Egypt must tolerate open debate
By Jonathan Steele The Hindu | July 30, 2005 http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/30/stories/2005073004291100.htm Political Islam must be given the air to breathe. Open debate can tackle the dangers of fundamentalism. SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY happened in Cairo the other day. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is an illegal organisation, joined Left-wing activists for a demonstration against President Hosni Mubarak. About a thousand protesters marched outside the Lawyers' Association's building, shouting slogans for freedom and an end to torture. The strange thing was not that demonstrators dared to take to the streets. Over the last year anti-government protests have become increasingly frequent. Some were met with police beatings and arrests, but the more common pattern in recent weeks is a kind of cold peace. The two protests I observed last week were typical. The demonstrators do not seek official permission, but the police know anyway through eavesdropping on mobile phones. Hours before the start hundreds of black-uniformed riot police with batons converge on the venue, while ordinary police go into blocks of flats and cafes to warn people not to join in. When the protesters arrive they are corralled into a small space by three lines of riot police to prevent them starting a march. The authorities are terrified that a mass rally could develop. Unusual combination The unusual feature of the combined leftwing and Muslim Brotherhood protest was that groups that could hardly be more different in their ideologies felt it useful to come together "The first time this has happened since 1954 when Nasser clamped down on the Islamists and the left," one excited participant whispered. It would be wrong to pretend there was unity. The leftwingers got upset when the Brotherhood, most of them students, brandished small Qurans in their right hands, punching the air with the holy book. This violated the organisers' agreement. But the protest was an important sign of the increasing boldness of the Government's critics and their search for common ground in pressing for reform. Nominations opened on Friday for the first contested election for the presidency since Mr. Mubarak took over in 1981. He controls state TV's coverage of the campaign and his party enjoys huge powers of patronage, so his rule is hardly threatened. The bombs in Sharm el-Sheikh last weekend were a blow to Mr. Mubarak's international prestige, and his officials assume they were more likely the work of an extreme Egyptian group, perhaps working with the Bedouin of the Sinai, rather than Al-Qaeda. But they may give him a temporary boost in the public at large. Egypt's Opposition forces are setting their sights on parliamentary elections in November, in which they could do very well. They want an end to the state of emergency, in force for two decades, and a restoration of civil liberties. The Muslim Brotherhood, which renounced violence a generation ago, desperately wants to be legalised, even though its image of being victimised adds to its appeal. In short, the country, which still claims to be the leader of the Arab world, is going through unprecedented turbulence. Yet the West hardly seems to have noticed. The United States and European governments put their hope in a gradual reform of the Mubarak regime, if not thanks to him, then to his ambitious son, Gamal. "They want reforms that are more than cosmetic but less than profound," says Emad Eldin Shahin, a leading analyst. Islamists' role The big issue in Egypt is what role the Islamists are really playing. Mr. Mubarak's old arguments that stability is more important than democracy, and only he stands in the way of fundamentalism, are wearing thin. The economy cannot find jobs for millions of school and university-leavers, and pressures from the international financial institutions to end subsidies on cheap food and fuel could lead to a social explosion (as happened in Yemen last week). In this climate the attractions of political Islam are growing. It is not just the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultra-puritanical Salafis, financed largely by Saudi Arabia, are the new force gaining ground on Egypt's campuses, as well as in smaller towns and marginal communities in Cairo. Although the government licenses all imams, the Salafis use the fact that their message is ostensibly only about social values to spread their radical views in the mosques. The more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, whose leadership comes from the urban middle class and owners of small businesses, has an ambiguous line. Many of Egypt's secular intelligentsia feel it plays along with the regime, and may in the end not support an Opposition candidate or call for a boycott of the presidential election. Its primary aim of being legalised makes it open to compromise, they say. Is the Brotherhood an Egyptian version of Turkey's moderate Islamists, who swept to power in 2002? Its economic policies support for privatisation and gradually opening Egypt to global free trade are part of the orthodoxy of modernisation. "They've realised the importance of moving from being an Islamic movement and becoming a civic movement of mainstream nationalism with Islamic principles," says Mr. Shahin. The political context differs from Turkey's, according to Kamal Abbas, one of the new breed of independent trade-union leaders. "Turkey is a secular state with a mature civil society that has evolved through various stages," he says. "Egypt has never had democracy. For now the Brotherhood stands for civil rights, but its basic stance is against them. It has one language for the media and another for its followers." And, on the flanks, the Salafis are gathering strength. But the answer to both trends is to let political Islam have the air to breathe. Only through legalisation, debate, openness and public competition can the dangers of fundamentalism be properly met. Repression always backfires. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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