EGYPT’S VEILED ISLAMIC RIVALRY
Tony Badran,
NOW Lebanon, September 20, 2012
The Obama administration is insisting that the assault on the US Embassy in Egypt, and the subsequent riots and attacks elsewhere in the Middle East, were “absolutely” about an obscure film, The Innocence of Muslims, that to date has only appeared in highly abridged form. Meanwhile, critics of the administration are blaming this week’s violence on a policy of appeasement. The truth is, a better guide to the causes of the recent assault on the US Embassy can be found in the public spat between a Salafist preacher and Egyptian movie star, Ilham Shahin.
Shahin, a famous Egyptian actress who was staunchly supportive of former President Hosni Mubarak during last year’s revolution that eventually toppled him, was recently accused by a Salafist preacher of “adultery” over some romantic scenes she’d been in. The attack on the Egyptian film star raised fears about the clout of radical Islamic forces in post-Mubarak Egypt. Where was Egypt’s newly elected president from the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Morsi, in this important debate? To the ire of the Salafists, Morsi asked his spokesman to call the actress and express his full support.
This episode highlighted the rivalry that exists between Morsi and, more broadly, the Muslim Brotherhood on the one hand, and the Salafists on the other. What we witnessed last week with the siege of the US Embassy in Cairo, with all its violence and demagogy, was an expression of this simmering rivalry. In other words, despite the appearance of a showdown between Islamic societies and the West, it was rather a classic manifestation of local inter-Arab power politics.
There’s a perception in Egypt, one that extends beyond the Salafists to secular nationalist and left-liberal circles, that Morsi has a de facto agreement with Washington. Former editor of al-Dustour Ibrahim Issa summed up this view last week. The unwritten agreement, Issa wrote, involves a commitment on the part of Morsi to maintain relations with Israel and safeguard its security, including keeping Hamas on a leash and under Egypt’s umbrella. It also involves containing the Salafists and protecting the Copts.
Put differently, Morsi risks being regarded as the Muslim Brotherhood version of Mubarak. This makes him a vulnerable target for Salafist populism. As several analysts have pointed out, it was Morsi’s Salafist opponents who had called for moving on the US Embassy well before news of the video had even surfaced.
These groups saw an opening to embarrass the Egyptian president by outbidding him on Muslim causes, thereby presenting him with a choice of either standing up for the prophet of Islam, or for his relations with the US, and thus appear as another American quisling like Mubarak.
That this indeed was the underlying dynamic was evident in the back and forth between Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood politicians. For instance, Jamal Saber, campaign manager for Salafist politician and one-time presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail, chided the Brotherhood for wishing to deal with the matter “only on a political basis.” Stated differently, Saber was contending that the Brotherhood was prioritizing politics—i.e., diplomatic ties with the US—over the honor of the prophet.
In contrast to what Saber described as Morsi’s accommodation, Mamdouh Ismail, vice president of the Salafist al-Asala party, claimed that “the Salafist call was the strongest Islamic entity defending the prophet.” Another official in the Salafist al-Nour party noted that he offered the Brotherhood's leadership an opportunity to participate in the rally, but they never responded. The Salafist were attacking Morsi’s Islamic credentials.
The response of officials from the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party was essentially to charge that the protests were aimed at “embroiling” the government—read: the Brotherhood—in a diplomatic crisis with the US. This retort and Morsi’s delayed, or initial lack of, response to the assault on the embassy suggest that the Egyptian president may have tried to have it both ways. On the one hand, he could not simply cede the platform of Islamic pride to the Salafists. On the other hand, he cannot have them sabotage his relationship with the US.
Indeed, there are other landmines that the Salafists planted for Morsi in the lead-up to the attack on the embassy. As the Algerian daily al-Jaza’ir News put it in a sharp news analysis piece, the scene at the US Embassy was merely one “battleground between the Salafists and the Muslim Brothers.” Since Morsi has assumed office, the two sides have clashed on a host of issues ranging from the position on Islamic law to standing by the actress Ilham Shahin.
However, as al-Jaza’ir News noted, “The most important arena of conflict is the military operations conducted by the Egyptian Army in order to purge the Sinai of Islamist extremists.” This was in reference to the operation that Morsi conducted in the wake of an attack in Sinai last month that killed 16 Egyptian border guards.
Egyptian policy in the Sinai is a highly sensitive issue since it is seen as perhaps the defining marker of the difference between the new government and the Mubarak regime. Hazem Abu Ismail, the Salafist figure, contended that Morsi's maneuver in Sinai, dubbed Operation Eagle, was illegal. Perhaps even more significantly, none other than Ayman al-Zawahiri also attacked Morsi for the Sinai campaign. Zawahiri’s criticism preceded the assault on the US Embassy during the Cairo demonstrations, where his brother Mohammad was notably present.
Zawahiri lashed out at Morsi in a statement timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, charging that his government was “guarding Israel’s borders.” He then called on the “honorable, free officers in the Egyptian Army, and they are many, not to be guards for Israel’s borders, or defend its borders, and not to partake in the siege of our people in Gaza.”
Zawahiri’s language unmistakably hearkens back to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s tirade against Mubarak during the Gaza war of 2008-09. Nasrallah similarly appealed to the officers of the Egyptian armed forces, not to “guard the borders of Israel” and to open the Rafah crossing.
The Salafists, therefore, have systematically sought to paint Morsi as the reincarnation of Mubarak. Their move was calculated to show him as someone lacking Islamic credentials, an American lackey, and an upholder of the previous regime’s relationship with Israel. What’s more, it followed a well-established tradition in Arab politics. Throughout the twentieth century, Arab states and political actors have framed their various civil wars and struggles for power as a fight against external enemies, be they Britain, Israel or the US.
Attacking the US Embassy was a perfect way to embroil Morsi—the equivalent of a bank shot in a game of pool. The anti-Islam video was just an instrument that served these local dynamics. The new Egyptian political class was simply conducting politics as usual. If the US is going to navigate the terrain of post-Arab Spring politics, it needs to recognize these dynamics of inter-Islamist and inter-Arab competition for power and prestige. (Top)
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Steven A. Cook
Council on Foregin Relations, September 18, 2012
Last week after the attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, American officials, political candidates, and pundits were asking, “Where is Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi? How come he hasn’t made a strong statement about the attacks on our embassy? Why has he been so elusive?” After a couple of days, Morsi did release a statement, but it was equivocal at best, falling well short of what Washington and the policy community deemed necessary. Yet from Morsi’s perspective it was the politically rational thing to do. Indeed, there are no easy answers to this question except to say: given what is at stake in Egypt broadly and, in particular, for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian president was never going to meet Washington’s expectations to denounce the protests in the way that satisfied Americans.
I am not sure whether these expectations are a function of a blind spot because the United States is the big kid on the block or because of an unacknowledged neocolonial strain that permeates the American foreign policy establishment (to wit, the oft used “We must get Egypt right,” circa March 2011). I hope it is the former, but I fear it is the latter. Either way, Americans consistently fail to recognize that Arabs have their own politics and have the ability to calculate their own interests independently of what Washington demands. As a result, whenever a crisis erupts that presents Egyptian leaders with a choice of kowtowing to Washington or protecting their political position at home, domestic politics will win virtually every time. There continues to be an odd cognitive dissonance affecting much of Washington when it comes to Egypt: There is recognition of the major changes that have occurred since February 2011, but there is a desire to do business pretty much as usual. The problem is that business pretty much as usual was based on a deal with authoritarians who agreed to carry Washington’s water in exchange for political support, diplomatic recognition, and aid. That deal greatly narrowed the constituencies that Mubarak and Sadat before him had to please.
Morsi, in contrast to his predecessors, has a more complex and multi-layered challenge to ensuring and maintaining domestic political support. To be sure, the Brothers had a significant edge over other groups in a more open political environment given their 80-year head start, credibility, and vision, all of which have helped Morsi to consolidate power. Still he is not master of the Egyptian political universe—at least, not yet. He still has to deal with the remnants of the old order, legions of which make up Egypt’s vast bureaucracy, a police/intelligence apparatus that distrusts the President and the Muslim Brotherhood, and a weak but dedicated opposition. And even though Egypt’s electoral outcomes (parliamentary and presidential) suggest that a lot of people like the Brotherhood’s answers about how Egyptian government and society should look and function, they are not the only answers.
Indeed, since Mubarak’s fall, the most dynamic part of the Egyptian political spectrum has been the Islamist one. Lest anyone has forgotten, over the last 18 months, the sheikh of al Azhar, Ahmed el Tayyeb, has weighed in on debates concerning both important issues of the day and Egypt’s future trajectory in forceful ways. In response to the “Innocence of Muslims” and the attack on the U.S. embassy, Tayyeb called for an international ban on attacks on Islam. Salafis of varying stripes have also engaged in the debate about Egypt’s future and the Nour Party, which represents part of Egypt’s Salafist movement, is a potentially powerful political competitor to the Brothers’ own Freedom and Justice Party.
The embassy protests were a response to the call of a Salafi preacher, Wesam Abdel Warith, for Egyptians to defend Islam. Indeed, within the debate about the institutions of the Egyptian state, the best means to achieve social justice, and Egypt’s place in the region, is a competition over who speaks for Islam. This is fraught political territory for the Muslim Brothers because if they don’t manage these debates and challenges correctly, they leave themselves open to the kind of ontological attacks that the Brotherhood leveled against Sadat and Mubarak. It would not have been unreasonable for the Salafis to expose the Brothers as not Muslim enough and bad nationalists if Morsi had responded to the protests in the way that Washington demanded.
As I have written before, it is going to be some time before Egypt sorts itself out. The Egyptian political arena is ideologically rich and thus highly contested, especially in a new, more open environment. As a result, it is important for observers to understand Egyptian foreign policy from the “inside-out,”—in other words, foreigners need to be cognizant of the Egyptian president’s domestic political imperatives and the complexities associated with navigating Egypt’s political arena. It’s banal to say that context matters, but Egypt is too important to react in a way that puts Morsi in a corner by making demands he cannot possibly meet. (Top)
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MUSLIMS NEED TO FIND A BETTER WAY TO PROTEST
Mirette F. Mabrouk
Egypt Independent, September 20, 2012
In 1987, the American artist Andres Serrano won an award from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art for his photograph entitled “Immersion (Piss Christ).” It depicted a small plastic crucifix submerged in what appeared to be a yellow liquid. Serrano later said the liquid was his own urine.
The photograph wasn’t displayed in public for another two years, and when it was, it predictably set off a storm among devout Christians. Complicating what was already a volatile issue was the small matter that the US$15,000 award had been partly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects. In other words, the US taxpayer had helped fund a picture of Christ in a glass of urine.
There was an outcry throughout the US — Serrano received hate mail and death threats and, when the photograph was exhibited abroad, it was vandalized both in Australia and France.
But no one died. The US embassy was not torched in either country, despite the American government being a sponsor of the work.
Western galleries and cinemas are full of art and films denigrating Christ, God and various other tenets of the Christian faith. Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” offered what many thought was an incredibly unflattering portrait of Jewish characters but while there was much anger, irate Jews did not scale his garden walls setting fire to his shrubbery. Or put a bounty on his head.
Last week, US embassies were attacked in Benghazi, in Cairo, in Tunis and Khartoum. While the facts remain unclear, it appears that the attacks were originally instigated by Salafis, hardline Muslims with their own agendas. What is clear is that the storming of the embassy in Libya led to the deaths of four people, among them the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, by all accounts an Arabist who was attached to Libya and its people.
The initial reason given for the attacks was that Muslims were livid over a film, “Innocence of Muslims,” that mocked the Prophet Mohamed, allegedly made by an Israeli-American named Sam Bacile. It later transpired that the film is little more than a trailer with astonishingly bad production values and the actors involved claimed they had been duped, not realizing they were making a film about Islam. And according to reports Bacile is apparently Californian, an Egyptian Copt, with a criminal record to boot.
By now it has become a cliche to say that the riots weren’t really about the film, but rather about other domestic grievances. This is almost certainly true; there are multiple facets as to who was demonstrating and why, but that’s another discussion. For the purposes of this discussion, however, one fact is very clear: there is no doubt that the film produced precisely the reaction that its makers must have intended. Once again, Muslims around the world reacted violently to someone expressing an opinion which runs contrary to theirs. In Egypt, Islamist President Mohamed Morsy, the first Egyptian president who actually has to take public opinion into consideration, played populist politics.
Assessing that parliamentary elections might be around the corner, he pandered to popular opinion. It took him over a day to denounce the attacks in Cairo. Egypt’s consul general in New York tweeted that the president had asked that the American authorities take legal action against the filmmakers. This move could only be a populist one since the president must be perfectly well aware that there are no legal measures to be taken. The first amendment of the American constitution protects freedom of expression and religion. Hate speech may be reviled, but it’s legal. The only exception is if the speech is likely to directly incite violence.
The timing of the attacks is horrific (or excellent, depending on one’s viewpoint), coming as they do on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks and so close to the American presidential elections. There are few things which limit an administration’s ability to exercise diplomatic leeway like an election. And apart from the abhorrent nature of the attacks, they have handed Islamophobes cutlery and a napkin. The Arab Spring, they say, has accomplished nothing more than exposing the true, barbaric face of religious extremism. The eyes of the world are upon us and we’re not a pretty sight. While the situation is anything but simple, there are a few facts that we need to grasp.
The first is that no one owes us anything. Non-Muslims do not have to automatically understand, or appreciate, that some Muslims are so devout that they would die, or worse, kill, for their religion and their Prophet.
The second is that holding governments responsible for the actions of individuals is both reductive and counter-productive. Every time there is an Islamist terrorist, we expect non-Muslims to understand and appreciate that these are the actions of an isolated fanatic few, from among a global population of 1.6 billion Muslims. If one follows this line of reasoning, why would we hold the United States ransom for the actions of a convicted criminal? Or indeed, for any Islamophobic speech, incident or film? If the National Endowment for the Arts gave a prize to a photograph depicting Christ submerged in urine in a country where Christians make up approximately 75 percent of the population, what entitles Muslims to demand the criminalization of what they consider to be blasphemy?
And finally, no one is suggesting that we don’t make a stand. When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten printed 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet in 2005, the Pakistanis bombed the Danish Embassy. The Syrians, Lebanese and Iranians, among others, started fires at embassies in their countries. In Egypt, we stopped buying Danish butter — a far better idea.
Objection and protest is often at its most effective when it is non-violent, as proved by Gandhi and the US civil rights movement. If Muslims object to any form of misrepresentation they have a duty to object. They also have a duty to do so in any number of ways which will not insult the faith they treasure. It is doubtful that any of those perpetrating violence to defend the Prophet’s honor remember that he insisted on not harming or insulting those who had harmed or insulted him.
In less esoteric terms, Muslims have a duty to object in way which will not bring the roof crashing down on the heads of Muslim minorities. We do not have a monopoly on vilification. And the sooner we develop thicker skins and start dealing with the fact the better it will be, for everyone.
Mirette F. Mabrouk is a non-resident fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at The Brookings Institution. (Top)
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Gatestone Institute, September 20, 2012
Michael J. Totten
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Egypt Independent, September 19, 2012
Al-Masry Al-Youm
Amending Treaty With Israel 'A Matter Of Time'
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Egypt Independent, September 20, 2012
Al-Masry Al-Youm
Egypt's Interpol Office Seeks Warrant Against Anti-Islam Filmmakers
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Washington Times, September 19, 2012
Senator Rand Paul
Demanding justice from Libya, Egypt and Pakistan
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