Consequently, most political parties, social movements, and major presidential candidates have been so alarmed and outraged by SCAF's action that they have threatened to go to the streets by the millions unless the emergency laws are rescinded and elections dates announced.
In short, revolutions are about fundamental transformations to the political structure and power relationships in the country as well as the redistribution of resources within society, not a change in personalities or modalities.
But so far much of the changes have been cosmetic and superficial. Unless those who led the revolutions, sacrificing their blood and livelihoods along the way, are elected and put in charge to lead the reforms and carry out the demands of the people, no genuine change can actually take place.
2. The role of Islam in society
In the midst of the struggle to oust each regime, the tension between the Islamic movements on the one hand, and the secular and liberal trends on the other, was kept under the surface as all political oppositions were united in their goal to defeat and overthrow their dictatorship. But once the regimes were toppled, old rivalries reemerged and ideological debates resurfaced, generating discord and mistrust.
For years, secularists and liberals feared that Islamic political movements secretly intended to impose a religious state and were just paying lip service to democratic principles. While many Islamists affirm their commitment to democracy, they charge their rivals with having an anti-religion and a liberal pro-Western hidden agenda.
This mistrust between the two camps in Egypt has become so rife that in many instances public accusations were rampant, as were calls to boycott each other's events.
The liberal and secular camp believes that the Islamic groups are much more organized, better placed to win the elections and thus dictate a new pro-Islamic constitution. Consequently, they initiated a campaign to convince SCAF to issue a decree that would supersede any future constitution in order to guarantee certain principles.
Dubbed "above the constitution," they would ensure that the constitution could never be amended. They also hint that the army should serve as the protector of the state against any encroachment of religion in state affairs, much like the role the Turkish army played in the second half of the last century.
The Islamic camp argues that having principles that are above the constitution is in itself an undemocratic practice. Many of its leaders insist that they seek a civil state that will have a modern and democratic constitution enshrining pluralism and basic civil rights.
While both camps agree that Shari'a would be the basic source of legislation, they differ on how this principle would be applied in reality and how widely they will be allowed to interpret it. Similar pronouncements and disputes between both camps have also been raging in Tunisia, as the country prepares to elect a body to write the future constitution.
Furthermore, throughout the armed struggle between the National Transitional Council (NTC) and the Qaddafi regime, both the secular pro-Western and Islamic camps cooperated in their objective to depose the Libyan dictator. However, both sides distrusted and frustrated each other throughout months of struggles against the Qaddafi loyalists.
The Libyan Islamists accuse the pro-Western secularists within the NTC of making deals with NATO countries that are detrimental to the country. In addition, they charge them with conspiring against them. For instance, in late July the pro-secularist military commander of the Libyan opposition Gen. Abdelfattah Younis was gunned down by his own Islamically-oriented contingent of troops in retaliation for allegedly conspiring with NATO to attack them covertly.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Libyan official recently appointed as the NTC representative in a major European country asserted that Younis used to give NATO the coordinates of the positions for aerial bombardment of members of his own troops that he considered "too Islamic."
Thus, in many instances NATO was considered to have bombed the wrong targets, not because of technical errors, but because they were deliberately fed misleading information. The senior official further claims that over seventy percent of the Libyan insurgents who fought on the ground are Islamists who objected to the intervention of NATO and Western forces.
Shortly after the fall of Tripoli, this dispute came to the surface, as the acting Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, admitted that the NTC was not in control of many of its armed groups. Meanwhile, Sheikh Ali Sallabi, a prominent religious leader, called for the resignation of Jibril and many of his colleagues, including the finance, communications and oil ministers. He accused them of being corrupt pro-Western stooges "stealing the revolution."
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