“[Y]ou don’t get to arrive at Thomas Jefferson unless you first pass through Martin Luther”

“I fully expect the Muslim Brotherhood to do well in any election,” Gerecht tells me. “They have a fairly substantial following.” He has no illusions about the group’s Islamist agenda, or about its virulent anti-Americanism, or about its hatred of Israel. In his view, calling for U.S. “engagement” with the Brotherhood is like calling for engagement with Ayatollah Khamenei. But Gerecht insists that allowing Brotherhood members to participate in a democratic process is the sine qua non of Egyptian political maturation. The country will never achieve real progress, he says, without first creating the political space necessary for a momentous debate over God and man. Indeed, Egypt’s secular liberals must defeat the Islamists in the public square, rather than through military repression. They must win the battle of ideas…

While democratic elections do not necessarily promote stability — indeed, they can dramatically disrupt short-term stability — they do “allow for the evolution of these societies.” Luckily for us, Gerecht adds, the democratic wave is crashing before the Muslim Middle East goes nuclear. Our biggest concern isn’t really the outcome of the first free Egyptian election; it’s preventing the cancellation or theft of the second free election (and the third, and the fourth, etc.).

If Egyptians voted the Brotherhood into a position of serious power, that would generate a kaleidoscope of problems for America and Israel (and Egypt). No serious analyst should pretend otherwise. But Gerecht’s logic is inescapable: You can’t have authentic Egyptian democracy while disenfranchising the country’s largest opposition movement. If you aren’t willing to countenance Brotherhood electoral participation, you shouldn’t be demanding representative government.