, prosperity and coexistence. Still, the Road map initiative remains a mere map with no clear road toward the future of Egypt.

The disputed "legitimacy" remains a tumultuous controversy not only inside Egypt, but also in other Arab countries which have bred their new Tamarroud movements. The Islamist-led governments in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, and Turkey have developed some fear of the possibility of having their electoral legacies washed away by some undetected political alliances with existing centers of power. The Arab Uprisings are poised to stimulate violent conflicts and years-longs stalemates, and add to the debate "whether democracy is not for Muslims". This political uncertainty will generate only deeper levels of unemployment and shrinking foreign investment, and ultimately lead to long-term economic depression. The battle of "legitimacy" will not be settled unless the Egyptian new leadership and the rest of the revolutionary Arab governments seek a genuine national dialogue and inclusion of all foes and friends.
 

### Picture by flickr user Darla Hueske