CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt was the centerpiece of the Islamist movement's vault to power in the Arab world's sweeping wave of uprisings. Winning election after election here, the Islamists vowed to prove they could govern effectively and implement their vision of political Islam, all while embracing the rules of democracy.
Mohammed Morsi was their pillar: the veteran of the Muslim Brotherhood, the region's oldest and most prestigious political Islamist group, who became Egypt's first freely elected president.
That is what makes his ouster after barely a year in office, with a gigantic cross-section of Egypt's population demanding he go, such a devastating blow to Islamists on multiple levels, not only in Egypt but across a tumultuous region.
Morsi, his Brotherhood and their harder-line allies say they played by the rules of democracy, only to be forced out by opponents who could not play it as well as them at the ballot box and so turned to the military for help. The lesson that the Islamists' extreme fringe may draw: Democracy, which many of them viewed as "kufr" or heresy to begin with, is rigged and violence is the only way to bring their dream of an Islamic state.
But to the millions of Egyptians who marched in the street against Morsi, the Islamists failed at democracy: They overreached.
The protesters became convinced the Islamists were using wins at the polls to centralize power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood far beyond their mandate and treat the country as if it accepted the "Islamist project." Even worse, for many of the protesters, the Islamists simply were not fixing Egypt's multiple and worsening woes.
That is a serious setback for their dreams, calling into doubt the argument by Islamists across the region that political Islam is the remedy to their society's ills. The damage to their prestige echoes widely, from Gaza where the Hamas rulers who saw in Morsi a strong ally, to Tunisia where a Brotherhood branch holds power, to Libya and Syria where Islamists push for power.
"The Brotherhood in Egypt is now a cautionary tale," said Michael W. Hanna of the Century Foundation in New York. "Morsi's abysmal performance during their short tenure is a tale of how not to guide and rule."
The irony is, the Brotherhood knew the risks going in. After the 2011 fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, the group vowed not to try to dominate parliament and not to run a candidate for president, knowing the backlash if it seemed to be grabbing power or if it led a government that failed to fix a broken Egypt. It went back on each of those promises, every time saying its hand was forced into doing so.
Morsi himself recognized the power of the street as he vowed to be a president for all the people. The day before his formal inauguration on June 30, 2012, he first delivered a symbolic oath of office in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolt that overthrew his autocratic predecessor.
"You are the source of power and legitimacy," he told the crowd. Nothing stands above "the will of the people. The nation is the source of all power. It grants and withdraws power."
