Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt can bring the country to a standstill, by closing off roads, sleeping in front of cars in tunnels, erecting barricades and placing rocks on top of bridges, or by obstructing traffic and sowing confusion on the roads with marches to the Ministry of Defense, the Republican Guard, or the state television building. It can threaten those who oppose Doctor Mohamed Morsi every now and again by spreading fear of a march on Tahrir Square or on Ittihadiya Palace. It can shut down government and administrative centers, prevent employees from going inside, and forbid citizens from reaching them. The Brotherhood is also capable of clashing with the army or the police, and of using all that might be needed for the confrontation, from bricks and stones, through Molotov cocktails, and up to Grinov machine guns and Kalashnikov (AK-47) assault rifles. It can also entice the West or give rise to enmity between the United States and the army or the new government in Egypt with its talk of legitimacy or democracy. But the point is that none of this will return Morsi to the Egyptian presidency, nor make millions of people take to the streets again, not to demand his impeachment, but to plead with him to return to the presidential seat! The behavior and the actions of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially those that take place outside of the Rabia Al-Adawiyya Square where its supporters are protesting, are only increasing the people's hatred towards it, adding fuel to the fire of enmity between the group and state institutions, and making of the possibility for the group to return to power in the future, democratically or otherwise, a very low one. Indeed, how could the people prefer a group and grant it its votes or choose a president who has engaged in violence against them? Why would people go back to supporting the Muslim Brotherhood when it is pretexting legitimacy while mortally undermining the country and the lives and livelihood of its citizens? There are those in the Brotherhood who might imagine that they can reach the location in which Doctor Mohamed Morsi is being detained, release him and then march on the Ittihadiya Palace and place him on the presidential seat, so that he may once again exercise his functions as President! Meanwhile, others among them realize that all that is happening is part of the "political game" through which the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood aim to obtain gains or mitigate losses, in such a way as to ensure the unity of their group, and to neither tarnish its history nor characterize its present with failure or its future with uncertainty. As for secular forces, across the spectrum of political creeds and appellations, they have, despite the delicate situation and the nature of the phase Egypt finds itself in, continued to publicly celebrate the Brotherhood's departure and Morsi's impeachment. They have also, as is their habit, been busy discussing futile or insignificant details, as in the case of their stances on the articles of the constitutional declaration, which is temporary anyway, or the formation and composition of the government cabinet, despite the fact that it too will only produce a caretaker government to manage affairs roughly until the parliamentary elections, scheduled to be held within six months. Those forces have not taken to the street to fill the vacuum which the Brotherhood exploited for decades. They have not put forward the names of potential candidates to the next parliament, so that people may recognize and get to know them. They have not refuted or even imitated the methods to which the Muslim Brotherhood had resorted in order to establish contact with people, and have not put forward any bases that can be relied on to establish contact with the masses, after years of complaining about the Muslim Brotherhood distributing oil and sugar, or even money, in exchange for people's votes. On the whole, it seems that, despite the June 30 Revolution having rectified the course of the January 25 Revolution, the two camps who had cooperated in January and clashed in June have both preserved their defining traits and characteristics. Thus, the tendency of Muslim Brotherhood members to set themselves apart from people has increased even more. Meanwhile, their competitors, after having moved the street, have returned to their popular bases safely and successfully, having seen their opponents leave and having obtained part of the cake. They have left the street to youth groups that may have the ability to mobilize people, but whose members' limited political experience does not allow them to set the foundations for building the future. The Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian secular forces are like the blades of a pair of scissors: both are heading in completely different directions, and yet they meet at a single point... that of their mistakes.
