Egyptian soldiers stand in front of posters for hardline Islamists. Khaled Elgindy thinks the Army is the real threat to reform.
Army may be the real winner in Egypt
Editor's note: Khaled Elgindy advised the Palestinian leadership on negotiations with Israel from 2004 to 2009 and is a visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
By Khaled Elgindy - Special to CNN
At the end of the first round of voting in Egypt's historic elections, Islamist parties appear headed for a decisive majority in the first freely elected parliament since the ouster of former dictator Hosni Mubarak.
So far, the Freedom and Justice Party operated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest and best organized political movement, has won nearly 40% of the vote, followed by the ultraconservative Salafist parties with another 25%.
The "Islamist tsunami," as some have dubbed it, has raised eyebrows in the West and raised concerns in Egypt over the future status of women, secular-minded Egyptians and the country's substantial Christian minority.
The Muslim Brotherhood is attempting to reassure anxious Egyptians and foreigners alike and are reframing their imminent victory as a win for Egypt's nascent democracy.
As one Brotherhood leader recently wrote in The Guardian, "There will be winners and losers. But the real - and only - victor is Egypt."
December 13th, 2011
Masoud: Egypt's Islamist future?
I interviewed a really sharp Middle East mind the other day: Tarek Masoudteaches Middle Eastern politics at Harvard University. Check out the video above or transcript below to get his take on the role of Islamists in Egypt's future:
Fareed Zakaria: So first, give us the lay of the land. Egypt's first elections really in 40-odd years, right? What did it look like?
Tarek Masoud: So these are not just the first free elections in 40-odd years, I'd be willing to wager that these are the first free parliamentary elections in Egypt that any living Egyptian has ever voted in. And they were quite remarkable on one level because they were really free and fair by all accounts, and turnout was quite high at between 50 percent and 60 percent.
So what we had the last week was the first phase of elections, which happened in nine governments, kind of like states. And in those nine governments we found that the Muslim Brotherhood won of plurality - about 35 to 37 percent of the vote. The Salafi Group - called the Newer Party or the Party of Light - won about a quarter of the vote. And the liberal groups didn't do as well.
