Tag: egypt

Constitutional amendments looking bleak

I am very much working on this issue but don’t have time to comment, so read Reuters’ take on the constitutional amendments:

Amendments to the Egyptian constitution, as drafted by a parliamentary committee, would weaken the role of judges in monitoring elections and make it almost impossible for Islamists to seek the presidency.

The draft amendments would deprive non-party independents of the right to stand for the presidency and ban all political activity based on any religious reference or basis weapons the authorities could use against the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group in the country.

The amendments give responsibility for monitoring elections to a committee on which judges may not necessarily be in the majority.

Opposition and civil society groups have prized the existing requirement that judges supervise elections as one of the best ways to discourage the abuses which have marred voting in Egypt.

In the 2005 elections several judges risked their careers by speaking out against electoral practices that they witnessed. The parliamentary committee is expected to approve the amendments this week.

There is even worse stuff, but more on it when the amendments are in their final form. In the meantime, Muslim Brothers have launched a “We refuse the constitutional amendments” campaign across campuses.

Reading about the Ikhwan

Here are a few reading notes on some recent articles on the Muslim Brotherhood (MB):

What Islamists Need to Be Clear About: The Case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood – high-caliber work by the Carnegie Endowment’s excellent Amr Hamzawy and Marina Ottaway, essentially giving recommendations to Islamists on what they need to to convince the rest of the world that they are not a Trojan Horse. Many will have problems with this paper, but it clearly lists the issues that Western policymakers have problems with. The MB or other groups don’t have to agree with, most notably the provisions on international agreements. I also wonder what foreign policymakers would make of the fact that the most thorough intellectual work by Islamists on social justice is probably Sayyid Qutb’s “Social Justice in Islam.” Let’s hope they continue with other examples from other countries.

The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood – like most Foreign Affairs articles, pretty bland aside from making the suggestion to the wonk crowd that “a conversation with the Muslim Brotherhood makes strong strategic sense.” The article should have been less broad in scope, better sourced and referenced, though, and does not come up with any serious analysis of MB discourse and practice. It also, in my opinion, exaggerates the links between the Egyptian MB and various affiliates in Europe that are dealing with entirely different circumstances. It is however a refreshing change from the Daniel Pipes line that there are no differences between moderate and extremist Islamism.

Parties of God – Ken Silverstein’s Harpers piece covers a lot of ground, from the Egyptian MB to Hizbullah to the resistance to discussing Islamism with an open-mind in the US. Because of this it’s hard to see his point, even if, for its audience, much of the material will be new and interesting. He devotes some space to his own experience dealing with pro-Israel bias with his former editors at the LA Times when reporting on Hizbullah, something that would make a great article on its own (looking at pro-Israel bias and fear of retribution in American newsrooms) but has ultimately little to do with Islamist parties.

– at-tarikh as-siri li-jamaa al-ikhwan al-muslimin (The Secret History of the Association of the Muslim Brothers) is a re-edition of a controversial book by Alaa Ashmawy, who claims to be a former member of the tanzim al khass, the MB’s paramilitary wing that operated mostly in the 1940s and 1950s. The book has been reissued by Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s Ibn Khaldoun Center and makes the argument that the MB retains some kind of paramilitary wing, which is not accepted by many Egyptian and other scholars. I mention it because I was recently given a copy, but I have not had time to read it seriously nor can I comment on its usefulness. The issue is very topical though, particularly after the (inflated) concerns about the al-Azhar martial arts demo and last summer’s claim that the MB was willing to send 10,000 fighters to Lebanon.

– I’d like to also mention an undergraduate essay a reader sent me about the MB along with a message about the “On Freeloaders” post from a few days ago. The essay was written by an Australian student who has never been to the Arab world, does not speak Arabic and relied only on previously published English-language material. While obviously it isn’t ground-breaking, it provides a nice introductory summary and more importantly a decent bibliography of recent academic, policy and journalistic work on the MB. You can read the essay here, and it author has a blog called Jovial Fellow. If someone who had done that much reading contacted me for help on further research, I would have no problems helping them.

Various items pertaining mostly to Egypt

There haven’t been many posts lately because I am quite busy on a project at the moment, and I am spending a lot of time chasing people on the phone and in meetings. There is tons of stuff I’d like to post about but don’t have the time — such as the recent controversial (and problematic) Seymour Hersh article, Egyptian political news such as constitutional “reform” and the ever-growing number of strikes (covered so well by Hossam), developments within the Muslim Brotherhood (see the interviews on Helena Cobban’s blog). So here are a few quick links, mostly on Egypt:

– How Barack Obama learned to love Israel by Ali Abunimah, Obama’s groveling AIPAC speech is here.

– Arabs reiterate 2002 initiative, Israel says no to return of Palestinian refugees.

– Egypt in diplomatic row over alleged execution of Egyptian war prisoners by Israeli forces in 1967.

– Lebanese journalist Serena Assir has a blog, Freespace Beirut.

– Marc Lynch has a Guardian piece on the Brotherhood of the blog.

– Lawrence Pintak follows up on the US/Egypt tiff over the Iraqi insurgent channel Zawraa.

– Maria Golia on The subsistence math of Egypt’s neglected workers.

– Last but certainly not least, Baheyya on the perils of the succession, hammering the point that I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen about the fundamental uncertainty and risk of the Gamal scenario. As is increasingly argued, there is an analogy to be made with the crisis of 1951-52 — most notably the Cairo fire — and a growing risk of political violence (both spontaneous and calculated) in the next few years. Some even hope for it, thinking it will be the last straw that forces army intervention. I find this line of reasoning among some radical activists, but the other night at a dinner I heard a wealthy, well-connected, pro-regime, prominent society woman say “This country is on the brink of a crisis. The army has to intervene. We won’t democracy, but we’ll have order.” Like Baheyya, I don’t think we’re about to see the Mubarak regime collapse but the degree of uncertainty has grown tremendously. I am also concerned about the long-term impact of the exclusion of the Brothers from political participation and the ongoing rape of the constitution. But more about that later.

Garton Ash on Egypt

Timothy Garton Ash has an op-ed on Egypt in which he contrasts EU and US policies for democracy promotion. I think the difference between the two is while the US has a democracy promotion policy that systematically loses out to its imperial policy and domestic interests (big oil, Israel, etc.), the EU is even more morally bankrupt in that it does not have a democracy promotion policy at all. In fact, it barely has the guts to have any kind of foreign and security policy at all. The history of EU policy (not individual states) towards the Middle East in the past 15 years is the history of a failure, the failure of the Barcelona Process. It’s risible, really. But I don’t care much about democracy promotion as a concept, frankly (recent years have left a bad taste in my mouth), and think that European states’ policy towards the Middle East essentially take place in a transatlantic context, not in terms of direct bilateral relations between European and Arab states.

There is a part of the article I want to quote:

You cannot pass many hours here without encountering the unshakable conspiratorial conviction that the west is to blame for everything that is wrong in the Middle East (starting with Israel). The truth is that Usama’s future, and that of the more than 400 million mainly young Arabs who are likely to be around in 20 years’ time, is 80% up to the governments and people here and only 20% up to all the powers outside.

While I certainly agree that Arab countries have to do get their act together by themselves, it’s profoundly hypocritical to dismiss the regional and global environment when talking about a region that is the core of the oil-based modern global economy. Furthermore, what Garton Ash forgets is that the independent policies of strong and representative Arab states may not be at all to his or Western governments’ lacking. But then again organic intellectuals like Garton Ash will be at hand to criticize them when they are too strong rather than too weak.

Le Figaro on the crackdown on the MB

Tangi Salaun has a good article about the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in Le Figaro, looking it the regime’s fear that the MB could become a legitimate interlocutor for foreign powers, notably the US, as one explanation for the crackdown. This aspect of things, even if not a prime motivation for regime-MB relations, is often overlooked in the US media. He also highlights the widespread condemnation in the independent media and among prominent state press columnists, who have been calling for the state to adopt a more intelligent and conciliatory attitude towards the MB (I am talking here about people like Magdi Mehanna and Salama Ahmed Salama, who are not at all MB lovers.)

Favor: Foreign Affairs article on MB needed

Update: Got it, thanks!

There’s an interesting-looking new article on “The Moderate New Muslim Brotherhood” at Foreign Affairs, but it’s subscribers-only. Can readers with access send me a copy?

The Muslim Brotherhood is the world’s oldest, largest, and most influential Islamist organization. It is also the most controversial, condemned by both conventional opinion in the West and radical opinion in the Middle East. American commentators have called the Muslim Brothers “radical Islamists” and “a vital component of the enemy’s assault force … deeply hostile to the United States.” Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri sneers at them for “lur[ing] thousands of young Muslim men into lines for elections … instead of into the lines of jihad.”

Jihadists loathe the Muslim Brotherhood (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) for rejecting global jihad and embracing democracy. These positions seem to make them moderates, the very thing the United States, short on allies in the Muslim world, seeks. But the Ikhwan also assails U.S. foreign policy, especially Washington’s support for Israel, and questions linger about its actual commitment to the democratic process.

Over the past year, we have met with dozens of Brotherhood leaders and activists from Egypt, France, Jordan, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom. In long and sometimes heated discussions, we explored the Brotherhood’s stance on democracy and jihad, Israel and Iraq, the United States, and what sort of society the group seeks to create. The Brotherhood is a collection of national groups with differing outlooks, and the various factions disagree about how best to advance its mission. But all reject global jihad while embracing elections and other features of democracy. There is also a current within the Brotherhood willing to engage with the United States. In the past several decades, this current — along with the realities of practical politics — has pushed much of the Brotherhood toward moderation.

It’s an important topic, it’s nice to see someone looking at the moderate side of the MB transnationally. Will comment on paper regarding Egypt, as I have been working on this issue a little bit recently.

Debating the amendments

I am catching a plane to Rome in about 20 minutes and have just discovered that Cairo airport finally has free wi-fi. Because of my travels I probably won’t be posting much until Tuesday. I did want to mention a debate I went to at AUC last night about the constitutional amendments and the Muslim Brotherhood. Kudos to the organizer for getting a nice panel of people — constitutional scholar Yehia al-Gammal, seasoned lefty journalist Salah Eissa (who wrote a book a few years ago about the ‘lost’ constitution of 1954), prominent reformist Muslim Brother Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh and veteran leftist Hussein Abdel Razek of the Tagammu party.

I was rather miffed that al-Gammal and Eissa spent so much time talking about the provision that sharia is a source of law in the Egyptian constitution. Although this was relevant to the topic of the debate and the whole issue of whether the MB want a theocratic state or not, to be honest I think it’s rather besides the point when you have such a calamitous set of constitutional amendments coming through that threaten to permanently reduce personal and political freedoms. For this reason I was rather impressed by the impassioned speech Aboul Fotouh gave, skewering Eissa and defending the MB who are after all the ones being arrested and having their private property being confiscated these days. Although that was perhaps the easy political speech to make (and he was the only real politician of the panel), I do get the feeling that the pointless debate over sharia law (and Coptic demands for a fully secular state, which I personally support) is eclipsing the serious injury done to the constitution. It was particularly disappointing to have al-Gammal, the expert of the group, not give AUC students a better explanation of some of the more damaging changes that would give security forces routine powers to wiretap, search homes, and more. Or how despite rising fraud in elections, fewer and fewer judges will supervise future elections.

It’s not the best study of these changes made thus far, but the Land Center has a long report on the constitutional amendments for those who are interested. (Download Constitutional Amendments.doc)

Time to go!