By Patricia H. Kushlis
Afer 18 excruciating days, Hosni Mubarak the now former President of Egypt, finally and reluctantly left the scene on Friday morning turning over power to the army and a caretaker government as a popular uprising against his continued rule grew larger day by day.
Now the rebuilding needs to begin in earnest.
Despite its venerable ancient history, Egypt today is a young country sporting a huge youth bulge. Its members were the real leaders of and inspiration for the revolt. They must be a party to the debates and discussions that decide the shape of Egyptian politics to come. Furthermore, most are not Islamists, Islamic radicals or radicals of the left or right. They are foremost educated middle class professionals who more than anything want their Egypt to join the democratic world because, if nothing more, they want a say in their own future. In short this was a democratic not an Islamic revolution.
That these twenty-somethings were inspired by the success of the revolt against Ben Ali, a hated dictator in Tunisia who had stayed on well past his time, should be no surprise. This was the spark that lit the dry tinder of Egyptian society and is spreading throughout the Arab world.
Egypt, the exceptional
Yet Egypt is special in ways Tunisia and other Muslim countries are not. Not only does Egypt have the largest population of any Arab country, but Egypt, after all, is crucial to the quest for Arab “hearts and minds” and perhaps other Sunni Muslim ones as well: Al Azhar University in Cairo – where Obama spoke in 2009 – is the heart of Sunni religious thought. Cairo – except for the upstart but influential Katari-based Al Jazeera - is the heart of the Arab media that is beamed throughout the region.
Mubarak = Shift + Delete (sign seen at Tahrir Square)
That these young Egyptian professionals used all the organizational tools in their arsenal – from Facebook and Twitter to age-old calls to the barricades delivered by foot in the streets of Cairo’s slums – should also not be a surprise. That they formed alliances with Mohamed El Baradei, former head of the IAEA and modernizer with loads of experience abroad as well as the Muslim Brotherhood and others in the opposition should also not surprise: they needed all the allies they could muster.
The youth coalition has called upon Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, and other respected figures . . . to be their intermediaries with the country’s new military chiefs, according to Kareem Fahim in The New York Times.
That the drama that unfolded on the stage of Tahrir Square was seen around the world thanks to the technological skills and ingenuity of the Egyptian youth was combined with the experience of the international media - especially Al Jazeera, CNN and BBC – should also be no surprise. Using Facebook and Twitter to organize is one thing: to broadcast the pictures and videos in real time to most of the world adds another complex dimension.
Or that the planning and organizational sessions of the demonstrations that tuned into a revolution took place around the kitchen table at a young man’s mother place should have been expected. After all, you’d hardly expect anti-government protestors to hold their strategy sessions out in the open air, at a restaurant or at someone’s office particularly in a police state where the walls and pavement have ears.
That the demonstrations appeared to be leaderless but really were not – should also not come as the seventh wonder of the world. A networked world works differently from the top-down hierarchical pre-Internet organizational model. Perhaps that was the real secret of the revolt’s success.
It must be hard for a traditional hierarchy to understand or deal with an amoeba-like, amorphous or hydra-headed creature whose leaders - the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution - combined three different elements: the April 6 Youth Movement, the Muslim Brotherhood and the young supporters of Mohamed El Baradei. But they clearly spoke and speak for many more.
Just as the US military and intelligence services are challenged in combating a clandestine terrorist organization like Al Qaeda whose leaders are hidden by people – and which – until the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt – seemingly captured the attention of Muslims around the globe weary of home-grown repressive dictatorships and their western supporters.
Al Qaeda’s militant stance and promise of a new caliphate, an ideal Islamic state born through terror used against an antiquated establishment – was, like Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? – music to those increasingly disenchanted with the status quo.
But perhaps that page has just been turned.
The Muslim Brotherhood
Just as the Facebook and Twitter generation needs to play a role in Egypt’s future so does the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist, but non-clerical organization whose presence was used as a pretext by the Mubarak regime and the Israelis to maintain the status quo.
Especially after 9/11, fear of militant Islam and not just Al Qaeda’s siren song spread like wildfire throughout the US and elsewhere. This fear was, and is, promulgated primarily by this country’s right-wing. The neo-conservatives have been the worst of its propagators. That they controlled US foreign policy towards the Middle East under much of the Bush administration especially during his first term was part of the problem. They and their foot soldiers effectively spread the message of fear across this country. It’s still with us today.
I heard the same admonition just last Monday from Michael Oren, the New Jersey born Israeli Ambassador to the US, at a speech he gave at the Baker Institute in Houston. He appropriately prefaced his talk by saying that he would not comment on the demonstrations occurring in Egypt but just as inappropriately broke that pledge by concluding with a stern warning about the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood gaining control if the revolt succeeded.
This warning was not just questionable but likely specious. 2011 Egypt is not 1979 Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood is not the clerics who brought Ayatollah Khomenei to power. Here’s why:
- The Muslim Brotherhood which began as an anti-British colonial movement in 1928 but was forced underground by the Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954 swore off violence in 1982 and began cooperating with other political parties in 1984. It is, as Anthony Shadid of The New York Times has pointed out, neither led by clerics nor is it based on a clerical organization.
Today, no one really knows the numbers of its supporters but given the complexity of Egyptian society the Brotherhood may be playing in a crowded field. We do know, however, that the Brotherhood garnered 88 seats (or about 19% of the seats) in the 2005 parliamentary elections before the Mubarak regime again banned its participation in parliament. But support for the Brotherhood in truly free and fair elections is unknown.
We also know that Dr. Zawahiri, the brains behind Osama Ben Laden, split from the Brotherhood years ago because he did not think it radical or militant enough.
- The Brotherhood came to support the demonstrations in Cairo three days late. Once the organization did join, however, its protest-hardened members helped maintain order and also infused fresh numbers into the Square just when the protests seemed to flag. Yet there is scant evidence to suggest that its leadership became the democratic movement’s dominant voice although the Brotherhood certainly views democracy as beneficial to its interests. Furthermore, its youth leaders are part of the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution that surely must be part of the equation that leads the country towards elections later this year.
- Egypt, unlike Iran, does not produce oil and is not awash with petro-dollars. Instead, its revenues comes from tourism, Suez Canal tolls, export of manufactured and agricultural goods, and foreign aid – including $1.5 billion annually from the US - most of which goes to the Egyptian Armed Forces. In short, Egypt is far more dependent upon the rest of the world than Iran.
The Egyptian Brotherhood has no heir-apparent, no Iranian Ayatollah Khomenei waiting in the wings to be swept to power – in part because the organizational foundations of Sunni Islam in Egypt and Shiite Islam in Iran are antithetical. Moreover, there are major cultural differences between Iranian and Egyptian societies as well as 31 years, or a generation, between the two popular uprisings.
The Iranian bazaaris or merchants – so crucial to the Ayatollah’s rise in 1979 – were Shiite and the sold their wares to other Iranians. According to Juan Cole, Coptic Christians are well represented in the Egyptian bazaar (suq) which unlike the bazaar in 1979 Iran is heavily dependent on the tourist trade. Or as Cole notes: “That the Egyptian Market would bankroll Egyptian fundamentalists to establish an oppressive theocracy that would permanently scare away German holiday-makers is highly unlikely.”
It's Just Begun
The Egyptian military is in control of Egypt. It now needs to live up to its promise to move the country from dictatorship to democracy in an orderly fashion within a matter of months. It’s a tall order – but the last thing we as outsiders should do is fixate on a fear largely manufactured for the purposes of others.