Forty-three members of pro-democracy, non-governmental organizations), including 19 Americans, face criminal charges in Egypt following raids on their offices.

Allegations that unlicensed foreign NGOs were directing their efforts at destabilizing Egypt are being investigated. This, plus a draft law presented to the Egyptian Parliament making it virtually impossible for NGOs to function there, raises more concerns about post-Mubarak Egypt.

Since President Hosni Mubarak's fall, the country has experienced flashes of violence. Among the first victims were Coptic Christians. Islamic leaders fired up followers to attack and burn a Coptic church. As Copts took to the street in protest, security forces, who failed to act to stop the church's destruction, sprang into action, killing Christian protesters.

Yet no investigations were launched by the government to hold those responsible accountable for inciting violence or using excessive force. Nor was any draft law submitted to protect minority religious rights.

Ironically, while guilty of inaction in investigating violence against the Copts, the military leadership takes action to investigate non-violent NGO activities. The sinister crime of which NGOs stand accused is "training parties on the electoral process."

It is unsurprising the military's prosecution of the NGOs is supported by a group long critical of the generals for failing to relinquish governmental control -- the Muslim Brotherhood. It should be obvious, therefore, both the generals and the Muslim Brotherhood envision educating Egyptians about democracy as "destabilizing."

A free election was but a vehicle the Muslim Brotherhood rode in to win the largest representative block in Parliament. Now, we can expect to see that vehicle garaged as the Muslim Brotherhood seals the fate of the people by writing a constitution preserving its power and allowing it to overreach the minority.

The Muslim Brotherhood's first real litmus test on democracy will be its vote on the draft NGO law.

While questions remain whether the generals approved the raids, they clearly have no interest in seeing the public educated about democracy as they are reluctant to relinquish the power they now enjoy. Although Mubarak served as president for 30 years, the military always served as the power center behind him. With power came wealth -- two things the army stands to lose should Egypt become a functioning democracy.

Thus, neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the generals are eager to see the seeds of democracy tilled in Egyptian soil.

An unheralded tradition among democratic nations is they rarely go to war with each other. Democratic people embrace the array of personal freedoms to which democracy gives rise, adhering to common values of human life that make military confrontation extremely unlikely. Although not flawless, "Democracy," as Winston Churchill once said, "is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."

Democracy has only become a danger to like-minded nations when seized by the wrong hands -- i.e., a driver uses democracy as a vehicle to power for the purpose of converting it into something other than democracy later.

The last century saw a democratic vote put Adolf Hitler in power, only to transition Germany into a military dictatorship that challenged the world's democracies.

Democracies haven't fared well in Muslim hands either.

In Pakistan, parliamentary democracy has yet to witness a president's full office term completed due to repeated military coups.

In Gaza, a democratic election in January 2006 put Hamas in power. Following victory at the polls, Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into southern Israel, which responded with an incursion called Operation Cast Lead. Hundreds of people died in the violence.

In Turkey, we see what has been hailed as the best example of democracy at work within the Muslim world. The country's prosperity today is attributed to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who established the Republic of Turkey in 1923 as a successor state to the Ottoman Empire.

A country with a 99 percent Muslim population, Ataturk recognized prosperity turned on the separation of state and Islam. He said Turks had to rely more on modern science and less on religion. He removed mention of Islam from Turkey's constitution, recognizing such linkage undermined true democracy.

Turkey's success within the Muslim world stems from almost nine decades of free thought, stimulated by releasing the Turkish people from the Islamic yoke binding their creative spirit. The army has felt compelled to keep Turkey's secular ship of state on course and away from Islamic "shoals," prompting the military, occasionally, to seize power to reset course.

When a deteriorating economy brought Turkey near collapse in 2001, the ruling party was voted out of office, replaced in 2002 by the Justice and Development Party, know by the Turkish initials AKP -- a party with Islamist roots.

While launching an economic recovery, the AKP has also been slowly drifting toward Islamic shoals. In 2007, it began trials based on allegations a shadowy uItra-nationalist organization had been plotting a coup for years.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, chairman of AKP's main opposition-the Republican People's Party, reports, "Many of those indicted have been detained for years without trial," including 10 percent of the army's generals. The absence of a single conviction suggests AKP mounted a witch hunt to impose a chilling effect on its opposition.

Today, however, rather than resorting to a coup, generals retire in protest. But while the army no longer interferes in politics, the AKP abuses the rights of those who oppose it. Additionally, it has reasserted government into religious affairs, closing the gap between the two that Ataturk's secular mandate opened.

In a Washington Post op-ed this month, Kilicdaroglu informs readers he recently visited Silivri Prison "where hundreds of journalists, publishers, military officers, academics and politicians are being held ... At work is an insidious attack on the rule of law" by the AKP. Not even legislators, immune by law from prosecution while serving, are spared. Kilicdaroglu warns, "Our democracy is regressing ..."

What is happening in Turkey is important in understanding what is happening in Egypt. In Turkey, even after a span of decades of secularism and democracy during which Islamic roots were abandoned, there remains an underlying consciousness to return to them. In Egypt, which never had the same experience, those roots have yet to even be abandoned.

(James. G. Zumwalt, is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer who heads Admiral Zumwalt and Consultants, Inc. He has published numerous articles in various publications and is author of "Bare Feet, Iron Will -- Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields.")

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)