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Shadi Hamid may have influence sufficient to encourage a pro-democracy program that seeks to integrate “Islamists” into democratic process even while they promote illiberal policy.

As demonstrated in Egypt, I don’t think that goal is achievable with core Muslim Brotherhood affiliates. Once empowered, they produce the program associated with malignant narcissism, i.e., they become and proceed to make themselves the center of everyone else’s universe. The empowerment of others to any extent equal to or greater than Muhammad is not what Muhammad would seem to have been about — and everyone crawling up this intellectual vine wants to be as if they were themselves Muhammad, i.e., absolute authority. That is not compatible with democracy anywhere, and it is why the Muslim Brotherhood once elected to power in Egypt failed completely, grossly, utterly to produce greater democracy and freedom around themselves. Instead, then President Morsi proved himself a tyrant and within a year inspired the massive counter-revolution that turned him and re-criminalized his movement.

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Sooner or later, I’m going to collide with or simply meet some of the notables mentioned on this blog.  I and they have been spared so far by my “miniversity” located in the province 90 minutes northwest of Washington, D.C., or I’d be hoofing it into Brookings frequently.

Be that as it may, the note came about with the mention (on Facebook) of MB-types within the Administration.

I happen to feel Obama’s chief conflict principles are 1) “to pursue the Least War Possible” — and along that line, indeed, we’ve seen the development of drone technology programs and some boost to special forces that may be deployed to re-shape a political landscape a critical little bit at a time and a concomitant reluctance to deploy, after Afghanistan, additional major force elsewhere (although the invitations to do that would seem many, and, indeed, we are getting busy in eastern Europe) — and 2) to prove democracy capable of integrating Islamist ambition and thought into democratic processes.

Again, echo of the above inset paragraph, I think the character of Islamist ambition, the mentality in general, expressive of malignant narcissism — strong on determination and long on patience — is exactly what America’s democracy was designed to block and neutralize.

Political absolutism invested in personality — to be like Muhammad, whether one has grown up to be Muammar Qaddafi or Mohammad Morsi — would seem to remain the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, and, as such, deeply, permanently, inimical to either the level of cooperation and compromise involved in the democratic exercise of political power.

The brief empowerment of the party representing the movement in Egypt and the outcomes produced would seem congruent with that assessment.

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