For the United States the Brotherhood’s ascension poses a considerable challenge

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian sweep

By Ilan Berman

For all their ideological fervor, revolutions in practice tend to be fairly predictable affairs. More often than not, when the initial groundswell of popular discontent recedes, the best-organized and most ideologically cohesive political factions assume power and proceed to run the show according to their own preferences.

• This is what happened in Russia at the turn of the last century, when the Bolsheviks parlayed widespread hostility to czarist rule into a “workers’ revolution” that spawned the Soviet Union. 
• It’s what took place in Iran in the late 1970s, when antipathy to the shah was harnessed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers and channeled into a radical “Islamic revolution.” 
• The latest such transformation has just happened in Egypt, where over the weekend the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement succeeded in wresting control of the country from pro-democracy forces and the Egyptian military.

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