Having tasted blood, Egypt surge may return

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

The Muslim Brotherhood is West Asia’s equivalent of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Both are socio-cultural movements with a political wing – the Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party compare with the RSS-Bharatiya Janata Party nexus. By swamping politics with religion, the Brotherhood extinguished Egypt’s brief flowering of democracy and gave the military a plausible reason for resuming control of a country that once made news but seems to have dropped out of the world’s reckoning.

Last week Egypt was again in the headlines when the 88-year-old Hosni Mubarak, who was a casualty of what exultant Americans dubbed the Arab Spring, was released from five years of confinement in a Cairo hospital. Mr Mubarak, who came to power in 1981 after an Islamist activist assassinated Anwar Sadat, the president who made peace with Israel, was Egypt’s fourth president. The circumstances in which he took and demitted office pose a question that is crucial to the future governance of all Afro-Asian countries. It concerns the place of religion in politics and the limits of democracy. Can a voluntary vote for obscurantism be faulted? The BJP’s spectacular victory in Uttar Pradesh and – even more – the appointment of a saffron-draped Hindu monk as chief minister makes the question of pressing importance.

Many countries place limitations on a voter’s choice. Even in India, secession can’t be preached ever since a 1960s constitutional amendment robbed the Dravida Kazagham of an important campaign plank. Aung San Suu Kyi cannot formally take over the reins of government because Myanmar’s president cannot have a foreign spouse. Barack Obama’s detractors unfairly tried to make out he was in breach of the law that allows only native-born Americans to stand for the United States presidency, a stipulation that may have thwarted Henry Kissinger’s ultimate ambition. The former Thai prime minister, the ethnic Chinese Banharn Silpa-archa, was involved in a similar controversy. More importantly, no Thai can utter a word against the sacred institution of the monarchy.

Many Indian liberals would like constitutional restrictions to prevent someone like Yogi Adityanath holding office. But not all nations are averse to mixing religion with politics. Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus, for instance, campaigned vigorously not only to free Cyprus from British rule but for Enosis, the island’s union with Greece. He was a popular president after independence and a leading light of the non-aligned movement. Mr Mubarak tried to achieve the opposite in Egypt by strengthening the traditional separation of religion from politics. Alarmed when the Brotherhood and its allies captured 20 per cent of parliamentary seats in 2005, he revised the constitution stipulating that “political activity or political parties shall not be based on any religious background or foundation”. Independent candidates were banned from running for president, and new antiterrorism laws gave the security forces sweeping powers to detain suspects and restrict public gatherings.

The Muslim Brotherhood was set up in 1928 (three years after the RSS) by an Egyptian schoolteacher and six Suez Canal Company employees to make Sharia law mandatory, introduce Islamic notions of social equity, fight colonial control (monarchical Egypt was a British protectorate) and end Western influence. Branches were set up throughout the Arab world to run mosques, schools and sporting clubs. It proved immensely popular but not with Egyptian governments. While the RSS has been banned only four times (once during British rule and three times after independence), the Brotherhood was in constant trouble with the authorities, and constantly being proscribed for one reason or another.

All that ended when Mr Mubarak was overthrown. The Brotherhood was legalised and launched the FJP to fight the polls. Instead of voting for a safe and secular retired air force chief, Egyptians chose the FJP’s burly, bearded chairman, Mohamed Morsi, to be their first truly civilian and democratically elected president. It turned out Mr Morsi was more interested in consolidating his political position than attending to economic grievances. Visiting Egypt last month I was shown mile upon mile of derelict ramshackle blocks of flats, many without electricity, some with gaping holes for doors and windows, in the outskirts of Cairo. They were illegally built on prime agricultural land by Brotherhood members. Minarets sticking out of some of these grim condominiums spoke of a common tax dodge – the buildings were officially mosques.

People also complained of Islamists being favoured. Coptic Christians, accounting for nearly 15 per cent of Egypt’s 94 million population, resented discrimination. The Soviet Metrojet airliner bombing, killing all 214 people on board, added further to distress. The tragedy took place in the popular Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh which accounted for 33 per cent of the country’s tourism revenue. The Russians promptly stopped coming and when I was there, Egypt was desperately courting Chinese tourists to make up the deficit. Regaining the Western world’s confidence is an even more difficult task. As riots and protests soared, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the army chief, took over control.

According to Gehad er-Haddad, the Brotherhood’s official spokesman, Mr Sisi has “clamped down on the opposition and presided over a campaign of brutal repression. State authorities are responsible for extrajudicial killings, disappearances of hundreds of civilians and the detention of tens of thousands of political prisoners.” Others say hundreds of people were killed under both Mr Mubarak and Mr Morsi. While Mr Morsi was ideologically driven but inefficient, Mr Mubarak was regarded as competent, a seemingly unassailable Arab ruler and a staunch American ally. However, many Egyptians despised him as a symbol of rampant cronyism and repression. His incarceration was seen as one of the last remaining victories of the Arab Spring.

That victory vanished last week. The rich and the powerful who made hay while the sun of Mr Mubarak’s power shone are believed to have got away. They may have been jailed, tried and convicted, but in the end, they were released like Mr Mubarak himself. But thousands of Mr Morsi’s supporters are languishing in Mr Sisi’s jails while Mr Morsi himself faces trial in a glass cage.

For those who grew up to regard Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt as a harbinger of global revolution, and ranked him with Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito and Indonesia’s Sukarno, Egypt today marks the end of a dream. Despite its Islamic faith and despite being home to the thousand-year-old Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s most prestigious centre of learning, Egypt was a secular country. That was the secret of its stability and modernity. It set Egypt apart from a theocracy like Saudi Arabia and ensured its leadership position in the Arab world. Mr Sisi’s coup arrested the forces of obscurantism. But having tasted blood, they can surge back again, especially if they can bank on a democratic mandate.

The writer is the author of several books and a regular media columnist