http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1037/sc70.htm
3 - 9 March 2011
Issue No. 1037
Special
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
Islam in the insurrection?
Few of the country's religious groups supported the protests leading to the
Egyptian revolution, with many of them being opposed and revealing the limits
of their version of contestation, write Hossam Tammam and Patrick Haenni
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Click to view caption
Muslims and Copts protested in Tahrir and other Egyptian governorates
demanding the departure of Mubarak
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While the exact nature of the actors who triggered the revolt on 25 January,
the date of the first call to go out into the streets to protest against the
regime of former president Hosni Mubarak, is not yet entirely known, two things
at least are clear.
The first demonstrations in Tahrir Square were led by young people from the
various protest movements that have structured Egyptian politics over the last
two years, these having little clear ideological orientation and being a
mixture of democratic aspirations, nationalist references and a leaning to the
left.
It is also clear that the Muslim Brotherhood, like the country's other
established political forces, was not present at the start of the uprising, and
Egypt's religious establishment, like other political actors, was forced to
respond to the uprising as it unfolded.
While positions varied, no religious actors supported the unfolding revolution,
and most were distrustful of it. As a result, an Iranian-type scenario is
unlikely to develop in Egypt, since the country's religious leaders and the
demonstrators have not reached a moment of communion.
GAPS BETWEEN RELIGION AND STREET: The reaction of the Muslim Brotherhood to the
demonstrations was a confused one. At first, it condemned the protests, before
getting sucked in by the dynamism of the demonstrations. The Brotherhood then
tried to open up negotiations with the demonstrators, though these were
unwelcome to the latter who had shown themselves to be bolder than the
Brotherhood in their demands.
This boldness was not necessarily the position of all Egyptians, many of whom
would have settled for a compromise, with Mubarak running the transition and
the demand for democracy postponed until the next elections. The voice of the
street was not necessarily the will of the people, however, though the
country's Islamist groups were without doubt the most detached from it. Various
Salafist groups, among them the Muslim Brotherhood, condemned the demonstrators
from the time of their first appeals onwards.
As for the country's official religious institutions, both Muslim, in the shape
of Al-Azhar and Dar Al-Iftaa, and Christian, in the shape of the Coptic
Orthodox Church, these had ties to the regime and were even further from
grasping the new revolutionary spirit.
The grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed El-Tayeb, first supported the regime and
only later changed course with some difficulty and began talking of the demands
made by the demonstrators using vocabulary that was less well aligned with that
of the regime. However, this change of course happened very late in the day,
and at the height of the demonstrations in early February El-Tayeb called for
calm, condemning the deaths of the demonstrators but not saying clearly that
these had been caused by a regime that had resorted to violence using its usual
methods as well as young thugs recruited from the poorer parts of town.
For his part, the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenouda,
called on the Christian population throughout the uprising not to join the
protests.
The attitude of the leadership of the clerical institutions, both Christian and
Muslim, was badly received by the people, and it risks jeopardising the
leaderships' relationships with their followers over the long term. This was
seen in the anger of the young Copts in Tahrir Square when they heard the
position being taken by Pope Shenouda, as well as in the resignation of
Al-Azhar's vice spokesman Mohamed Rifaa El-Tahtawi, who then joined the
demonstrators on the streets, and the number of Al-Azhar preachers and imams
who joined the protest movement while wearing their official clothing.
The huge numbers of people who abandoned the official mosques on the Fridays of
the demonstrations to join the demonstrators showed the crisis of communication
that was taking place between the religious establishment and the people.
Fatwas calling for calm were disregarded, and many among the country's Copts
also joined the protests.
The prayers of Copts side by side with Muslims in the streets showed a double
rejection, being both a rejection of the regime, and also a rejection of the
church's political support for a regime that many Copts feel has done nothing
for them. Copts complain that the previous regime was responsible both for the
growing Islamisation of Egypt and for the separation of Egyptian identities
along confessional lines.
Strangely enough, it was a person whom everyone had thought would be the least
inclined to get involved in politics, Amr Khaled, the young preacher and
religious conscience of the Muslim middle classes, who supported the protest
movement most openly. Khaled supported the uprising from the start, issuing
political demands, notably for the revision of the constitution, and calling on
activists from his network of development initiatives to support the protests.
He also promised to send "50,000 young people into the streets to protect
public institutions."
Khaled went to Tahrir Square in person several times and called on the regime
to "listen to the demands of the young people". If Khaled has been becoming
increasingly politicised, this was clearly accelerated and clarified by the
protests.
RECONCILIATION AND REVOLUTION: The Salafist groups found themselves deeply at
odds with the dynamic of the streets. From the start and up to now, their
position has been unequivocal: to boycott the protest movement because protest
means chaos. It is better to choose the iniquity of the regime than be led into
the void that opposing it could open up. The Salafists base their views on a
fatwa issued by the mediaeval Islamic thinker Ibn Tamiya, which says that 70
years of iniquitous rule are better than one day without rule.
Yet, influential Salafist sheikhs in Egypt, especially those who have
established strong positions through religious satellite television channels
such as Al-Nas and Al-Rahma, also scaled down their overall objections. As the
protest movement grew, they stopped opposing it and instead tried to contain
it, making do with reminders of the importance of protecting public property
and underlining the need to oppose thugs and gangs.
This Salafist theology of political submission, present through the influence
of Saudi sheikhs Rabia Al-Madkhali and Mohamed Aman Al-Jami, had the blessing
of the authorities, even though its radical nature, especially because of its
rejection of Egypt's Coptic population, had earlier caused a hardening of
positions on the confessional front.
In 2010, as confessional relations worsened, as was indicated in the excellent
report issued by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Mubarak
regime decided to suppress religious television channels dominated by salafist
sheikhs in the interests of social peace. But these same clerics managed to
re-establish themselves, not by reclaiming the banned satellite TV channels,
but instead by appearing on the official Egyptian ones. Sheikhs such as Mohamed
Hassan, Mahmoud El-Masri and Mustafa El-Adawi endlessly churned out their
condemnations of the protests, reminding viewers of the benefits of social
peace.
Some even went so far as to call the revolts a "Zionist plot", their position
being aligned with that of the official Wahhabism of the clerics in Saudi
Arabia, whose mufti had declared in similar vein that all protest movements in
the Arab world are to be understood as western machinations against the Muslim
community.
Sheikhs from this Salafist trend have maintained an unchanging line. One of
them, Sheikh Mahmoud Amer, declared the candidates who stood against Mubarak in
the 2005 presidential elections to be illicit, religiously speaking, since he
considered Mubarak to be the guarantor of the Muslim community's affairs.
When the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and
high-profile opponent of the regime Mohamed El-Baradei said that he would stand
against Mubarak in the presidential elections, Sheikh Amer declared that
El-Baradei's blood was "licit", an indirect call for his killing, on the
grounds that he was "inciting civil insurrection against the Mubarak regime"
(cited in Al-Ahram Hebdo on 22-28 December 2010).
However, while the position of the loyalist wing of Saudi Wahhabism was
foreseeable, that of the Salafist sheikhs of the Alexandria school was awaited
with more curiosity. This school has developed a more autonomous line vis-à-vis
the regime than that of preachers ideologically aligned to the official Saudi
clerics. Indeed, the Salafist Alexandria school had found itself in a position
critical of the regime, and it was subject to pressure from the security
services and a wave of arrests, culminating after the Alexandria attack of 31
December 2010 with the imprisonment of hundreds of members of the movement and
the death from torture of one of its members, Sayed Bilal.
In spite of this government crackdown, the leaders of the Alexandria school and
their followers in over 10 Egyptian governorates refused to support the
insurrection, even less to join it. Furthermore, they went along with the
campaign of intimidation, emphasising the risk of chaos. In the movement's
mosques, preachers spoke of the threat the protest movement represented to
"Islamic identity," and on the Arabic SalafVoice website, Sheikh Yasser
Burhami, one of the movement's most prominent preachers, pronounced a fatwa
affirming the illicit nature of the demonstrations.
The height of the political abdication of the Salafist movement came when some
Salafist mosques stayed closed during the second Friday of the demonstrations
on the famous "Day of Departure".
The attitude taken by former jihadists was less clear than that taken by the
Alexandria school or by the sheikhs following the loyalist Saudi line. Over the
past few years, jihadists have made a series of ideological revisions leading
to a theological position that rejects the resort to violence. During the
uprising, the group mostly remained silent. There was one communiqué from two
of its mentors, Tareq and Abboud El-Zummur, supporting the mobilisation, but
most former jihadists leaned towards calm and an end to the political standoff
in the belief that people would be satisfied with Mubarak's promise not to
stand again in the next elections.
The former jihadists thus sought to position themselves within the framework of
the national dialogue, a stance interpreted by some as a strategy to dilute
demands for change through the presentation of potentially contradictory
agendas.
However, there was one discordant note in this loyalist Salafist concert, which
was that of the reformist Salafist current emanating from Saudi Arabia, part of
an attempt to fuse Wahhabite conservatism with Muslim Brotherhood-type
activism. This trend, though very small in Egypt, has been present through the
action of personalities such as Gamal Sultan and the Reform Party political
party. From the start, it has unambiguously supported the movement for
democratic reform.
THE ROLE OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERS: The Muslim Brotherhood's position developed
under pressure from the street and not vice-versa.
At the beginning and during the first demonstration on 25 January, the Brothers
joined in the protests but only in a symbolic way, sending small groups from
their youth movement out to demonstrate. Then, during the "Day of Anger" on 28
January, the Brothers concentrated their efforts on Cairo and mobilised about
100,000 people in the demonstrations, according to one of their leaders.
As events unfolded, including continued confrontation, massive repression,
deaths, the disappearance of the police, and the regime's strategy of chaos,
positions radicalised. Mubarak blamed the Brotherhood for the disturbances, and
the Brotherhood through their supreme guide, Mohamed Badie, accused Mubarak of
"state terrorism". According to one Brotherhood official, some 40 members of
the Brotherhood died in the demonstrations.
There was a feeling of no return among the Brothers, who were aware that they
would be the main victims of the restoration of order if the protest movement
did not succeed. "Our only card is the mobilisation in Tahrir Square," said one
Brotherhood leader. "It has become our life insurance against the swing of the
pendulum which awaits us if the regime gets back on its feet."
The Brothers in Tahrir Square, mobilised and strongly influenced by the other
groups who started the protest movement, began to call for Mubarak's departure
ahead of any negotiation. Nevertheless, on 5 February the group's leadership
began talks with the then vice president Omar Suleiman, former head of Egyptian
intelligence. According to one observer, the Brotherhood's leadership thought
that it could not pass up this chance of winning some sort of recognition, or
even legitimate presence in Egyptian politics. This move only exasperated the
young Brothers out on the streets.
A NEW POLITICAL CULTURE: Unlike other Islamist movements, which have tried to
clarify the structural dilemma of Islamism -- whether it is a movement of
preaching or of political participation -- the Muslim Brotherhood is based on
the concept of shomuliya, or globalism. This makes the group not just a
political organisation, but also one that is religious, social and economic.
This confusion between politics and religion made the movement out of place in
an insurrection whose spirit was above all political.
As a result, during one of the mass demonstrations that took place in
Alexandria, with the streets overflowing and observers claiming a turnout of a
million and a half people, one Brotherhood preacher launched into a
confrontational sermon that called for revolution and that was very much in
tune with the mood of the day. However, abruptly forgetting the revolutionary
pleas that had won him such an audience, he then called, as Brotherhood policy
said he should, on everyone to go home.
Elsewhere in this demonstration, when the time for prayer came and no one had
performed their ablutions or were in a position to do so, the crowd being mixed
and it not being possible to put shoes outside the space for prayer, the pious
simply prepared themselves to pray anyway. This angered some young Islamists,
who condemned praying in a state of impurity and with both men and women
present. The crowd insulted the Islamists in return, and one young man shouted
at them that "this is not your revolution."
Such anecdotes from the revolutionary days are telling, since the revolution
had a political logic and culture. It was not religious, which does not of
course mean that the post-authoritarian political equation will not give the
religious their due. But the revolutionary political culture was not that of
the Brothers, who tended to confuse religious norms with political demands and
to sacrifice the demands of the people, and the political forces that
represented them, to narrower interests.
The Muslim Brothers did not lead the revolution, and they definitely do not
appear to be the guardians of its spirit. Though it may currently be
ill-defined, a revolutionary spirit is taking shape between Tunis and Cairo
that could hardly be further from the political culture of the Brotherhood. It
is not programmatic, and it does not prefer one ideology over another, but
instead demands a transparent framework for political competition. It is
anti-authoritarian, and it is democratic and not religious. It functions in a
loose set of networks, notably through Facebook, and it is the reverse of a
pyramid structure of secrecy and submission.
It bypasses the existing political actors in their entirety, including the
Muslim Brotherhood, and it recruits among the young of these parties and pushes
them beyond their existing training. The Facebook experience has given birth to
a movement, modest but real, of self- critical young people who have now
rejoined a network of existing mobilisation. The enthusiasm of one young
activist was revealing, as was so much else at Tahrir Square, this man
rejoicing because the first demonstrations had been led by secular Christians
who had disagreed with their own church.
Such a dynamic has profoundly affected the Brotherhood. When dialogue started
between some of the young Brothers mobilised in the streets and the
Brotherhood's elite, disagreements were deep. One Brotherhood leader close to
Abul-Fotouh, the leader of the Brotherhood's reformist wing and closest to the
Turkish AKP model and the least ready for accommodation with the regime, said
that the "rupture between the Brothers in the streets and the political
leadership is total. Since dialogue started, and as a result of the
mobilisation, young Brothers are calling into question the very foundations of
the Muslim Brotherhood, calling for bottom- up transformation through the
education of activists."
"What the Brotherhood's leadership wants is top- down transformation and toeing
the line of peaceful opposition. Abul-Fotouh rejected this sort of spirit. He
thinks one must break with what he calls the 'oppression syndrome' and the
political passivity it brings."
Younger members of the Muslim Brotherhood, especially those who demonstrated in
Tahrir Square, are now rallying to the militant spirit coming from the new
networking initiatives that were at the heart of the uprising and with which
the Brothers had difficulty competing. These initiatives, including the Khaled
Said Group, the young people mobilised around Amr Khaled, and the Control
Group, an electoral monitoring group set up by young members of the Brotherhood
during the 2010 elections that monitored police actions during the uprising,
owe little to the established political parties and even less to their spirit.
Throughout the demonstrations, the dynamism of the demonstrators revealed the
exhaustion of the authoritarian models of the regimes in place, as well as
those of the traditional forms of opposition to them. What is happening in
Egypt is not just the contestation of a regime, but the calling into question
of an entire political culture.
Hossam Tammam is an Egyptian researcher on Islamist movements; Patrick Haenni
is a researcher at the Religioscope Institute in Switzerland.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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