Why Did Libya Vote Against the Muslim Brotherhood?

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

 

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ

Jul 10, 2012

 

In a remarkable development, the people of Libya on Sunday voted against the seemingly-irresistible advance of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the “Arab Spring” countries of North Africa. Until Libyan ballots began coming in, Western media seemed assured that the MB would repeat, in that country, its successes elsewhere over the past year. In Tunisia last October, the Ennahda or Rebirth party won 37 percent at the polls. In Morocco’s November contest, the MB’s Justice and Development party gained enough strength to form a government under its leadership. Since then, however, Morocco has remained largely tranquil.

 

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With MB-ruled Tunisia and Egypt to its west and east, Libya may have seen their examples—with Wahhabi riots in Tunisia against modern art, leaving thousands injured and one dead, in June, and deep political divisions in Egypt—as incentives to repudiate the MB. But other factors may be detected in Libya’s swerve away from Islamist politics.

 

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In addition, Libya's recent history has been unlike that of Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt in that it was ruled by a deranged form of Islamist ideology. Crafted by Qaddafi and embodied in his World Islamic Call Society (Jamiat al Da’wa al Islamiya) it was expressed in his 1975 Green Book, which offered a theory of Islamic socialism, and intended as compulsory reading for all Libyans. The outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt may have reflected the absence of political experience with radical Islam in power, and a belief on the part of the populace that the Islamists were “clean” when compared with the corrupt minions of Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in Tunis and Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.

 

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