The Egypt of today is witness to a very flagrant reality: the Ikhwan (the Muslim Brotherhood, MB) is adopting the old policies of land possession and realpolitik to
The Egypt of today is witness to a very flagrant reality: the Ikhwan (the Muslim Brotherhood, MB) is adopting the old policies of land possession and realpolitik to serve one previously defined target: power.
These policies are not new to the MB: they were adopted after the group was formed in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna in an attempt to transfer the Islamic Caliphate to Egypt after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of WWI.
Throughout successive decades, the MB has striven to achieve its dream. This moved towards being a reality after the 25 January 2011 Revolution, and finally materialised with the election of one of its members, Mohamed Mursi, as president of Egypt. Ever since, the process of ‘Ikhwanising’ the Egyptian State has been going ahead full speed.
Yet again, as most analysts can spot, today’s reality of the Ikhwanisation of Egypt did not occur overnight; it has been progressing since way back in the 1930s. What is today a visible, flagrant process that displaces anything non-Islamist in its way is the fruit of much older work that was long resisted by non-Islamists.
“He can go to hell”
The symptoms of Ikhwanisation are all around, flagrantly propagated by the Ikhwan themselves. Even the public announcements by the Islamists are telling.
The former supreme guide of the group, Mahdi Akef, said on the TV programme Zaman al-Ikhwan (The time of Ikhwan), broadcast on the private satellite channel al-Qahira wal-Nas and presented by Tony Khalifa, that anyone who did not accept Islamic rule ”toz feeh” (“let him go to hell”).
The newly appointed media minister in Hisham Qandil’s Cabinet, Salah Abdel-Maqsoud, is totally loyal to the Islamists; when he referred to Khalid al-Islambouli’s mother he introduced her as “the mother of the martyr”. Khalid al-Islambouli was an Islamist Egyptian army officer who planned and participated in the assassination of Egypt’s third president, Anwar Sadat, in 1981 and was subsequently arrested and executed the following year. The Islamists, whom Sadat had given free rein to spread their ideology and mandate in an attempt to fight his bitter enemies, the communists, were the very ones who assassinated him for his making peace with Israel.
The recent appointment of MB or MB-loyal chief editors to almost all the Egyptian State-owned journals, coupled with the arrest and trial of two of the most vociferous opponents of the Ikhwan: Tawfiq Ukasha of the Pharaeen TV channel and Islam Afifi of the Cairo daily Al-Dostour, did not send a reassuring message.
The Free Egyptians political party issued a statement supporting the journalists and intellectuals who rejected the Ikhwan’s manipulation of the Egyptian media. The statement warned of similar attempts to manipulate the media during the parliamentary elections scheduled for next October.
The unholy alliance
The liberal journalist and writer Mohamed Salmawi says: “Democratic regimes separate the State from the government. State institutions, such as the army or the judiciary, are strictly beyond the reach of governments. Elections in Italy or France may bring in a socialist or a right-wing government, but they never work radical changes to the judiciary, the army, the intelligence or the security apparatuses. This separation is the only guarantee for peaceful, efficient power rotation which is the cornerstone of democracy.
“In Egypt, however, there exists an unholy alliance between the State and the government. It worked with the now-defunct ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of the Mubarak regime but, to be historically precise, it has its roots in much earlier practices that go back to the military-led rule of the country since 1952. Since the 23 July 1952 Revolution, which many historians insist was a military coup, the military has placed its men in all top public positions, not only as governors or intelligence chiefs, but even as senior diplomats and CEOs of public sector companies. What the Islamists appear to be doing today is an extension of the pervious practice; they are trying to make sure that its people dominate all the leading, decision-making positions.”
The ongoing process of Ikwanising the State will certainly hinder democracy and will also destroy the revolution that erupted against authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Ikhwan control
The selection of the new cabinet was thoroughly Ikhwanised. MB Hisham Qandil who, one may remember, was not much of a success as water resources minister in the previous cabinet of Kamal al-Ganzouri, is now Prime Minister. MB members dominate all the portfolios. Salah Abdel-Maqsoud is Media Minister and Ahmed Mekki is Justice Minister, meaning that for many people this is the way to Ikhwanise the State, since the Ikhwan now control the courts of law and the media.
Salah Abdel-Maqsoud’s only experience is that he was responsible for Mursi’s election campaign; this in itself is not sufficient qualification for handling the media affairs of a civic State. It is no secret that the first people who feel threatened are the ‘true’ revolutionaries—the young people who started the January 2011 Revolution—not those who were allied with the Ikhwan. The political activist poet Ahmed Doma is leading a campaign he has called Oyoun al-Thawra li-Rasd Akhwanet al-Dawla (The Revolution’s eyes are open to detecting the Ikhwanising of the State). It counts among its members many of the revolution’s young people who say they will defend the revolution and will not accept that it should be usurped for the benefit of any other movement.
Islamisation of education
Emad Gad of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) worries about the Ikwanisation of the Egyptian education system. Yet again, according to Mr Gad, this is not an overnight process. It started in the 1970s when the then President Sadat released the Ikhwan out of the prisons they had been placed in by his predecessor Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Many Ikhwans then returned to Egypt from the Gulf States and from Saudi Arabia, where they had fled the Nasser tyranny.
The Sadat regime, with an eye to promoting Islamism in the face of the communist movement which he dreaded, appointed several of them to manage the education portfolio with the result that they gradually Islamised all the components of the education system: the teachers, curricula and school systems. They inserted Qur’anic verses in the curricula, even in subjects not related to religion such as history and the environment. Christian students had to sit for exams scheduled during Christmas or Easter, and frequently faced increasing isolation in schools and non-stop taunting from Islamist-leaning teachers.
Observers do not deny that several education ministers under Mubarak worked hard to battle fanaticism in schools and the curricula, but the Islamisation had become too entrenched in the system for it to be wiped out in one go. In addition to the fact that battling Islamisation brought on allegations, propagated by the Islamic streams in the community, of anti-Islamicism—an allegation too ominous to fight.
According to Mr Gad, we are today reaping the bitter fruit. The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the MB, has exploited the system, which already includes many of their members, to propagate Islamist thought and defame their competitors. Last year’s exams included topics on the devotion of the Ikhwan to the revolution, and this year’s Arabic language exams were used to attack and insult the liberal and secular parties.
Full sway over legislation
The final coup, however, was President Mohamed Mursi’s decision on 11 August to cancel the addendum to the constitutional declaration and hold sway over the full range of legislative and executive powers of the State, and to replace the defence minister, chief of staff, and chiefs of the air force and navy.
The Socialist Popular Alliance Party announced its acceptance of the President’s decision to appoint a new chief of the armed forces as an important step to end military rule and to end the transition period. However, the party disagreed with the president’s decision to take over legislation authority and the adjustment he made to give himself the right to dissolve the current constituent assembly and form a new one.
Fears abound of further Ikhwanisation. The constitutional court and Al-Azhar are the only two remaining obstacles facing al-Banna’s heirs. Each step they take appears to be well-studied and strategic, and they are taking very good care to give no chance for opposition voices to be heard. Predictably, they insist that opposition to them constitutes opposition to Allah and Islam.
WATANI International
26 August 2012