Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
While I‘ve been trying to take a break from all politics and news as I bask in the glow of my family staying with me this week, I’ve nonetheless been fascinated by the fall of Egyptian President Morsi, in what must be described as a military coup. I’ve never been a fan of coups as I expect is true of most of us, yet the fall of Morsi has raises issues that I think are far more nuanced than appear on the surface. The salient facts are that after too many years the corruption of the government of Hosni Mubarak (who had been installed by the Egyptian military) led to severe economic issues and dissatisfaction with totalitarian rule. This then led to such massive protest that the military felt compelled, or justified to remove him. Mubarak’s removal was cheered, but then the clamor for free elections arose and after 18 months of martial law elections were held, as the first step towards transitioning to democracy and formulating a constitution.
The Society of Muslim Brothers, or Muslim Brotherhood was:“Founded in Egypt in 1928as a Pan-Islamic, religious, political, and social movement by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna,” It’s stated purposes was to: “to instill the Qur’an and Sunnah as the “sole reference point for …ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community … and state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood In a country such as Egypt, with its’ long history of totalitarian rule, the concept of political parties was not strong. Through its 85 years history the Brotherhood became the most stable opposition faction in the Egyptian political scene and was the main focus for opposition to whoever ruled Egypt by dint of the Egyptian Military’s backing. Such has been the success of the Muslim Brotherhood that it has branched out to have a significant presence in 20 nations around the world, many without a Muslim majority, such as the Russian Federation, the Indian Subcontinent, Great Britain and the United States. Therefore when the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 took place, the now legal “Brotherhood” was in an excellent position to vie for political power and formed the “Freedom and Justice Party” as its electoral arm. It won more than 40% of the parliamentary seats and its candidate Mohamed Morsi won election as President with 51.73% of the vote. His chief opponent had been a man who served as Mubarak’s Prime Minister. The Egyptian voters were faced, I think, with a “Hobson’s Choice” of Presidential candidates and chose what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils. Sound familiar? What I will attempt to examine here is a question which is framed as: “Are Religious Fundamentalists capable participating in a pluralistic democratic society?”The stated objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood through its’ “Freedom and Justice Party” politically were certainly ones that few of us could complain about and perhaps soothed the secular voters of Egypt and its non-Muslim Egyptians.
“We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people’s will, removing all obstacles restricting the functioning of civil society organizations,etc”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood
However, that statement is belied by the following objectives openly acknowledged by the Brotherhood:
“In the group’s belief, the Quran and Sunnah constitute a perfect way of life and social and political organization that God has set out for man. Islamic governments must be based on this system and eventually unified in a Caliphate. The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal, as stated by Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna was to reclaim Islam’s manifest destiny, an empire, stretching from Spain to Indonesia. It preaches that Islam enjoins man to strive for social justice, the eradication of poverty and corruption, and political freedom to the extent allowed by the laws of Islam. The Brotherhood strongly opposes Western colonialism, and helped overthrow the pro-western monarchies in Egypt and other Muslim countries during the early 20th century.
On the issue of women and gender the Muslim Brotherhood interprets Islam conservatively. Its founder called for “a campaign against ostentation in dress and loose behavior”, “segregation of male and female students”, a separate curriculum for girls, and “the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes … “
“The Brotherhood’s credo was and is, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
This is then the dichotomy of beliefs that the Brotherhood’s political party presented to the Egyptian voter. On the one hand it had denounced violence and agreed to work within the framework of a democratic political process. Yet its’ core beliefs are that (at least within predominantly Islamic countries) they should be ruled by the beliefs of Islamic law and justice in accordance with their interpretation of the “Qur’an” which they believe is perfect. Part of the task of the Morsi government was to create and implement a Constitution for Egypt. It was also promised that his government would include all factions of Egyptian society including the large group of Egyptian Coptic Christians. What occurred though was that Morsi only brought in Brotherhood political allies into the various Ministries of government and created a Constitution that was decidedly Islamic in content. Egypt, which was one of the most enlightened countries in the Mid East in the treatment of women, was being pushed into a far more fundamentalist outlook. This decidedly religious obsession of the Morsi government failed to pay attention to improving Egypt’s collapsing economy, growing poverty and the social unrest that goes with those conditions. Rapes of women increased in alarming increments and crime soared as people sought the wherewithal to feed their families. Cairo, that great and venerable city, increased to a population to more than twenty teeming millions the majority living in horrendous slums. City services in Egypt’s capitol collapsed under the weight of those numbers. The elation of the 2011 Revolution led inexorably to the despair of 2013 as millions of Egyptians, many with nothing to lose took to the streets and gave the Egyptian Military the tacit permission to remove Morsi and arrest the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is not my intent to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as evil, nor is it to give a litany of their history of violence and terrorism. Such a view is in my opinion one sided and ignores the reality that led to the Brotherhood’s creation and to its success in surviving for 85 years in a hostile Egyptian climate. Historically, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Mid East has been an area controlled by wealth and Western imperial power. While wealthy rulers lived in luxury, the middle classes were relatively small and the masses lived in abject poverty. No doubt from the perspective of the Brotherhood’s founders they were mandated by their beliefs to aid their brother Muslims and to return them to the “perfection” of Islamic Law. Intermingled with those beliefs was the memory of Islamic empire and the determination to return to its’ glory. However, noble their motives may have been and are, within their beliefs is this inherent problem. If you see that everything you believe is “perfect” and mandated by God, then the idea of compromising those beliefs is blasphemy and sacrilege. How indeed can you live in a pluralistic society, when those who reject your beliefs, are by your definition “evil” and “sinful”?
There are two thoughts that arose in my mind and caused me to write this piece. The first is that the entire concept of “Democracy” has been deconstructed through the years by ours and other governments to mean the ability to vote and little else. How often throughout the world have we seen dictatorships legitimized simply because elections were held? A democratic government needs to be supported by democratic institutions and the agreement of its citizens to abide by the results of the electoral processes. Beyond that it needs an overall conceptual structure that provides the framework for the existence of a government that will protect the rights of all the people, not just the ever changing majority. It requires a legal system and a judiciary that protects its conceptual framework (constitution) and with it the rights of the individual. It’s of course more complicated than that, but if you’re a regular visitor here I’m sure you get my meaning and could on your own flesh it out beyond my brief offering. The point is that when the world saw the welcomed upheaval of the “Arab Spring” it had been conditioned by years of propaganda that made simply holding a vote appear to be the acme of a democratic process. There is much more to developing a democratic society than simply voting for a “leader” and the election of Morsi, given his subsequent actions, did not a democratic Egypt make. This leads me to my second thought on this subject.
I seriously wonder whether it is possible for Fundamentalist religionists to actually be able to take power in a democratic society and wield it in a way that allows people of differing beliefs their freedom to have those differing beliefs? When you have a belief system that you not only see as “perfect”, but as the road-map for a perfect society, how can you make the compromises that are necessary to maintain a pluralistic, democratic society? From the perspective of the Muslim Brotherhood, indeed it is their stated goal; you can only build a “perfect” society based on Islamic law and justice. In this respect they are not really very different from other Fundamentalist true believers that see “their way” as the only way towards true righteousness.
When we apply this to America the abortion debate comes to mind. There is no doubt that the majority of Americans do not believe that women should be denied the right to choose what they do with their own bodies, yet in the years since Roe v. Wade this has been one of the flashpoints of the American political scene. The only conceivable, immutable ending for those anti-abortionists to this national controversy, is the complete end of abortions. Compromise of positions can only be temporary and must include small gains for their side. If and when those opposed to abortion finally gain power they will not hesitate to end it completely, regardless of the equity of the situation and a sizable opposition to their actions. I use abortion though as merely an illustration of this problem. There are many other areas, prayer in schools for instance, where the same dynamic would apply. The problems is that when someone sees their views not only as perfect, but also as the only way to live, compromise becomes ugly and unacceptable.
My contention is that without the ability of people to compromise, maintaining democratic institutions becomes impossible. This is true whether in Cairo, or Washington. The nature of much of today’s religious fundamentalism, be it Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Judaic, is that compromise is impossible, because one cannot compromise “God’s Word”. If you are a true believer than that is an obvious fact of existence and you would cease to be a “true believer” without that philosophy. This brings me back to Morsi and Egypt. I hate the idea of military coups anywhere, but what was to be done in Egypt. There is strong evidence, that contrary to their platform, once in power those of the Muslim Brotherhood returned to their stated principles and were moving quickly to establish the version of Muslim Law upon Egypt, while at the same time denying equality of treatment to others. This fanaticism in the application of their beliefs distracted them with dealing with the economic and social problems that plagued most Egyptians and led inevitably to the Egyptian Military’s coup. I think this is a quandary that is at the heart of the difficulty of maintaining a democratic, pluralistic system in many countries, including ours. While is certainly is not the only difficulty, it ranks high on a list of contributors to political dysfunction. The question is what to do about it and the answer is quite difficult. The problem is that if you exclude religious fundamentalists from the political process due to their authoritarian views, then you no longer have a pluralistic society because of that exclusion. In a pluralistic society religious fundamentalists should also have a voice, or when do you stop excluding. Please help me out here because while I can frame the problem I admit that I don’t have the “perfect” answers.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger