Did Morsi Ouster Save or Destroy Egypt’s Democracy?

August 29, 2013

While the West frets over the Egyptian military’s seizure of power and condemns the violent suppression of protesters, the response within Egypt is more ambiguous. Many of the nation's intellectuals see those actions not as an attack on democracy, but as the best chance to save it. Others are not so sure.

After several days of massive protests against the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the military removed him on July 3 in what is widely seen as a coup d’etat. But not everyone in Egypt calls it that way.

“Here in Egypt we don't call it a coup,” said professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an award-winning Egyptian fighter for democracy and a supporter of the revolution two-and-a-half years ago against Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak imprisoned him three times.

"This is more commonly a term used by the Muslim Brothers and by Western media," said Ibrahim.

Rania al-Malky, a liberal Egyptian commentator and online newspaper publisher, sees it differently.

"First, I just want to call things by their names. This was a military coup," she insisted.

But that is a minority view among Egyptian intellectuals.

"The military did the only thing they could. It is the people who really went up in arms and it was the army that was trying to catch up with them - the unprecedented number of people who took onto the streets, 30 million," Ibrahim pointed out.