Can the Muslim Brotherhood Be Trusted?

In the eighty-four-year history of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, there have been few weeks more remarkable than the past four. A movement born in resistance to British colonialism, and which later thrived protesting against secular dictatorships, is grappling now with the dilemmas of seizing and holding national power, as the whole world looks on in a state of tightening anxiety. The spectacle is riveting because the political future of Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, hangs in the balance. It is fascinating, too, because it is a kind of proving ground for long-running debates about whether an Islamist revolutionary movement such as the Brotherhood can ever adapt itself to Western-style constitutional democracy, preserving the rights of minorities and space for individual conscience.