Rami G. Khouri

We are commemorating several significant anniversaries this week which provide us with much food for thought about events across the Middle East at one of its most dynamic and difficult moments.

This week marks four years since mass demonstrations across Egypt demanded that the transitional military council transfer power to a legitimate elected government. It has also been three years since the election of President Mohammad Morsi, two years since he was overthrown by street demonstrations and a nudge from the military headed by then-Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. It has been one year since Sisi became the more or less elected president of Egypt (in the modern Nilotic tradition of elections in which most of the opposition fears to raise it head and is arrested and hounded soon after the election ends). It has also been one year since ISIS declared the establishment of its “Islamic state” and “Caliphate.”

Elsewhere, it has been 51 years since American President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law and 239 years since the Continental Congress of the American colonies resolved with the Declaration of Independence that the colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” It has been 61 years since Elvis Presley recorded “It’s All Right Momma” at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, and launched the world into the important and wondrous era of rock’n’roll.

The common theme here with regard to our troubled Arab condition is that individual human beings have always struggled, and often died, for the freedom and the right to be themselves, to achieve their full personal and civic potentials. This universal quest for personal liberty is not absolute, but ideally is defined within a constitutional framework of order and the rule of law that protects the equal rights of all citizens.

The United States of the 18th and 20th centuries reminds us that an initial burst of democratic pluralism and freedoms often needs to be completed decades later with further political and legal action to ensure that all citizens enjoy the fruits of liberty in practice, rather than only on paper. Egypt today still provides the best, yet most complex and erratic demonstration in the Arab context of how difficult it is to transition from military or colonial rule to genuine national sovereignty anchored in equal personal liberties. Egypt’s violent moment reminds us of one problematic reality, but also fortifies us with the inspiring memory of another.

The recurring Egyptian problem on display is that neither of its two dominant public forces of the past century – the Muslim Brotherhood and the armed forces – is operationally or politically qualified to govern efficiently, and with consensual legitimacy. When one group tries to dominate or eliminate the other, all Egyptians suffer. They are suffering now more dramatically than ever because of the proven ability of groups such as the ISIS-affiliated “Sinai Province” to undertake large-scale military attacks against the Egyptian armed forces in the peninsula and kill senior public officials in the heart of Cairo.

The one-year anniversary of the ISIS “Caliphate” reminds us that if an orderly political process does not lead to a legitimate governance system, darker forces of frustration and desperation will prevail. ISIS is the consequence of that desperate darkness that has hollowed out the hearts of millions of Arabs, and lured some of them with the false promises of instant redemption on earth and in paradise. The limited but real expansion of ISIS through mostly tiny affiliates – some no larger than motorcycle gangs, someone should tell David Cameron – in over 15 countries should remind us more of the dire conditions that define the lives of hundreds of millions of mistreated people, rather than of the actual strength of ISIS.

More than anything else, however, this moment of commemoration should also remind us again and again of that shining moment in 2011-13 when the Egyptian people repeatedly confronted the transitional military government and agitated for a full transition to legitimate civilian authority. They also sought dearly to hold accountable the military regimes under President Hosni Mubarak and others that had run their wonderful country into the ground. These regimes had also had set the stage for the kinds of political atrocities and buffoonery now performed routinely by the Sisi regime, such as mass death sentences in laughable “trials” and the almost total silencing of any peaceful opposition protests.

The spirit and specific reasons behind the public protests for democratic and constitutional pluralism three years ago across Egypt remain valid today, but have not been acted on. The goals of the original January 2011 revolution – basic social, economic and political rights under a framework of law applied equally to all citizens – remain active, and will be achieved one day.

And Elvis? Well, Elvis reminds us that liberties include the right to enjoy life in any manner that pleases us and does not harm others. Those who listen to him will recall that his music was about not taking ourselves too seriously and enjoying life, while trying to improve life for ourselves and others.