The triumphant emergence of Islamic movements after decades of repression is one of the more striking features of the Arab revolutions of the past 18 months. How these movements behave once they are in government will be closely watched. Each of them has an extremist fringe, apparently determined to abolish the divide between religion and politics, dear to Western opinion. The key question, therefore, is this: Will Islamic leaders now in power be able to tame the radicals in their ranks?
This is the challenge facing Mohammad Morsi, Egypt’s new President, and Rashed Ghannouchi, the historic leader of Tunisia’s Ennahda (
In Syria the contest is fiercest. Islamists are engaged in a life-and-death battle with President Bashar al-Asad, whose regime rests essentially on the secular Ba‘th Party, on minorities such as Chistians and Druze, on some members of the commercial and professional middle classes, and on the military force of his own Alawi community. Both sides are fighting with the utmost ruthlessness. It is kill or be killed. The outcome of the contest is still uncertain, but the wounds in Syrian society are already very deep, and must inevitably shape the nature of any successor regime.
The West may not like it, but in country after country across the Arab world the Islamists’ day has come. Minorities may tremble. The educated middle classes may fear for their Western-style way of life. Liberated women may dread being forced back into purdah. Israel may worry about the survival of its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, which has guaranteed the regional supremacy of the Jewish state for more than three decades. But these fears may be greatly exaggerated.
Both Mohammad Morsi and Rashed Ghannouchi are highly-intelligent, modernising Muslims whose immediate priority is not to impose the shari‘a but rather to create jobs for their armies of unemployed youths, provide security for all citizens, restore the authority of the state, and generally revive their economies after the ravages of the past year.
Morsi has a doctorate in engineering from the University of Southern California. He spent several years studying and teaching in America. Two of his five children, born in the United States, are American citizens. Ghannouchi has had an essentially Islamic education but his open-mindedness may be seen in the careers of his daughters. One has a doctorate in astrophysics, another is a human rights lawyer who studied at Cambridge and the London School of Economics, and a third is a philosophy graduate and researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London
To fulfil their daunting programmes, the Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia must form coalitions with local allies and keep fanatical extremists down. To calm the fears of women and of Christian Copts — the latter some 10% of Egypt’s population — President Morsi has even suggested appointing a Christian woman as vice-president! Aware of the magnitude of the task facing it in Tunisia, Enahda has formed a governing coalition with two other parties — Moncef Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic, and Mustapha Ben Jaafar’s Ettakatol. Marzouki is now President of the Tunisian Republic and Ben Jaafar is Speaker of the constituent assembly.
At this month’s Ennahda conference — its first since its victory at the polls last October — Rached Ghannouchi went out of his way to project an image of tolerance and moderation, which is essential if foreign investors and tourists are to be attracted back to Tunisia.
The Islamist revival across the Arab world springs from many roots. It is powered by a popular reaction against corrupt dictators and brutal security services. It is a reaction against Western domination and against leaders who seemed to give primacy to Western strategic interests over the aspirations of their people. Both Morsi and Ghannouchi are surely aware that only leaders able to assert their country’s independence vis-a-vis external powers will have the legitimacy to keep their own extremists at bay. The Islamic revival also reflects popular outrage at Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, and at the West’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to speak of America’s lethal counter-insurgency operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere — all widely seen as wars against Islam.
Above all, the Islamists are reacting against decades of cruel repression in their own countries. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, was disbanded in 1948 and scores of its members jailed when they were suspected of plotting a coup against the monarch. A year later, Hasan al-Banna, the movement’s founder, was gunned down at the early age of 42, almost certainly by King Farouk’s security agents. When the Muslim Brotherhood tried to assassinate Egypt’s revolutionary leader Gamal Abd al-Nasser in 1954, many thousands were arrested, and half a dozen of its leaders hanged. The movement was dissolved, causing many prominent members to flee abroad. Repression and mass arrests of Muslim Brothers continued under the regime of Husni Mubarak, until he was toppled last year.
In Tunisia, the Ennahda party was driven underground for a quarter of a century by President Habib Bourguiba and his successor Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Rached Ghannouchi himself, sentenced and jailed many times, spent over 20 years in exile in Britain. In Algeria, the army fought the Islamists in a bitter 10-year civil war in the1990s in which more than 150,000 people perished. Some Algerian Islamists, veterans of the civil war, are today behind the insurgency in northern Mali to Algeria’s great concern. In Libya, the late Colonel Muammar Qadhafi hunted down the Islamists whenever he could.
In Syria, an attempt by the Muslim Brothers to kill President Hafiz al-Asad in 1980, and overthrow his regime in a campaign of terror, was brutally crushed in 1982 with great loss of life. The movement was outlawed for the next 30 years and membership was punishable by death. Today, the Islamists dream of revenge.
In Yemen, Ali Abdallah Salih, who ruled from 1978 to last year, made use of the Islamists to defeat the Marxists and secessionists of South Yemen but, when he found himself compelled to join America’s ‘war on terror’, he turned against them. Now that he has gone, they hope to restore their fortunes.
Against this harsh background, it would not be surprising if Islamists embraced extremist, revanchist views. It will demand courage and vision for their leaders to embrace a moderate, tolerant Islam that recognises diversity, accepts modernity, delivers social justice, asserts national independence and sovereignty, and — above all — creates jobs. Only by recognising that their countries live in an inter-dependent world will they succeed.
Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East. His latest book is The Struggle for Arab Independence: Riad el-Solh and the Makers of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press).
Copyright © 2012 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 17 July 2012
Word Count: 1,168
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