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In FT today, Gideon Rachman asks 'Which revolution will Egypt choose?'
My answer was that if we take the symbolism of the flag shown, I would think the natal course of revolution would be the one on the left though not Qom style but Akhwan based, i.e., Muslim Brotherhood which is the intellectual and philosophical guru of radical political Islam. The Ayatollahs are less inclined in allowing suicide bombings but some factions of Islamic brotherhood justify radicalisation using annihilation of moderate ideologues as a tool of policy.
Today, the unfolding developments in Egypt’s revolt are new changes, under glaring eyes and information overflow. Unlike the West’s, Islam’s ‘renaissance’ is being played out instantly and through live coverage. It is emergence of long awaited renaissance but it will take its course of history and will go through anarchy. Imagine guillotines and beheadings, burning of books and inquisitions, all being played live on CNN and Fox 24-7 – this is the challenge of new reformation; either perish or live with the world. Any other revolution through history has resulted in freedom, but here they are talking about its genesis.
There is a tendency in the Islamic world where revolutions result in introversion because they want to apply laws of 1400 years ago today. Google, Twitter and internet-based open revolutions are subject to ordinances of Scriptures revealed in the desert; it is borne within and contradictory. Either injunctions of the Scriptures will survive or Google and internet-based will. And this is one of the reasons technology is frowned upon by despotic monarchs, emperors and dictators. Knowledge was and is considered an impediment for governance, therefore this is the background in which the Egyptian revolution is being viewed – with cautious optimism. Certainly, we are excited about freedom and hearing its “voice” but also concerned about the two-steps-forward-six-steps-back approach, if Khomeini’s revolution is anything to go by or Nasserite revolution against the monarch. With the historical backdrop of revolutions in the Islamic World, I’m afraid this incipient renaissance might just be nipped in the bud.
A 'Google based revolution' in the world of connectivity interbred with the will of Allah under tutelage of Muslim brotherhood will be classic revisionism of free will. The twain shall not co-exist, revolutionary zeal ala Political Islam style is antithesis of a revolution. This needs to be understood by those liberals who are gong course in seeing this freedom being sought by some who will murder this freedom. There should be no liberty for those who kill liberty.
After fifty years of wasted opportunity, some of the sons of present radical revolution will drift to the right, i.e., secular democracy; freedom of mind and separation of state from religious dogma. A repressed Muslim Brotherhood, which is the Sunni equivalent of Qom based clergy, will be a destabilising force for some time in Egypt. Be prepared for a new alliance of evil -Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic brotherhood. The peace treaty of Israel that has kept Egypt out of the dirty game of death will experience new stresses led by a radical Middle East.
From Libya to Saudi Arabia, a new ideological curtain of rejectionists is in the offing. Fractious liberals in Egypt led by Baradei face a great challenge to feed the mouths of an exploding populace and create jobs; this needs less of ideology and more of pragmatism that unfortunately is missing from the agendas of the present fundamentalist opposition.
A little over a week before the crisis in Egypt during the onset of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, I wrote that:
‘…Countries like Egypt, where nepotism and effort to install Gamal Mubarak are clandestinely underway, must also be very worried at the origins of this major North African uprising. Governments across the Middle-East are scrutinizing the events, quickly unfolding in Tunisia after the toppling of Ben Ali by a popular uprising, with anxiety and fear. In Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Yemen, Libya and even the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the Arab rulers have a fear of popular uprising from their own respective oppressed populations inspired by Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution. Though it is absolutely important to realise that the revolution in Tunisia is not in its content a clarion call for popular 'Arab revolt' or the beginning of revolution seasons across the Middle East. The poverty levels at which a common man lives in majority of these countries are appalling…
…Present day revolutions are rooted in the beliefs that direct and unilateral action is possible and justifiable and that a super power should embrace and push for opportunities for democracy and security. These revolutions succeed because they are the culmination of patient efforts; a result of a policy that actively promotes democracy and freedom in all regions of the world. The global openness and interactivity of information has created a world that has no place for totalitarian rule and autocrats…’
Enlightened and free minds extend the frontiers of human knowledge and understanding. Puritanical adherence to dogma kills the spirit of inquiry. Today, students at our seminaries rarely study the works of Avicenna, Al Kindi or Averroes. When scholars and “free thinkers” are termed as ‘heretics,’ the intellectual capacity and capability of man is destined to go nowhere but down. Today’s “democratic” ideas in the Islamic world are deemed as “borrowed,” according to Egypt’s newly-appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman. What most leaders in the Arab World don’t realize is that freedom of thought, pursuit of knowledge and tolerance, not bigotry, is the answer to the crisis the Islamic societies face.
Some Muslims have lamented the fact that despite being 19.6 percent of the world's population, the Ummah has produced only three Nobel laureates whereas Jews — only 0.2 percent of the world's population — have produced 122. The explanation is simple. Once orthodoxy choked off the rationalist initiative, intellectual decay took hold. Prof Ahmed Zewail, the only Arab to ever win a Nobel Prize for science, has said: "The end will begin when seekers of knowledge become satisfied with their achievements." Yet, our renaissance was extinguished not by the complacency of the scientist but by the intolerance of the dogmatist. Egypt’s own Naguib Mahfouz, another rare Arab Nobel Laureate (in literature), poignantly said in his acceptance speech, “I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic one. One day the great Pyramid will disappear too. But Truth and Justice will remain for as long as Mankind has a ruminative mind and a living conscience."
Revolutions are inspired by these prophets and so-called “heretics” of 'Enlightenment.' Until Iranian/Arab enlightened philosophers are brought ahead of the sacred writings no 'revolt' is possible. Revolutions only succeed when a society is able to embrace new realities. If society chooses to live in space of decadence and old thought, any revolution will only be a tool to accelerate its fall to ignominy and disasters.
Today people are confused at the nature of Egypt’s revolt. What kind of freedom are they seeking? Will it meet the fate of Iran’s revolution which descended into total anarchy after the Shah followed by a disconnect with the modern world in the ensuing three decades? Revolutions should bring some kind of enlightenment. Liberty seekers should not become killers of liberty once they are in power. People on the street want their freedom but there looms a question mark on the intention of the new incoming leadership representing the very same “freedom.” If a revolution means replacement by another dictatorship, then what we will have is a failed movement. Liberty truly means acceptance of secular liberal democracy as a way of life and designating religion to its right place, restricted to the belief that it is a private matter between you and God.
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is the mother of all intellectual radical movements of the world. It provides the philosophical bedrock to the right wing entities who believe that the Islamic way of life will rule the world one day. This continuous 1400-year old romance with the idea of bringing back the “Golden Age” is very much clear in the fringes of the Egyptian revolution. It is this notion of nirvana through God’s system that will not bring any real change in Egypt. Freedom through the ballot box means that those who are friends of freedom and liberty should continue to ascendancy and those who want to instill radical dogma as a policy of statecraft should lose out. This is the real challenge for Egyptians – to understand that to progress means universal education, to progress means universal rights to all minorities, to respect their places of worship; to progress means understanding the unique feature that their thought is not superior to anyone else’s and to coalesce various demands into one charter of basic rights – this is what the Egyptian opposition should look for. The resumption of geopolitical confrontationist policies and ties with failed radical movements of the region will only lead to major disasters.
Egypt’s immediate goals should focus in providing immediate employment to its youth, increase the productivity of its farms, use the Nile, its lifeline, to its maximum efficiency, maintain peace on its borders and act as mature freedom-seekers in the Middle East and show the way around to all the other despotic governments. The litmus test for people’s revolutions that bring down their governments is more prosperity and more freedom, although this is a difficult goal to achieve. History shows us that a revolution becomes a “hope for a revolution”, followed by anarchy, then the strongman, then education, before the course matures to evolve a “free society.” It is education that makes peoples responsible revolutionaries. It may be a tall order, but Egyptians should act responsible. They belong to a much-beloved ancient civilization, they are the descendants of the great Pharaohs. They have to act in a manner where this brave revolution does not end up in collapse of the Egyptian economy which is agrarian and tourism based.
Freedom means more incentives for people, education, employment, more hard work, and a responsible attitude towards mankind at large. Egypt is a linchpin in the region; it is the center of a scholarly Islam. It has no room for enemies; its only enemies are its self-sustaining demons of the past. This revolution should bury all those demons and continue the peace that Egyptians have chosen. Their biggest foe is the streak of radical self-destruction that will bring ideological polarization back to square one as in 1973, which will only lead to total annihilation.
