Egypt's political crisis might be an opportunity for moderate secularists.
D. Parvaz Last Modified: 09 Aug 2013 21:37
Supporters of Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood tend to favour governance based on Islamic law [AFP]
Cairo, Egypt - The current narrative in this country is dominated by the chasm between supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi and those of the military - making the choice for Egypt seem as if it is merely between notions of wanting a state ruled by religion, or by the army.
Even those who perhaps do not back Morsi and might not want a legal system based on the Sunni interpretation of sharia might well want a secular state, one that is not entirely divorced of Islamic codes and theory.
Wael Nawara, co-founder of the al-Dustour Party, which is focused on preserving the moderate Egyptian identity, explained that the Western notion of secularism is "not exactly the right word to describe what is happening in Egypt".
"No-one is calling for separation of mosque and state," he added.
No-one is calling for separation of mosque and state.
Wael Nawara, al-Dustour Party
"There are calls not to abuse religion or to use religious merchandising or trading in politics."
The notion of a society or rule of law entirely free from religion is not a popular one in Egypt, where the country's brand of Islam, said Nawara, "is moderate and doesn't eliminate religion from law and society".
Indeed, Article Two in the [interim] Egyptian constitution .. http://www.egypt.gov.eg/english/laws/constitution/chp_one/part_one.aspx .. states "the principal source of legislation is Islamic jurisprudence" - a clause which also existed in the country's former constitution. However, subsequent articles have been added which define the "principles of sharia" under Sunni jurisprudence.
This is where things become problematic for secularists and some liberals.
"A number of articles allow a judge to pass judgement not based on legislation, but based on interpretation of the constitution - which could be an interpretation of sharia itself," said Nawara, adding that even the term "sharia" was vague and subject to wide-ranging interpretations.
"The annulled constitution opened the door for future radicalisation," said Nawara, who also pointed out that Egypt's constitution was not a document that protects citizens' rights.
"You would have thought that this would be the case, that the constitution was written to protect people's rights, but in fact it is written to rob people of their rights," said Nawara.
The stigma of secularism
There is no shortage of Egyptians - certainly made visible by the tens of thousands at the pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo calling for sharia .. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/08/201382192815555879.html - who would very much support living in an Islamist state, and see doing so as a way forward.
"I don't support the separation of religion and politics," said Rasha Gamal, a 27-year-old out for an evening stroll in Giza with her family.
"If you apply sharia in the correct way, you gain prosperity and democracy, as they have in Malaysia," said Gamal, who has a clerical job at a university in Cairo.
The term "secular" is viewed with suspicion by some in Egypt - a notion that is supported largely by the Islamists' dim view of secularism.
For example, in response to the military's 48-hour warning .. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/08/201382192815555879.html .. for Morsi to step down on July 1, the chair of the Jama'a al-Islamiya Shura Council issued a statement blasting the military for "protecting secularism" and supporting communism.
Amr Ismail is a researcher of Middle Eastern politics at Stanford University and the former director of the social and economic justice unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
He said the conflict over identity was part of the political conflict that affected all Arab countries that had witnessed recent uprisings.
"Identifying yourself as being secular is political suicide," said Ismail.
"Historically in Egypt, interpretations of Islam have been used to bolster political legitimacy of the state the ruling regime."
Both Ismail and Nawara point to the state-funded Al-Azhar university as an official representative of Islam in Egypt, with Nawara saying that Al-Azhar had often been marginalised by Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood for being too moderate.
Room for moderate voices?
So the state has never used secularism as a means of fighting political Islam, but has chosen institutions such as Al-Azhar to reach the public.
"I don't support a secular state, but I want a separation between politics and religion," said Mohamad Gamal.
"And if this is the same notion of secularism as in the West, then I don't think people here will support it," added the 22-year-old waiter, who said he'd voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, but now regretted doing so.
While he doesn't approve of the role of religion in politics, Gamal does not think that Islamist parties need be dissolved. Rather, he feels that they should switch roles and act as community groups or NGOs.
There is no one definition of secularism, said Ismail. "But if what we're asking for is looking for new boundaries between Islam and the state, then the answer is yes, of course this is happening right now."
But, he added, there is no major secular political trend in Egypt, rather a cultural one.
"There are lots of trends being defined to the left and the right of the Brotherhood… this needs some years to develop and yield a solid alternative," said Ismail, adding that he doubts another Islamist would become president in the next elections, yet to be scheduled.
Pendulum of power
After the 2011 revolution that toppled long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, the pendulum of power has swung several times, from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces .. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/06/20126191465269424.html , to the Muslim Brotherhood and now, to a military-backed interim government.
"I voted for Morsi, but that's because there was no better option," said Mohamed Abdullah.
"But now I'm against the Islamists - they played their politics wrongly," said Abdullah, a 30-year-old accountant.
"They just wanted to take as much power as they could for themselves."
However, Nawara said the ongoing protests - which he described as "crowd-democracy forcing the administration to bow to the will of the people" - as reason to be optimistic.
Nawara said that the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood - who he described as "clinging to old ideas" - have attempted to marginalise moderate Muslim Egyptians.
Egyptians, said Nawara, are not keen to follow either the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist models.
"Egyptians recognise their identity, they have their own identity of Islam, their own brand," he said. "They don't have to become Wahabist in order to be considered Muslim."
As Islamist rebels rise in Syria, liberal activists take a step back
Sam Tarling/For The Washington Post - Anas Ghaibeh, 28, a Syrian activist who fled his home in Damascus to live in Lebanon In February 2012, distributes biscuits to Syrian refugee children in an informal gathering of 12 tents which have been pitched on a small parking lot in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley near the town of Chatura on Aug. 16, 2013.
By Loveday Morris, Published: August 17 E-mail the writer
BEIRUT — Two years ago as he hung cuffed to a wall in one of the Syrian intelligence service’s notorious detention centers, Anas Ghaibeh couldn’t have imagined a day when he’d doubt whether the regime should fall immediately. But now he says, he’s not so sure.
[ insert excerpt from link .. The group, now known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is by no means the largest of the loosely aligned rebel organizations battling to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and it is concentrated mostly in the northern and eastern provinces of the country. But with its radical ideology and tactics such as kidnappings and beheadings, the group has stamped its identity on the communities in which it is present, including, crucially, areas surrounding the main border crossings with Turkey.
and .. who pays those guys? ]
playing an increasingly prominent role in challenging government forces. If the regime falls today, it is likely to bring only more chaos and bloodshed, he says, a difficult admission for someone who has already sacrificed so much in seeking its end.
As the war has progressed, many of the young liberals who organized protests and beamed their images to the world as the winds of change first reached Syrian soil more than two years ago complain that they have been marginalized. They now have to fight on two fronts, they say — not just against the government, but also against extremist Islamist rebel groups, which, despite their supposedly shared aims, are increasingly targeting secular activists.
At a protest in Aleppo ..
. .. last week, demonstrators demanded the release of several activists detained by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the newly expanded al-Qaeda in Iraq. The squeezing out of moderates is playing into the argument of Assad’s supporters that the only choice facing Syria is between his rule and that of Islamic extremists, says Mustafa Haid, the Beirut-based director of Dawlaty, a nonprofit group that has provided training for more than 100 activists since being established last summer.
“We’ve lost many political activists,” said Haid, including some who were killed, others who joined the secular-leaning Free Syrian Army and others who fled Syria for Lebanon or other havens. “They are confused and say, ‘It’s not my revolution any more.’?”
Ghaibeh was arrested by Syrian military intelligence in the summer of 2011, and his voice cracks with emotion as he talks about the harsh treatment he endured during five weeks in Syrian custody. He says he was made to stand for days on end, whipped with electrical wire and beaten on the soles of his feet. But the hardship only galvanized him, he said, making him more determined in his cause.
“I was just thinking of one thing,” he said. “That I’d be out one day and I’d be back on the street doing demonstrations. They wanted me to be silent, didn’t want to give them what they wanted.”
But Ghaibeh eventually fled to Beirut in March 2012. From outside Syria, Ghaibeh has continued to participate in demonstrations in support of the Syrian opposition, but he says the increasingly muddied makeup of the opposition has shifted his focus toward working with refugees and away from political activism.
“We need freedom but not like this,” Ghaibeh lamented as he sat in a coffee shop in central Beirut, the capital of neighboring Lebanon, where many of Syria’s secular activists have escaped.
“I’m still against the regime, but now if you think about the fall of the regime, it’s dangerous. The Islamists, the jihadis, they have stolen our revolution.”
In more idealistic days in the spring of 2011, Ghaibeh, then a student at the capital’s Arab International University organized protests in Damascus’s up-market neighborhood of Mezzah with a group of friends.
The first involved no more than a few dozen people and lasted 30 seconds or a minute — the thrill of showing defiance against the state, their confidence buoyed by the progress of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. His arrest came in August 2011 after a protest in which he stood on the front line and led anti-government chants.
Now Ghaibeh says he believes that what would be best for Syria might be a political compromise, one that could even allow Assad to stay in office, though with diminished powers.
He said the activists he trains are becoming increasingly frustrated, and he worries that some are becoming increasingly hard-line.
“I feel upset to see more and more of them becoming radical in their views, in their social media posts,” he said. Another activist, a 22-year-old from Damascus with bleached-blond hair, said that in the early days of the revolution he would never have imagined himself to be an advocate of a group such as Jabhat al-Nusra, designated as a terrorist organization by the United States.
“I thought they were bad people,” said the activist, who would give only his first name, Mahmoud, for security reasons. “But after what I’ve seen from them, I’ve changed my mind. They are Islamic, but they work with the Free Syrian Army. The Syrian regime portrays them as terrorists, but they are good people.”
However, even Mahmoud said he regarded the growing role being played in Syria by allies as of al-Qaeda as the biggest threat to the secular opposition. The groups include foreign fighters under the umbrella of a group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an expansion of what was once known as al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Those groups’ involvement, Mahmoud said, can lead only to an escalation of infighting among rebel groups and to wider Western uneasiness about providing arms for the anti-government rebels.
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