Ehab Lotayef’s commentary about the political situation in Egypt on the third anniversary of the uprising three years ago this week failed to make mention of recent acts of terrorism by Islamists in Cairo and other Egyptian cities (Jan. 25, “Egypt’s long struggle for democracy”).

This wave of terrorism reflects a desperate attempt by Islamists to regain power in Egypt, the power they lost when the Muslim Brotherhood showed its true colours under Mohammed Morsi’s rule.

First and foremost, the Brotherhood loathes Egyptian nationalism. As its late philosopher Sayyid Qutb wrote, “The citizenship of a Muslim is his religion.”

Second, the Brotherhood, in spite of taking advantage of western-style democracy to take power, considers democracy to be blasphemous. Its political outlook starts from the principle that only God should govern, and only the religiously enlightened know God’s ways and wishes. Democracy gives the power to people, to humans. Therefore it raises humans to God’s status, which is blasphemy.

Third, the Brotherhood’s main objective is the revival of an Islamist caliphate, a far-reaching Nation of Islam.

Bread, freedom and social justice, the chants of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, are the least of the Brotherhood’s concerns.

What is amazing to me is the audacity of the Islamists who believe that we in the western democracies should support their ascendance to power in the Middle East. They pretend to espouse western democracy, at least for the time being. At home, though, they take advantage of illiteracy, ignorance and poverty to galvanize the support of the masses to help them at the ballot box. The Brotherhood tells the poor masses that voting for anyone but Islamists is blasphemy, just as Qutb had said in his book Milestones.

Egypt is now trying to build a liberal modern democracy based on giving power to people, not to those who claim to represent God on Earth. The road to democracy is strewn with many obstacles; the most dangerous is the Brotherhood’s insistence on hijacking Egypt’s revolution and turning the clock back more than 1,000 years.