Is Mubarak’s rule threatened?
Category Archives: Muslim Brotherhood
After Egypt’s ‘Day of Wrath’ protesters say ‘there’s a revolution coming’
“I’ve never seen men so angry, yet so happy to be expressing their anger,” Courtney Graves, an American living in Giza told the BBC, describing what she witnessed in Tahrir square in Cairo today. “I walked next to girls in hijabs screaming for the downfall of Hosni Mubarak. I walked behind men begging God for freedom.” At least three people died in clashes between police and demonstrators.
In Hillary Clinton’s assessment, “the Egyptian Government is stable,” although Gamal Mubarak, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s son who is widely tipped as his successor, has fled to London with his family, Arabic website Akhbar al-Arab said on Tuesday.
The Mubarak regime is clearly rattled and has blocked Twitter.
Christian Science Monitor reports:
A popular uprising in Tunisia may have just pushed out President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, but Egypt — the Arab world’s largest country with a vast security establishment — is something else again.
But activists, political analysts and average people in Egypt insist that something crucial shifted for Egypt today. Egyptian political scientist Mustapha Kamel Al Sayyid predicts that now the dam has broken, protests will continue. “the reservoir of discontent is huge,” he says. He adds it is much too soon to talk about a revolution in Egypt, where several factors would make a Tunisia-style toppling of Mubarak much more difficult.
Though both nations suffer from high unemployment and a have a large youth population, Egypt has a much smaller middle class than Tunisia. The regime’s power is not only concentrated in the security forces, as Tunisia’s was, but also in the Army. Tunisia’s military is credited with helping to bring about Ben Ali’s demise, while Egypt’s military is loyal to Mubarak, he says.
And while the corruption of Tunisia’s ruling family was a rallying point for protesters, corruption in Egypt extends further, meaning a widespread base of people who would have much to lose from the fall of the regime. Yet Egyptians have hope.
“All this is happening because we are not afraid,” said Shaimaa Morsy Awad, a young woman who held aloft an Egyptian flag during the protest. “Every day more people will join us. We are still weak, and there’s a lot of work we have to do. But there’s a revolution coming.”
Protests against government escalate in Egypt
Al Jazeera reports:
Two Egyptians have died after a wave of unusually large anti-government demonstrations swept across the country.
The two died in the eastern city of Suez, according to the Reuters news agency. The report did not detail how or when they died.
Thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets in demonstrations, reportedly the largest in years, that they have explicitly tied to the successful uprising in nearby Tunisia.
On Tuesday night, hours after the countrywide protests began, the interior ministry issued a statement blaming the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s technically banned but largest opposition party, for fomenting the unrest.
Inspired by events in Tunisia, thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo and elsewhere, calling for reforms and demanding an end to the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, which has now lasted for nearly three decades.
The demonstrations prompted US secretary of state Hillary Clinton to assert during a press conference that “Egypt’s government is stable.”
(Video by Mondoweiss contributor Ahmed Moor.)
The demand for dignity surpasses all others
There are those who want to portray the emerging trend of self-immolation across the Middle East as the expression of suicidal desperation. For instance, Adam Lankford, attempts to explain away the death of Mohamed Bouazizi — the man who triggered the Tunisian revolution — suggesting that:
By setting himself on fire near a government building during a period of political turmoil, Bouazizi must have anticipated that his act would be interpreted as a sign of political protest. And those who followed him were also no doubt aware of how their actions would be interpreted in this climate. However, it is relatively common for depressed and suicidal people to try to latch on to something bigger and more significant than themselves in their last moments on Earth — regardless of their primary agenda.
Subsequent deaths have been referred to as “copycats” — as though the most intensely solitary moment of anyone’s life would be shaped by thoughts of imitation.
Such observations are glib interpretations of death made by those who view it from a comfortably safe distance.
Michael Slackman recounts the story of an Egyptian man, Abdo Abdel-Moneim Hamadah, which is strikingly similar to that of Mohamed Bouazizi.
Mr. Hamadah had a small sandwich shop in Ismailia. The government bureaucracy suddenly denied him access to a monthly allowance of cheap, state-subsidized bread. After he set himself on fire, the government-controlled media said he was suicidal over that issue.
A relative said, however, that his protest was not about bread but dignity, the same intangible that drove Mr. Bouazizi to light himself on fire and that the governments here and around the region have yet to redress. The relative said Mr. Hamadah snapped after a government official agreed to give him back the bread, not because he was entitled to it, but as charity.
“They spoke to him like he was a beggar,” said the relative, who spoke anonymously for fear of government retribution. After Mr. Hamadah burned himself, the relative said, the government turned over the cheap bread.
“He got his rights,” the relative said. That, he said, was all Mr. Hamadah had been seeking.
In these acts of self immolation, individuals when stripped of every other power are asserting the one and only power they still possess: the power to end their own lives. Whether or not conceived as a revolutionary trigger, this is without question, a political action. It is a demand that the state not treat an individual life as worthless — a demand that such a life not be disregarded and treated with contempt.
The New York Times reports on the political shifts now evident in many quarters of the Middle East, through which ideology is being set aside in response to an even more urgent demand for the restoration of human dignity and liberation from oppression.
Egypt’s most powerful and proscribed opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has decided that it will not participate in an antigovernment demonstration this week for a curious reason: The protest conflicts with a national holiday honoring the police.
“We should all be celebrating together,” said Essam el-Erian, a senior member of the group, offering an explanation that seemed more in line with government thinking than that of an outlawed Islamist organization whose members are often jailed.
That type of calculation, intended to avoid a direct confrontation with the state, is helping build momentum, many here say, for a political evolution — in Egypt and around the region — where calls for change are less and less linked to a particular ideology like Islamism. Instead, analysts and activists say the forces that brought people to the streets in Tunisia and excited passions across the Middle East are far more fundamental and unifying: concrete demands to end government corruption, institute the rule of law and ease economic suffering.
This is a relatively nascent development in a society like Egypt, which has been depoliticized over the past three decades of President Hosni Mubarak’s one party, authoritarian rule, experts said. But the shift seems to be striking fear in the country’s leadership, which has successfully pacified opposition by oppressing those it cannot co-opt, but which remains anxious about the prospect of a popular revolt, political analysts and activists said.
“Ideology now has taken a back seat until we can get rid of this nightmare confronting everyone,” said Megahed Melligi, 43, a longtime member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who said he quit the group three years ago out of frustration. “This nightmare is the ruling party and the current regime. This is everyone’s nightmare.”
In 1979, the Iranian revolution introduced the Muslim world to the force of political Islam, which frightened entrenched leaders, as well as the West. That ideology still has a powerful hold on people’s imaginations across the region, which continues to feed fighters to jihadist movements. But like Arabism and socialism before it, the political Islam of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran and the radicalized ideology of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have failed to deliver in practical ways for the millions of people across the Middle East who live in bastions of autocratic rule.
That failure — and now the unexpected success of Tunisians in bringing down their government — appears to be at the heart of a political recalculation among some about how best to effect change in the Arab world. The Tunisians were joined together by anger at oppression and corruption rather than any overarching philosophy.
The Muslim Brotherhood — not a global menace
Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, in a report released last week, breathlessly warned that: “real progress [is] being made by the Muslim Brotherhood in insinuating shariah into the very heartland of America through stealthy means.”
Nathan J Brown knows a lot more about the Islamist organization than do the anti-shariah crusaders, and he says the international Muslim Brotherhood is “a group of loosely linked, ideologically similar movements that recognize each other, swap stories and experiences in occasional meetings, and happily subscribe to a formally international ideology without giving it much priority.”
[A]wareness of Islamist movements in the West has lead to some dark talk of an international Brotherhood that serves as a cover for all sorts of missionary, political, and even violent activity. From a solid core in the Arab world, the Brotherhood’s tentacles are said to be reaching out from Oslo to Oklahoma City.
I have conducted little research on the Brotherhood in Europe and the United States, but I have studied it in various Arab countries where the movement is the strongest and most active. Is there such a thing as an international Muslim Brotherhood uniting these branches? Yes. But the odd truth is that the international Brotherhood does not matter much. And perhaps the odder truth is that it does not seem to matter that the international Muslim Brotherhood does not matter.
[…]
Why does this international organization not matter? Because it has not (and probably cannot) do very much. First, it is sluggish and unresponsive. On the few occasions it has been called in to settle difficult organizational questions, it has not responded with efficiency or alacrity. For instance, in 1989 a dispute among Jordanian Brotherhood members about whether to accept an invitation to join the cabinet proved so contentious the disputants tried to kick the question upstairs to the international organization. The answer came far too late and contained too much ambiguity to resolve the issue. In 2007, Khalid Mish’al sought to have Hamas recognized as a distinct member of the international organization, setting off a complex organizational tussle inside the Jordanian organization. (Hamas has largely subsumed the Palestinian Brotherhood, which in turn was formally attached in the eyes of the international organization to the Jordanian branch — and some vestigial links survive between Hamas and the Jordanian Brotherhood as a result). One chief bone of contention focused on what would happen to Palestinian and Jordanian members in the Gulf (an important source of funds but also a group that sent representatives to the leadership bodies of the Jordanian organization, tilting it in a Palestinian direction). Three years later, the issues are still not fully resolved.Second, the international organization is not only sluggish, it is also Egyptian dominated. Its leader is always an Egyptian and Egyptian Brotherhood members have scoffed at the idea that a non-Egyptian might be selected. Badi’s election was approved by the international organization, but there was some grumbling about the rubber-stamp nature of the process. Most members do accept that the “mother organization” will inevitably have a leading role, but many also find the Egyptian leaders far more interested in Egyptian than international affairs. Egypt’s harsh security climate also hampers its leaders from becoming more active internationally — many Egyptian leaders cannot travel outside their country.
Finally, various chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood have developed an ethos of mutual deference: they increasingly hold fast to the idea that each chapter should be free to react as it sees fit to local conditions. The various chapters do consult each other, but they are free to reject the advice they receive. The Iraqi Islamic Party participated in a political process sponsored by the United States at a time when Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood refused contact with American officials because of the country’s occupation of Iraq. Aware of the conflicting stances, leaders of both organizations simply agreed to disagree. Hamas was advised by both Jordanian and Egyptian leaders not to try too hard in the 2006 parliamentary elections. “Participation, not domination” (that is, run but do not win) was the formula suggested to them. They listened to the first half of the message (they ran), but not the second (they won). Unlike their Jordanian and Egyptian comrades who only contest a minority of seats, they submitted a complete slate of candidates for parliamentary seats, enabling their surprising (and in the eyes of some Brotherhood leaders elsewhere) ill-advised victory.
It’s obvious, go talk to the Islamists
This nagging issue just will not go away: How do local or foreign governments best deal with leading Islamist groups in the Middle East and South Asia? Do you engage, negotiate with, ignore, or actively fight politically and militarily against Hizbullah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and other such groups that range widely along the spectrum of cultural and political activism and occasional armed militancy?
Since the rise of this generation of Islamists, native and Western governments alike have adopted two major strategies: politically containing movements like the Muslim Brotherhood by allowing them to have limited representation in toothless parliaments; and opposing or fighting more powerful movements like Hamas, Hizbullah, the Taliban and others that use military force for various reasons.
The results have been inconclusive, indeed largely unsatisfying. The Islamist movements continue to grow in most cases, to assert their power and legitimacy and share power in some countries, or to break away and rule on their own when that is the only option left to them. Only in Turkey have they assumed power nationally through a credible democratic process.
Two intriguing reports from the United States and Afghanistan in the past few days suggest that more realism may be creeping into the toolkit used to address this issue. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai is reported to have approved a plan designed to reintegrate low-level Taliban foot soldiers and commanders into the government forces, while simultaneously making peace with more senior leaders and their backers in Pakistan. This effort hopes to succeed where previous ones failed, by offering community leaders jobs, education and development programs that might bring an end to local fighting. Karzai sensibly assumes that foreign military power cannot prevail against armed nationals who believe they are fighting to liberate their country from foreign occupation.
The two key elements in the new approach are the acknowledgment that the Taliban are a credible force that must be engaged in negotiations for power-sharing, and that local developmental needs must be seriously addressed. In other words, both the Afghan government and its NATO backers acknowledge the political legitimacy and core grievances of the Taliban and their supporters.
In the United States, according to Mark Perry, blogging at the Foreign Policy website, a team of senior intelligence officers at US Central Command (CENTCOM) has just issued a report titled “Managing Hizbullah and Hamas,” that questions the current US policy of isolating and marginalizing these movements, and instead suggests a variety of approaches that would integrate them into their Lebanese and Palestinian mainstreams.
Perry notes that the most controversial finding is the one stating that “[t]he US role of assistance to an integrated Lebanese defense force that includes Hizbullah; and the continued training of Palestinian security forces in a Palestinian entity that includes Hamas in its government, would be more effective than providing assistance to entities – the government of Lebanon and Fatah – that represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively.”
The report says that while Hizbullah and Hamas “embrace staunch anti-Israel rejectionist policies,” the two groups are “pragmatic and opportunistic.” Perry adds that, “there’s little question the report reflects the thinking among a significant number of senior officers at CENTCOM headquarters – and among senior CENTCOM intelligence officers and analysts serving in the Middle East.”
That such ideas are being pondered by analysts and officers who actually know the realities of the Middle East – as opposed to staunchly anti-Islamist Washington politicians and pro-Israel proxies masquerading as American think tank analysts – is an important early signal of possible policy changes. Most Islamist movements indeed are pragmatic and opportunistic, as recent decades of their evolutions have shown; they are also heavily political and nationalist in nature, rather than mainly religious.
Most importantly, Islamist groups of all kinds – from the docile reciters of holy scripture and purveyors of charity to children, to the militant resistance fighters of Hamas and Hizbullah, to the occasional Al-Qaeda-type terrorists – are deeply driven by practical, identifiable grievances. These grievances are anchored in three main spheres: national socio-economic conditions, the autocratic policies of national governments and out-of-control security agencies in the Arab-Asian region, and the policies of foreign governments and armed forces (mainly American and Israeli) in the same region.
Addressing and ultimately relieving those underlying grievances is the key to dealing with these Islamist groups, most of which will transform or wither into other, non-militant organizations in the wake of a redress of grievances. It is heartening that some people in positions of authority and power in Afghanistan, NATO and the United States armed forces are now considering this rational approach to conflict-resolution, which seeks to promote peace and stability by politically addressing basic needs of justice and dignity.
What took them so long to embrace the obvious?
Talking to terrorists
The Washington Post has a passage from Mark Perry’s new book, Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage With Its Enemies. As Perry notes, talking to groups that the US government has labelled as “terrorists” is not only necessary but is a choice that has already been pursued and shown highly effective. As he recounts: “the real gamble in Iraq was not in deploying more troops to kill terrorists; the real gamble in Iraq was in sending marines to talk to them”.
This is how that happened:
On July 23, 2005 Marine Corps Colonel John Coleman was sitting at his desk at Camp Pendleton, Calif. when he received a telephone call from Jerry Jones – an assistant to then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Jones was frantic, telling Coleman that a group of Iraqi insurgents were battling an al-Qaeda militia at al-Qaim – an Iraqi city on the Syrian border.
“They need help,” Jones said. “It’s night there now, but they’re surrounded and if we don’t do something they’ll be wiped out.” Coleman acted quickly, placing a call to the Marine Corps headquarters at Camp Fallujah in Iraq.
The next morning, at sunrise, a “package” of Cobra helicopters attacked the al-Qaeda fighters, killing dozens and scattering the rest into the desert. “It was pretty nip and tuck there for awhile,” Coleman remembers, “but I had real confidence in the Marines.”
The little-known Marine intervention in al-Qaim is now seen as a turning point in America’s war in Iraq. It was the moment at which al-Anbar tribes – the insurgents — “awakened,” turning their guns on al-Qaeda and siding with the Americans.
But the Anbar Awakening did not happen suddenly.
For eighteen months prior to the Battle of al-Qaim, U.S. Marine Corps officers had been talking to the leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a series of meetings that began in Amman, Jordan in July of 2004. The meetings were opposed by senior State Department and Pentagon officials, who castigated the Marines for “talking to terrorists.” The Marines vehemently disagreed, quoting an insurgent leader whom they had met in Amman. “We are not your enemy,” this leader said. “Al Qaeda is your enemy. We’re different. We’re not terrorists, we’re the insurgents. There’s a difference.”
Can what the United States did in Iraq serve as a model for a larger strategy – one that will bring stability to the entire region? More specifically, should America recruit the region’s more moderate Islamist parties (like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood) to help in its fight against al Qaeda?
For most Americans, the suggestion seems outrageous; but for increasing numbers of policymakers, there are stark differences between the three groups and al-Qaeda: each of the movements has participated in national elections (Hamas won the parliamentary vote in the Palestinian territories in 2006, while Hezbollah and the Brotherhood hold seats in the Lebanese and Egyptian parliaments), each represents a distinct and growing constituency (and provides services for them), and each has rejected al-Qaeda’s Jacobin revolutionary ideology – and is targeted by bin Laden and his followers for actually endorsing democratic principles.
“Our habit of lumping all of these groups together, of putting Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in the same class as al-Qaeda is a terrible mistake,” former Pentagon official James Clad says. “Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are the three most important movements in the region today – and we don’t talk to any of them. I can understand not talking to al-Qaeda, they’re dead-enders and don’t represent anyone, but refusing to have a dialogue with groups that are respected in their own societies is short-sighted and counter-productive.”
Former Marine John Coleman would agree. In the wake of the Battle of al-Qaim, Coleman points out, the Anbar Awakening united 42 Anbar clans against al-Qaeda and transformed the war in Iraq.
“Our strategy was not simply a shift in American tactics, but in American thinking,” Coleman says. “It meant abandoning the easy language of the war on terrorism for a more sophisticated strategy.” Which is to say: the real gamble in Iraq was not in deploying more troops to kill terrorists; the real gamble in Iraq was in sending marines to talk to them.
Maybe that’s what we should be doing for the entire region.
The Muslim Brotherhood: new leadership, old politics
The Muslim Brotherhood: new leadership, old politics
There is no better way to take the temperature of Arab politics than to examine the state of the Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerful religiously-organised opposition movement in Egypt and the Arab world. With branches in several Arab and Muslim countries, the Brotherhood portrays itself as a more authentic, viable alternative to secular authoritarian rulers and religious extremists of the al-Qaida variety.
The recent election of a new leader, however, has utterly discredited those claims and exposed a serious rift within the 81-year-old Islamic organisation. After weeks of internal turmoil and infighting, the Brotherhood announced that it has chosen Mohammed Badie, an ultra-conservative veterinarian, as its eighth supreme leader since its founding in 1928, along with 16 members of its highest executive policy-setting “guidance bureau”.
Members of the old guard like Mahmoud Izzat, secretary general and gatekeeper of the Brotherhood’s finances and secrets, and Mohammed Akif, former supreme leader, who oppose opening up the organisation and democratising its decision-making, gained the upper hand. Ignoring the wishes of many younger members who called for transparency and respect for electoral rules, Izzat, Arif and their cohorts shoved the secretly-arranged results down the throats of opposition. [continued…]
Regional impact of the war on Gaza
Gaza attack strengthens Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood
Rarely do Egyptian demonstrations see thousands of people take to the streets. But, put together anti-Israeli and anti-government sentiments spearheaded by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, and the result is the country’s largest street action since the first anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq in 2004.
With Israel vowing a “long” siege against the Gaza Strip, there are concerns that the already strong opposition Brotherhood could become even stronger in the face of Israel’s military action against Palestinians.
On Monday, thousands of Egyptians marched in downtown Cairo, chanting phrases such as, “Off to Gaza we go, martyrs by the million,” and “We all belong to Hamas.”
The government and the military were as much to blame as Israel, activists said. “Where is the Egyptian army?” was another slogan chanted by the throngs of demonstrators.
“It is disappointing that while our Palestinian brothers and sisters are being killed, [President Hosni] Mubarak and his cronies sit by and do nothing. Only the Brotherhood is leading this country on the right path,” says Ahmed Said, a university student who is supporting the efforts of the Brotherhood. [continued…]
Al Jazeera: Arab League inaction (part one)
Al Jazeera: Arab League inaction (part two)
ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Breaking down barriers
Border crisis bolsters Islamists
Egypt’s main Islamist party and other opposition groups are strengthening their appeal by using images of desperate Palestinians streaming out of the Gaza Strip to provoke wider protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s 26-year-old government.
Demonstrations in Cairo and throughout the country by the Muslim Brotherhood and other political groups ostensibly have been staged to declare Egyptian solidarity with the residents of Gaza. But they are also aimed at weakening Mubarak, whom the groups accuse of oppression and criticize for economic shortcomings and close ties to Washington.
It is political theater punctuated with dangerous rhetoric. Mubarak’s vast intelligence and security forces are attempting to prevent pro-Palestinian protests from erupting into sustained nationwide anti-government rallies. But the Muslim Brotherhood and Kifaya, Arabic for “Enough,” an umbrella opposition group of leftists and nationalists, are determined to make just that happen. The Muslim Brotherhood has sponsored 80 demonstrations since Wednesday, when hundreds of thousands of Gazans began pouring into Egypt through a breached border wall. [complete article]
Editor’s Comment — However Israel, Egypt, the United States, and Mahmoud Abbas wrestle with the issue of “restoring security” along the Gaza border, the political symbolism is inescapable: Those who tear down walls will always be seen as the champions of freedom and those who struggle to raise those barriers back up will appear threatened by freedom.
FEATURE: Ikhwan bloggers
In September 2007, the Society of Muslim Brothers, Egypt’s largest organized political force, released a draft political party platform to a select group of around 50 Egyptian intellectuals. The response was scathing. Planks such as those advocating formation of a “higher council” of religious scholars with what looked like a legislative role and a ban on a female or Christian head of state triggered an avalanche of complaint from friend and foe alike. For the Brothers’ enemies, the draft platform was a gift from heaven, revealing at last the Islamist organization’s “true face” and justifying the constitutional ban on political parties with a “religious basis,” strengthened by the government in March with the clear purpose of preventing the Brothers from becoming a legal party. As the debate unfolded, however, a novel feature of the Brothers’ “true face” began to emerge: sustained criticism of the platform posted by young Muslim Brothers on their personal blogs. “Is this the platform of a political party or a religious organization?” queried one youthful blogger, ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Mahmoud. The posts, in turn, generated another sharp debate, not only about the platform, but also about what it means to be a member of the Brothers and the limits of public dissent.
These online discussions are a manifestation of a new trend among young Muslim Brothers and a dynamic new force inside the organization. As of the spring of 2007, there were an estimated 150 bloggers in the organization—an impressive number given that less than a year before there had been virtually none. At home in cyberspace, blogging Brothers have more in common with other young Egyptian activists, whether leftist or nationalist, than they do with their less wired peers. Their jibes at the draft platform, along with those of secular commentators, were undoubtedly one reason why the draft party platform was withdrawn for revision in late October (though leaders have said the offending clauses in the platform will not be altered). [complete article]
OPINION: The West’s silence on Egypt’s assault on human rights
The justice systems in Britain and the US may not be perfect. But viewed from Egypt, the jurisprudence and transparency that attend the vast majority of trials there are very much to be envied.
In Cairo today, some 40 leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood are facing a secret military tribunal. Thirty sessions have been held so far, while all journalists, reporters and domestic or international human rights observers have been denied access. These members of the country’s most powerful political opposition – which holds about a fifth of the seats in Egypt’s parliament – stand before this tribunal despite civilian courts acquitting them four times of all charges brought by the notorious state security prosecutor, describing them as “fabricated, groundless, and politically motivated”.
They are standing before the tribunal despite a court ruling that found the president’s decision to transfer them to a military tribunal “unconstitutional”, on the basis that they are civilian opposition leaders who should be tried by civilian courts. The treatment of these representatives of the region’s largest Islamist movement, which advocates a moderate, peaceful approach, has been roundly condemned by international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. [complete article]
NEWS & OPINION: Egypt’s struggle for democracy
Cairo moving more aggressively to cripple Muslim Brotherhood
After imprisoning or prodding into exile Egypt’s leading secular opposition activists, the government is using detentions and legal changes to neutralize the country’s last surviving major political movement, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Brotherhood leaders and rights groups contend the government is clearing the stage of opponents in politics, civil society and the news media ahead of the end of the 26-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, who is 79. Egyptians widely expect the transition to be tense and that Mubarak’s son Gamal will be a top contender. [complete article]
Of all the puzzling remarks made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, naming Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his regime as one of America’s strongest and most strategic allies in the Middle East is perhaps the most puzzling.
anti-americanism.jpgWhat is strange about the statement is that it portrays one of the strongest proponents of anti-Americanism in the Middle East as one of America’s closest friends. It seems that Ms Rice, just like other senior politicians and decision-makers in America, were fooled by the Egyptian regime’s international facade, which does not reveal its reality. [complete article]
OPINION: The Muslim Brotherhood is not at odds with its democratic rivals
The Muslim Brotherhood will stand up for all Egyptians
In her opinion article, [Mona] Eltahawy criticizes the Muslim Brotherhood’s leader, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, for calling her “naked” because she was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt and pants. I could not agree more with her.
Not wearing the hijab, or headscarf, makes a woman unveiled, not naked. I realize how offensive it is to call someone “naked” for not wearing a headscarf, and I find Akef’s comment unjustifiable.
To be clear, I support Akef’s stance on wearing the hijab, and like him view it as a religious obligation. There has been consensus on that among Islamic scholars for centuries.
Yet this has got nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood as a political group. While we believe that wearing the hijab is an obligation, we believe it is an individual woman’s choice to uphold it — a choice that the state should not interfere in. [complete article]
OPINION: The rise of political Islam
Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam
The Bush administration proclaimed in 2004 that the promotion of democracy in the Middle East would be a major foreign policy theme in its second term. It has been widely perceived, not least in Washington, that this policy has failed. Yet in many ways US foreign policy has succeeded in turning Muslim opinion against the corrupt monarchies and decaying nationalist parties who have ruled the region for 50 years. The irony is that rather than turning to liberal secular parties, as the neocons assumed, Muslims have lined up behind parties most clearly seen to stand up against aggressive US intervention.
Religious parties, in other words, have come to power for reasons largely unconnected to religion. As clear and unambiguous opponents of US policy in the Middle East – in a way that, say, Musharraf, Mubarak and Mahmoud Abbas are not – religious parties have benefited from legitimate Muslim anger: anger at the thousands of lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq; at the blind eye the US turns to Israel’s nuclear arsenal and colonisation of the West Bank; at the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the incarceration of thousands of Muslims without trial in the licensed network of torture centres that the US operates across the globe; and at the Islamophobic rhetoric that still flows from Bush and his circle in Washington.
Moreover, the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources. Hence the strong showing, for example, of Hamas against the blatantly corrupt Fatah in the 2006 elections in Palestine. Equally, the dramatic rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon has not been because of a sudden fondness for sharia law, but because of the status of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah’s leader, as the man who gave the Israelis a bloody nose, and who provides medical and social services for the people of South Lebanon, just as Hamas does in Gaza. [complete article]
OPINION NEWS: Muslim Brotherhood; Egypt’s crackdown on the press
I will stand up for the Muslim Brotherhood
…as that same secular, liberal Egyptian Muslim, I believe I must defend the Brotherhood’s presence on Egypt’s political stage. If I don’t, then I am just as guilty as the regime that has for decades sucked the oxygen out of the body politic — and with Gamal Mubarak being groomed to take over the presidency from his aging father, the regime seems set to rule for another generation.
Besides the state, the Brotherhood is the last man standing in Egypt. We’re down to the state and the mosque. The Muslim Brotherhood must remain on Egypt’s political stage, not least so that its ideas are out in the open and can be challenged.
I was in Egypt in 2005 when the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats in parliamentary elections, and I remain unconvinced that the majority of Egyptians would vote for them in free and fair elections. Less than 22% of Egyptians turned out to vote in 2005, which to me says most Egyptians want neither the state nor the mosque. They want a real choice. [complete article]
Egypt extends crackdown to press
Ibrahim Eissa, an Egyptian editor and columnist whose newspaper, Al Dustour, has become a byword for the kind of journalism that courts controversy and attacks government limits on free speech, doesn’t look like a man facing a year in prison.
He’s smiling and almost jolly in his downtown Cairo office as he attacks the verdict against him – for the crime of defaming President Hosni Mubarak – and predicts he’ll lose his appeal.
“If you make the decision to be an opposition journalist here, you have to have the demeanor to carry yourself through all sorts of situations,” he says. “But am I hearing that there’s some kind of deal out there to keep me out of jail? No. The regime has given up on me. The regime is panicking and sees anyone that writes the truth about them as dangerous.” [complete article]