Juan Cole's interpretation, so subtract whatever you think is necessary.
But I have heard similar things, if not as unequivocal, elsewhere, for
elsewhere places, not least in Iran.
My latest guesstimate is that the "Seculars" within Dar al-Islam come in at
roughly 30%, the Sectarians (Sufis, Ahmadis, Ibadis, various South Asians)
at 20%, and the hard core True Believers at about 50%. So I would not
be the least dismissive of the Islamists, but let us hope that, about this,
although he often makes me ill, Cole is correct.
Billy
--------------------
_Informed Comment_ (http://www.juancole.com/)
____________________________________
_Militant Secularism in the Middle East?_
(http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/juancole/ymbn/~3/nln7LQnaPK4/militant-secularism-middle.html?utm_source=feedbu
rner&utm_medium=email)
Posted: 04 Oct 2013 12:10 AM PDT
The youth organizations that made the 2011 revolutions were predominantly
leftist or liberal. They revolted against seedy police states run by family
cartels and their cronies. They had allies among labor unions and office
workers.
These movements demanded free, fair parliamentary elections as the next
step. But the groups best organized to campaign, canvass and fund-raise were
the Muslim religious parties and to some extent the left-overs of the old
regime.
The Muslim religious parties got about 60% of the seats in the Egyptian
parliament in fall of 2011. Although that parliament was struck down by the
courts for electoral irregularities, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate,
Muhammad Morsi, won the presidency in June, 2012, and installed many party
hacks
in high positions. The Renaissance or al-Nahdah, religiously-inflected
party won 42% of the seats in the Tunisian parliament and gained the prime
ministership, though they had to ally with liberals and leftists, from which
the president and speaker of parliament were drawn.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya did poorly in the summer, 2012
parliamentary elections there, a significant number of independents lean
toward the religious right, though not a majority.
These outcomes were branded an “Islamic winter” by Neoconservative
critics of the Arab world (what would you call people who are professional
critics of a single ethnic group, about whom they never have anything positive
to
say?)
A raft of articles and books were published with the thesis that Arabs are
religion-obsessed fanatics who can never be truly democratic because of
their fascination with theocracy.
But in fall of 2013, things look different. A youth movement, Rebellion
(Tamarrud) staged enormous demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood
president in Egypt on June 30 and after, provoking a military coup and a
thoroughgoing crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been largely
broken
and driven underground. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been condemned
by the officer corps and activist youth as dictatorial, secretive and
grasping, as in short a kind of cult. The generals now dismiss it as a
terrorist
organization, having arrested 2000 party leaders. As a military-appointed
commission crafts a new constitution, it is likely that it will outlaw
religiously-based parties permanently. Most Egyptians are believers and either
practicing Muslims or Coptic Christians. But most of them from all accounts
have turned on the Muslim Brotherhood.
In summer of 2013, as well, Tunisian youth and the labor activists of the
UGTT (French acronym for General Union of Tunisian Workers) challenging the
Renaissance, Muslim-religious prime minister, Ali Larayedh. They blamed
him for being soft on Muslim terrorists and allowing two assassinations of
members of the far-left Popular Front. They demanded he step down in favor of
a caretaker government that would oversee free and fair parliamentary
elections. Thousands assembled regularly at Bardo outside the parliament
building, and the alliance of the crowds with the powerful UGTT gave them a
bargaining chip. If the country’s workers struck en mass, it would paralyze
the
Tunisian economy, already limping. So by the _past weekend, the
Renaissance Party had agreed to step down in favor of a caretaker government._
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/28/tunisia-islamist-government-to-resign
) Many among the Tunisian demonstrators use a militantly secular
discourse.
The Muslim religious parties are not in control of Egypt and nor do the
have a firm grasp on power any more in Tunisia. They are merely influential
in Libya, with leftist and pragmatic members of parliament dominating the
scene politically.
Likewise in Yemen, the religious right has not taken over the country. In
northern Syria, as strong division developed between the Muslim
fundamentalist rebels against the regime, and the more nationalist Free Syrian
Army.
There have been firefights between the two.
The long and the short of it is that there has been a vast and
thorough-going reaction against the religious parties this summer and fall.
Bloggers
have sometimes declared themselves atheists, though that is rare and can
result in prosecution.
But the fears of the imminent imposition of Islamic law over a vast
stretch of the Arab world has subsided. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has
lost
most of its popularity outside committed cadres, who are being
marginalized. The Renaissance Party in Tunisia announced in spring, 2012, that
they
would not try to implement sharia or Muslim canon law.
So, no more “Islamic winter” talk please. It doesn’t comport with
reality. The revolutionary youth in the Arab world is for the most part not
theocrats and won’t be ordered around by the clerics. The officer corps
likewise
reacted against Brotherhood excesses.
The real question is whether a place can be found in Egyptian politics for
the Muslim Brotherhood.
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