A Ramble on Egypt

By Richard T. Sale, author of Traitors.

Islam is on the march in the Middle East.  For the past few years, in every
Mideast election, the Islamic parties have won: in the Gaza Strip in 2006, in Iraq
and Tunisia in 2010. In 2011, they won again in Turkey and Morocco, and in
Egypt the Islamist parties confirmed an overwhelming victory in the first
parliamentary elections since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt represents the new reality. In February 2011, its youth, liberals, and leftists at last gave voice to theirlong-suppressed outrage over the economic and social injustice of Mubarak’s regime. Within a few weeks, a senior U.S. official passed the word to Egypt’s military that Mubarak had to step down. “It is time for him to go,” the U.S.
official said, and Mubarak did, ending a thirty-year rule.

This was a hardly a revolution, however. It was a revolt, with a dictator being removed, but leaving in place the old military structure that continued to run the country. To the leftists, the youth, and the liberals, who had fully expected that their democratic idealism would own the future of the country, the recent Islamic victory left them stunned and dismayed. Like many in the U.S. media, they were the prisoner of
words like, “democracy,” “liberty,” “the future,” and “the needs of the
individual,” phrases that have been used by so many countries in so many parts
of the world and in so many different ways, that they have become weak,
hackneyed, and dangerously vague. 

Team of Rivals

The views of the authority of religion and its social effects of its severe moral
discipline are currently at the heart of the disputes between Al-Nour and the
Muslim Brotherhood.

The emergence of two huge blocs of Islamic
interests in Egypt gave the United States pause. The United States is
inextricably bound to the success of these new Middle East movements.  It is an aged cliché that we in the West re addicted to oil but in the past, US ideals like transforming the social,political, and economic structures of the region were quaint and appealing, butspreading unrest and dangerous chaos raised horrible visions, because the
United States has long been a victim of strategic necessity and could do little
more than make intermittent efforts to further modest reform while buttressing
the status quo. It wanted popular change, but to back the protestors meant
estranging long-standing allies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain, who
feared that US support for democratic change would destabilize their own
regimes After Mubarak’s fall Jordan's King Abullah II was asked
whether the region's leaders could still depend on the United States. With
shocking candor, Abdullah responded, "I think everybody is wary of dealing
with the West...Looking at how quickly people turned their backs on Mubarak, I
would say that most people are going to try and go their own way."

Religion can be a common bond but it also divides. The other big winner of Egypt’s recent election was the MuslimBrotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The one thing the Salafists share with the Muslim Brotherhood is their distrust of each other.  The Brotherhood members wear suits and ties,
and many are upwardly mobile professionals. Its critics say it is secretive,
arrogant, and devoted only to its own interests. Its chief strength is in the
middle class. By contrast, the Salafist strength rests with the poor; the men
dress in gowns and sandals, and the elders wear full beards and use scripture
in expressing their ideas. Their followers deny any separation between religion
and politics. Many leading Brotherhood members profess they are at heart
Salafist. Both agree that Islam should be the paramount ideal and influence in
daily life. And there are sinister similarities of outlook between the
Brotherhood and Al- Nour. Like the Salafists, Brotherhood leaders have put
Islamic law over economic common sense, calling for a ban on beach bathing,
alcohol, and bikinis, despite the fact that these are the chief engine for Egypt’s
tourism, which makes up about 10 percent of the country’s stagnating
economy.  The Brotherhood has also been
busy bolstering new legislation that would curb foreign funding of
non-governmental-organizations, thus drastically undermining Washington’s
ability to support pro-democratic reform.

The Al-Nour party, founded in 1985 and now an odd alloy of conservative and formerly militant groups, suddenly emerged
into the spotlight in the spring of 2011. The party had close ties to Saudi
Arabia, hardly a bastion of democratic change. The Saudis have offered a safe
haven for fallen Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, and Riyadh gave
$100 million from the oil-rich Wahabi kingdom to the Salafists.  Al-Nour was also getting money from the oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf. For example, Kuwait and Qatar gave $50 million
in 2011 alone.

The Al-Nour politicians are austere, profoundly religious, devoted to the literal interpretation of the Koran. When the party considers Egypt’s new destiny, it looks to the ancient past rather than the future.  To them, Islam is the
soul of Egypt, and they are busy assembling a political program whose goal is
to emulate the pure Islam proclaimed by Mohammad and his Companions almost fourteen hundred years ago. The overall objective of Al-Nour is the preservation of
Egypt’s Islamic identity, which the Salafists believe is under attack by
liberals and “foreign forces.” Its chief aim is to ensure a prominent role for
Islam in every aspect of life.

Religion as Collective Power

“Religion is the soul of culture,” said
Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, the epigram has taken on a new meaning.
Islam, like Christianity, is a religion of human salvation. Under Mubarak, the
Islamics were given approval to work in mosques, and work they did.  In one city, the Islamic clergy built over seventy-seven mosques, and all over the country they quietly established a vast and effective network of charities that provided social services for the unfortunate. For example, adherents of Al- Nour gave aid to the sick and poor;
they paid stipends for widows and divorcees; they gave money for young women
needing marriage trousseaus; they gave cut-rate food for religious feasts; and
they provided water buffaloes with easy repayment terms for landless peasants.
And, of course, there was a lot of religious instruction.

There are major historical difference between US democracy and Islam. The social
contract of the Puritans excluded much of the population, but its
congregational ideal was at heart democratic. And according to historians like
Hibbert and Dawson, it meant that society was not an external order imposed on the individual by authority and tradition, but a spiritual community in which membership involved personal acts of conviction and self-surrender. 

It didn’t last. The earlier United States ideals of state regulation and local cooperation were replaced by laissez faire. The United States abandoned its Christian tradition of caring for the weak and the poor and adopted a harsher doctrine that made poverty the result of sloth or incompetence. The first half of
the eighteenth century showed a decline in the simplicity and equality of
America’s early years.   Society became a victim of growing secularization where money was transformed from the root of all evil to the mainspring of social life.

Forming a Government

Most Egyptians suffer from grinding poverty, are ill-educated, and were condemned to almost unending misery under the old Mubarak system. Doors to opportunity were shut. The Brotherhood says that this must be changed. With their boundless optimism
and their hypnotic fascination with ideals, they ignore the fact that there is in Egypt no tradition of discussion as a way of founding and governing a country. The exchange of views, the weighing of alternatives, verbal restraint, reasonableness, and the development ofdiscerning judgment on political matters is missing because Egyptian masses have no practice in these things.

Thanks to the fact that early American colonies were governed by British officials
rather than by royal governors of France and Spain who ruled by decree, in
colonies like Virginia, the inhabitants very early enjoyed a large measure of
self-government.  New legislatures governed by convening meetings of their members, and colonists acquired training in drawing up bills and measures expressing their grievances, ideals and demands, their actions protected by parliamentary laws. Egypt and most ofthe Middle East have no comparable experience.

In fact, the Salafists are hostile to democracy. In the beginning, they eschewed
politics as “the work of the devil” and loathed elections because they were
infiltrated by “whores and Zionists.” Ultraorthodox Islamics believe that the
rule of man rather than God is a sin.

It pays to recall that France in 1789 had the world’s most democratic
constitution in history.  It had nobureaucracy, and no centralized administrative authority. The King was afigurehead, the ministers almost powerless. 
King Louis XVI protested, quite rightly, that the government couldn’t
control a country the size of France.  He saw that authority was so divided and restricted that the government no longer had any effective control over the country and freedom was so elaborately, almost neurotically protected that it was smothered under the burden of ceaseless elections. This could happen in Egypt.

That the ultraorthodox Islamists like Al-Nour wield great power there is no doubt. Its reach and its resources make it an impressive example of the worship of collective human power.  But Hibbert and Dawson wrote of France’s
revolution that Louis XVI (who had little political insight), denounced the
Jacobins as an “immense corporation, more dangerous than any that had formerly
existed,” whose power would inevitably nullify the actions of the government.
The power of Islam, backed by centuries of submission to its religious power,
may instill a common will in the bulk of the people in defiance to our wishes.
Each group must strive to realize what lies uniquely in its bones, in its essential features, circumstances, and peculiarities that act to create customs, traditions, and initiate talents and the outcome of Egypt’s struggles may not resemble anything we esteem.

It pays to remember that despite the recent surge of the Salafists,
for now, nowhere has an Islamist bloc been able to win the support of a
majority of the electorate. In Egypt, Islamist parties contested the
parliamentary elections as part of a coalition designed to hide their identity.
Labeled more frankly in the presidential race, the two Islamist candidates, Al
Nour and the Muslim Brotherhood won the support of around 30 percent of the
vote in a 42 percent turnout.

 

But there is a concern here that won’t go away. A former veteran US intelligence source who lived in Cairo for years told me that America’s main worry centers on Egypt experiencing an Islamic landslide in which the Islamics secure a majority and then gradually leverage their legislative authority to divest the military of its traditional power and start to outlaw political opponents. If that occurs, Egypt could start linking
with similar groups in Tunisia, Syrian, Libya, and Yemen, which would be
catastrophic and that thought numbs the mind.

 

Comments

[turcopolier]

All

Egypt is inherently poor. It lacks the natural resouces and markets needed to industrialize successfully in the face of a population growth that devours any advance in economic product. At the same time the population embraces unlimited population growth as a good. In this situation the presence of a large number of poor is regrettable but unavoidable. pl

[Matthew]

Col: I watched an old Michael Wood documentary last night called "Legacy." He noted that starting in the 13th Centuary, England's average family size declined in conjuction with the rise of private property rights. The womb is the most basic form of power.

Doesn't Egypt suffer from this paradox: its population growth rate will not slow without economic development, but robust economic development cannot occur until the propulation growth rate slows?

[turcopolier]

Matthew

Egypt has been through repeated cycles of economic growth by design beginning in the time of Muhammad Ali. Each was followed by massive population growth. The English example does not seem to apply. pl

[William RAISER]

I'm about to give up on any "intelligent" discussion of the "Arab spring" and its aftermath. I think none of us know enough or are close enough to the unfolding situation to have anything much to contribute.

I find amazing the constant concern about Islam and Islamists and no concern about the influence of US neo-liberalism in the area. All the various global forces are fighting to gain position while the people suffer.

My major hope for Egypt comes from the workers' movements that have been active and gaining experience for quite some time now. They might be able to advance the cause of the people in the face of all our outside forces: Islamic, American and European.

I wish them well but; given the experience of the US in its war for independence and France, among others, in its revolution I don't look for any quick resolution of the issues in the coming months. We took years/decades. I expect MENA will also. For all our sakes, I wish them well.

[505thPIR]

"The exchange of views, the weighing of alternatives, verbal restraint, reasonableness, and the development ofdiscerning judgment on political matters is missing because Egyptian masses have no practice in these things"

nor does congress....

As for the rest, Mr. Sale seems dead on except for his fears at the end. Leave em to their own devices...we need to work on our own societies in "The West". If ours work and their's implodes...well, we are a model to follow. If we don't get ourselves right, we are more hopeless than we are now.

[toto]

Sir:

If this link works, it seems that the birth rate of Egypt has gone down steadily over the last 50 years, to reach a rather unremarkable 2.73 births per woman. Still well above replacement rate though!

I added Algeria and India for comparison. Notice the sharpness of the demographic transition in Algeria.

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:EGY:USA:IND:ALG&ifdim=region&tdim=true&tstart=-298584000000&tend=1310788800000&ind=false

[turcopolier]

toto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_of_Egypt#Population

pl

[turcopolier]

william raiser

"I'm about to give up on any "intelligent" discussion of Ithe "Arab spring" and its aftermath. I think none of us know enough or are close enough to the unfolding situation to have anything much to contribute"

Bye. Bye. I will continue to state my views pl

[Medicine Man]

From 36.3m in 1971 to 81.5m 2008. That's astonishing.

[Matthew]

If only Egypt's birthrate mirrored your banishment rate...

[Arun]

Off-topic, but to note that the National Rifle Associate opposes the Senate DISCLOSE act, that would require groups to disclose publicly the sources of campaign-related funding exceeding $10,000.

[JohnH]

Republican elites have successfully managed to attract the support of Christian fundamentalists--even to the extent of nominating a Mormon!--and still advance their pro-business agenda. I don't see why Egyptian politicians wouldn't do the same, maybe with a little advice from their friends in the US.

There is no inherent contradiction between the doctrines of the MB and the salafis and making money. The petro-monarchs of the Persian Gulf are ample proof of that.

Personally, I would not like to live in an Islamic fundamentalist state any more than I'd like to live in a Christian fundamentalist state or a Jewish one.

But what is the real issue here? Does anyone
here think we can tell Egyptians how to run their social and religious lives any more than we tell Zionists?

Or is the fear that Egyptian religious fundamentalism is really nationalization, like Zionism? If so, that flame is lit. Credit Zionism and savage capitalist, secular elites, who provided all the fuel needed.

[turcopolier]

JohnH

Since you do not value the interests of the United States, no argument that I could make would be effective. BTW, the Mormon claim to being Christian is very weak. that's why Romney does not want to talk about it. pl

[Alba Etie]

Col Lang
If the US government had not asked Leader Mubarak to step down - would he still be in power ? How realistic would it have been not to expect that the Mubarak regieme would eventually have fallen anyway ? It looks like Egypt could possible go the way of Turkey -and ostensibly find some middle ground between the Salafist and the Military ruling that country . But then again we are cautioned that Erdogan may noy yet be done with his Islamic reforms.
Given the rapid rise of the radical fundamentalist in the Midle East and North Africa this might be why Russia and PRC are still supporting al Assad .
Its appears to be a train wreck - this Arab Spring .

[confusedponderer]

I have a hunch that Mr. Sale has in mind not so much how the West would react but how Israel, would act in face of such 'encirclement - probably violently.

Should regime change in Syria succeed, I wouldn't be surprised if we get to see something resembling a joint Israeli/ Saudi-funded attempt to crush Hezbollah - which would be cheered on by neo-cons and neo-wilsonians alike - naturally before the Saudi-funded entities predictably turn on Israel (their presumable priorities being: Fighting the apostates and heretics first, and then the heathens).

Ironically, the Israelis would likely be better off finally making a deal with Hezbollah and the Palestinians, because of Hezbollah's discipline, restraint and comparable moderation. But that would mean making compromises, and that would require Israel conceding something, anything - and that is utterly unacceptable to the likes of Netan-yahoo.

Only a complete and unconditional Siegfrieden that imposes Israeli will on the enemy will ever be enough. Since that is utterly impossible to achieve, and since the Israelis are unwilling to compromise, there will be no peace. From their perceived position of strength the Israelis can, even in light of the shifting geo-political tectonics of the region, afford themselves the US subsidised luxury of not having a peace.

For that end, it may appear preferable to them to not have a partner for peace. It would be highly illuminating to see Israel's policy of targeted assassinations be analysed in that regard.

An Israeli desire to not have a partner for peace would handily account for Arafat's death. Having Syria and Lebanon in chaos would do fine in that regard also.

Of course that is a foolhardy approach. Kicking the can down the road, hoping that tomorrow will be a better day, as the Israelis do, is just crazy, but it appears to me that it is precisely what amounts to Israel's strategy for decades.

That lack of realism aside, I was struck by the deep cynicism on display when the Obama administration scolded the Palestinians for investigating Arafat's probably murder, because it would have a detrimental effect on the peace process. What a sad joke. Peace process? What peace process are they talking about? The one where the Israelis refused unprecedented Vichy-esque concessions, even on Jerusalem, as simply being not good enough? Grotesque.

[Matthew]

"[T]rain wreck" for whom?

None of the secular regimes were working. The Arabs--like the Europeans before them--will stumble along until they find a system that works.

[JohnH]

Let me get this straight. The salafi promoting royals in Saudi Arabia and Qatar are America's best friends. But salafis in Egypt (funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar) represent a threat to America's interests, in part because they would set a bad example.

Pardon me for my confusion.

[Al Spafford]

I turned my NRA hat and membership card back in to the org in the '80s when they fought the ban on coated bullets that could pierce police vests. They are too often, too extreme.

[turcopolier]

John H

Your confusion derives from the fact that the Saudi Wahhabis are not really our friends. We are stupid enought to allow them to convince the half assed people in the foreign policy establishment that they are our friends. The relationships with Qatar and SA are entirely transactional. they understand that. We don't because we insist on believing what they say to us. Tell me you are a student. Please tell me that. Give me hope. pl

[JohnH]

Well, let's call a spade a spade.

Salafis are not a threat because of their religion per se. They are a threat because they are populists. They claim to represent the people, not wealthy entrenched interests.

We can argue about whether they are misguided or not. I personally don't like their social agenda. And I doubt that they have much of an economic one.

For some reason those spinning the foreign policy narrative don't want to call a spade a spade, preferring to cloak the message in Crusader-like images.

[turcopolier]

John H

You are altogether wrong about salafis. I have heard this fable for so long that I find it unspeakably boring. Salafis are Islamic zealots who hate the West because they see the world as a moiety in which they and their god are at war with the western alternative to the world they seek. people like you who do not accept the power of belief always insist that salafism is a screen behind which the truth lies whether this be a secret populism, agrarian reform, pragmatism in internatioal affairs. this belief is a matter of religion for you because your mind has been destroyed by the dogmas of political science. I weary of you. pl

[Kunuri]

Very interesting discussion, Egypt being the Petri dish of the Arab spring, all other Arab countries being peripheral...

Salaphists and Moslem Brotherhood have a rude awakening coming their way. If they can't make the trains run on time or find employement for those millions seeking some way out, they will not last long. Unless they learn how to put on suits and ties and trudge around the world looking for markets for their products, partners to establish factories, level field for trade, international standards etc etc...once people quelch their thirst for religious freedom much supressed, they would realize that Koran course does not guarantee the means for them to buy that new plasma TV ...

Nothing to worry about here, unless they find a way to integrate their Islamism with a working capitalist system, they are toast. I say let them try the spiritual way out of poverty and underdevelopement first, however messy. The second Arab spring will deliver. Or the Arab summer, time to reap what is sown in spring.

[Kunuri]

Alba Etie, in Turkey what passes as Erdogan reforms are nothing but a roll back of Ataturk reforms. People were not very happy with the dogmatic statism of the original elite once the immidiate dangers to the nation passed, so they have given a chance to a religious oriented administration. Fine, let's see how they like it. I know for a fact that people here don't like being denied their Raki, basic freedoms, free press, constant religious nonsense bombardment over the airwaves, an emasculated Army, rigged judicial system, turbans and slippers in the metro, hicab wearing women on the fine beaches, and their entertainment can not be denied. AKP came to power with the votes of the undereducated, disadvantaged and alienated traditional understrata of the Turkish society, but they are no longer that. They have become a prosperous middle class, all for the best. It would be hard now to subject them to a sheria law or a military dictatorship. If you have a sense of humor, you would find it funny as I do, a hicab wearing young woman on an Istanbul street, wearing Italian stiletto high heel pumps messaging on her blackberry next to her best friend in her total Seattle grunge hippy outfit.

But the point is, and the irony, the more the Islamists open to the world, the more they lose their hold on power over their people. And if they don't open up to the world, they still lose because they can not provide economic developement and relief from poverty for their people. And if they don't have democratic institutions and basic freedoms they can not have economic developement. Egypt will have to test and break this paradox, hopefully soon. This is the reason I am not too worried about the salafists and the moslem brotherhood there, they have a losing proposition in front of them.

[Kunuri]

Sorry, probobly won't get posted by Sayin Albayim, but totally incoherent comment above. Surprised that it warranted a reply by the good Colonel-by the way, Sir, you have kindled a new interest in me about the Civil War. Amazing how normal, typical human beings of 90 % of all those Generals were with all their petty egotisms and shortfalls. And how the guy who pulls the trigger and the one who orders it has not changed in 150 years.

[Larry Kart]

The Colonel's "this belief is matter of a religion for you" is perfect and true. No belief system can be more fierce than that of the adamantly wised-up. I've been one of those myself at times and can still feel the pull of those wised-up certainties, much as I now try to resist.