How farwill Egypt’s Islamists go?

Stephen Glain

8 The Egyptian city of al Minya clings to a bend in the Nile River about 220 kilometers south of Cairo. It is a tidy place with a population of a half million and several tourist sites, including an ancient Christian monastery and the tombs of some Fatimid-dynasty caliphs who ruled an Islamic empire from Old Cairo a thousand years ago.

Al Minya is also the home district ofMohammad Saad al Catatny, a member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhoodand a leader of the country’s political opposition. Not long ago,such a title would have been nearly meaningless. But when Brotherhoodmembers emerged from national elections late last year with a fifthof the parliament’s 454 seats they were suddenly an authenticopposition movement with a qualified mandate to lead. (The group isbanned as a political party, so its candidates campaign asindependents.) With President Hosni Mubarak’s fifth and likelyfinal term set to expire in 2010, the Brotherhood is now in its moststrategically favorable position since the ousting of King Farouk bythe Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1952. Victory in Egyptwould complete the Brotherhood’s journey from a fringe groupfounded in the 1930s and dedicated to recreating the Muslim caliphateto one of the most important and subversive transnational politicalmovements of the last century.

Since the September 11 terroristattacks, Islamist groups have been successful in nearly a dozenparliamentary elections—in Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq,Iran, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan, and the Palestinianterritories—as well as in municipal races in Saudi Arabia, thePalestinian territories, and Bahrain. Many of these parties have beenMuslim Brotherhood affiliates, among the 70 or so operatingworldwide. The triumph in January by the Palestinian Islamist groupHamas—a Muslim Brotherhood derivative—was only the most dramaticexample of the Islamization of Arab politics at the expense ofsecular Islam. The process has been evolving since the Nasser era andhas been fertilized at least in part by the U.S. government, firstthrough covert support and later, unwittingly, by empowering radicalIslam with policies that are widely perceived asanti-Islamic.

Exactly how the Muslim Brotherhood interpretsits newly expanded authority is unclear. Few political partiesanywhere have advanced so far while preserving for themselves suchcareful ambiguity on core issues. Would it, for example, impose thekind of Islamic law, or sharia, that forbids women in Saudi Arabia todrive or go out uncovered? Would it tear up Egypt’s peace treatywith Israel? Would it reverse the country’s free-market reforms infavor of state intervention?

The Muslim Brotherhood has beenattacked as heretical by more militant Islamist groups, such asAl-Gama`a al-Islamiyyah and Islamic Jihad, for its code ofnonviolence and its participation in politics, which suggests atleast tactical recognition of secular democracy. Brotherhood memberssay that they recruit most effectively in prison, where they enticeIslamists from rival groups with their message of peaceful change.The Brotherhood condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks asanti-Islamic within 24 hours of the bombings—though it isvirulently anti-Israel, and senior members have publicly suggestedthat the Holocaust never happened.

The Brotherhood has said itwants to govern with tolerance in a coalition of freely electedparties. But would a movement that has played its hand so shrewdlyfor so long, and at such a price to its members in blood andimprisonment—Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the current leader of theBrotherhood, has spent about a third of his life behindbars—willingly share absolute power if it earned it?

Fornow, at least, it is enough for Egyptians that the Muslim Brotherhoodis not the deeply unpopular Hosni Mubarak. And unless Mubarakinvigorates Egyptian politics by allowing secular parties to thriveand compete with the Islamists, that might be enough until the dayMubarak steps down and the Brotherhood takesover.

* * *

I paid a call on minority leader al Catatnyin early February, when the Muslim world was heaving with outrageover caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad published in the Danishpaper Jyllands-Posten. The journey from Cairo had taken several hourslonger than I had expected, and by the time I arrived in al Minya inthe early afternoon, well after my scheduled appointment, theinterview had to be postponed to 6 p.m. By then, I was told, Catatnywould be back in his office, hearing petitions fromconstituents.

In the meantime, I was to meet alCatatny’s assistant, Kamal al Fouly, at the faculty club of thelocal university, a casual cluster of deck chairs and tablesoverlooking the Nile. Al Fouly arrived and greeted me warmly. It wasdusk. We were seated under date palms that billowed gently in thebreeze. The riots seemed blessedly far away.

I offered al Foulytea, which he politely declined. It was the fasting day of Ashura, heexplained, when Muslims as well as Jews celebrate the day Moses ledthe Israelites from Egypt. Sunni Muslims have celebrated the event byfasting ever since the Prophet Mohammed, persecuted by the religiousestablishment in Mecca, fled to the neighboring city of Medina in theseventh century and adopted the Jewish ritual of fasting for hisfollowers.

“The Prophet, may peace be upon him,” said al Fouly, “arrived in Medina and saw the Jews fasting, and he declared, ‘Let their joy be our joy.’”

Al Fouly, tall anderect in a taupe suit, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s appealing publicface. He is poised, with a quiet charisma that does not discriminatebetween the sexes. (Unlike many Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhoodmembers I have met, including Akef, greet women easily with ahandshake.) In the late 1970s he attended classes at the Universityof Illinois, where he received a master’s degree and a Ph.D. ineducation studies. The time he spent in America, he says, “were thebest six years of my life,” and it was there, in the patchworksuburban grids of Champaign, where he joined the MuslimBrotherhood.

“It was not out of outrage,” said al Fouly. “Iwas simply impressed with the people I met there. This was in thelate 1970s and early 1980s, when anger over U.S. foreign policy wasnothing like it is now.”

Al Fouly acknowledged that theMuslim Brotherhood’s strong showing in the parliamentary vote wasas much an expression of discontent with Mubarak as it was anendorsement of Islamism. He also emphasized what political analystsin Egypt agree on: that the Brotherhood’s strong showing could havebeen even stronger.

“We wanted to send a message,” al Foulysaid. “The movement did not contest more seats to make clear thatwe don’t want to take over. If we had aimed for a majority, wecould have done here what Hamas did in Palestine.”

This was noidle boast. The Muslim Brotherhood has proved its appeal to voters ofall ages, areas of residence, income levels, even religions. A majorBrotherhood stronghold is impoverished Aysut, just south of al Minyaand heavily Christian; and in the race to represent the affluentCairene district of Kasr El Nile, the Muslim Brotherhood’scandidate won with 1,800 votes—a considerable plurality given thestate’s voter intimidation.

The bedrock of MuslimBrotherhood support is its intense civic-mindedness, which contrastswith the ineptitude and corruption of the secular regime. Thoughinspired by the Islamic code’s reverence for alms-giving andcharitable works, the Muslim Brotherhood has developed an instinctfor ward heeling that would have impressed the most resourceful of19th-century American political machines. When disaster strikes, theBrotherhood deploys ambulances from hospitals owned by Brotherhoodmembers. It funds health care for the elderly and finds public-sectorjobs for the children of remote villages. During the holy months ofRamadan it distributes food to the needy.

In Zaqaziq,between Cairo and Alexandria, the cardiologist and Muslim Brotherhoodmember Dr. Abu Hashem Abdullah tends to patients who cannot affordhealth care provided by the state. Dr. Abdullah, a professor at thelocal university’s medical school, spends up to eight hours a dayat the clinic when he isn’t lecturing. He also works with a groupthat helps orphans and occasionally visits a smaller clinic in avillage just outside the city.

Most of Dr. Abdullah’s patientsare elderly women, almost all of them veiled. “The government isstruggling against the Muslim Brotherhood,” he says during a break.“They’ve arrested our most prominent members, some of themdoctors and engineers. And we struggle back.”

Unlike members ofthe ruling National Democratic Party, who rarely attend legislativesessions, Muslim Brotherhood legislators are known to spend longhours on the parliament floor and in chamber. “These are fair,honest, and predictable men,” the Egyptian dissident Saad Ibrahimonce told me of Brotherhood parliamentarians. “They do theirhomework.”

And, crucially, they are not blemished by the mark ofcollusion with America. Even al Fouly, unusually equipped toappreciate America’s virtues, deeply resents what he regards asjoint Israeli-American meddling in Arab and Muslim affairs. Theappearance, if not the fact, of a Bush-Likud axis, U.S. designs onIraqi oil wealth, and the American Pentecostal movement’s hostilitytoward Islam gives the Muslim Brotherhood credibility and the moralhigh ground. During the cartoon crisis, for example, the Brotherhoodpublicly distanced itself from the more radical elements, accusingsome Arab leaders of playing a “dirty game . . . to distort theimage of the Islamic movement—to get the people to say that theyare not peaceful, not democratic, against freespeech.”

“We are tired of the double standards,” saidal Fouly. “When Muslims say ridiculous things about the Holocaust,everyone condemns them. But it’s not okay for us to be offendedwhen someone insults our religion. At the same time, the Americanspush for democracy but then don’t recognize our success. No wondersecular Islam has declined in favor of moderate Islamicparties.”

* * *

Sayyid Qutb, unlike al Fouly, loathedthe United States. He was typical of young Muslims who had turnedagainst the imperialist West, in particular Britain and France, forpartitioning the Levantine Middle East and creating the state ofIsrael. By 1948, Qutb’s writings had made him a target of thegovernment, and his friends persuaded him to lie low for a time inthe Devil’s own lair—America—where he took graduate courses inColorado. There he recoiled at what he regarded as America’s vulgarcommercialism and intellectual vacuity. He returned to Egyptconvinced that only Islam as it was embraced in the time of theProphet could protect the Muslim world from the West’s coarse,creeping modernity.

Qutb would become the MuslimBrotherhood’s intellectual architect. His message, that Arabnationalism was a foreign-imposed and secular heresy before theMuslim world’s true sovereign, Allah, conflated the struggleagainst Western imperialism and its proxy emirs with the Prophet’sattack on the idolatrous Meccan elites. It defined Islamistdoctrine—“the Koran is our constitution”—and set up itsstruggle with secularism, both at home and abroad.

Qutb’s booksIn the Shadow of the Koran and Signposts on the Road, written in the1960s, have continued to inspire generations of Islamists long afterQutb was hanged in 1966 by Nasser, the human embodiment of Arabnationalism. “It is hard to underestimate the impact that he had onIslamists around the world,” writes the terrorism expert PeterBergen in his book, The Osama bin Laden I Know. “Not only did Qutbprofoundly influence the Islamist movement . . . he provided thehandbook for jihadist movements across the Muslim world.”

It isnoteworthy that Nasser, who despite his one-man rule was known as aconciliator, drew the line when it came to Qutb and the MuslimBrotherhood. A pious but westernized Muslim, Nasser opposed theIslamists long before the West recognized their potential to subvertMiddle Eastern regimes. Indeed, Britain and the United States atvarious times colluded with the Brotherhood to destabilize Nasser,the former because of his preemptive and ultimately triumphantresponse to the Suez Crisis in 1956, the latter because he wasthought to be soft on communism. In fact, Nasser was stronglyanti-communist and entered the Soviet orbit only after Washingtonleft him no other options.

In Nasser, The Last Arab, Said Aburishdetails how both Washington and London, unable to tolerate anon-aligned popular Arab leader, engaged in “open support forIslamic groups . . . [including] the creation of anti-Nasser Islamiccells in eastern Saudi Arabia, near the oil fields.” (The samefields, it is worth mentioning, were attacked by Islamic militants inFebruary.) When Nasser refused to make peace with Israel on what heregarded as unjust terms, the United States pressured Jordan,Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to offer sanctuary to the MuslimBrotherhood and fund their offices.

“Modern Islamicfundamentalism,” writes Aburish, “began with [Saudi] King Faisal,with solid American support. It was created to fight the enemies ofAllah, at the time Nasser and the Soviet Union; but as we have seen,this movement has turned into a monster of its own.” The communistthreat to the Middle East, Aburish writes, was “mostlyimaginary.”

To be fair, the Muslim Brotherhood renouncedviolence in the 1970s. But by fatally misreading Soviet intentions inthe Middle East and undercutting Nasser, the West destroyed apro-West Arab leader who was secular, uncorrupted, and strong enoughto contain the rising tide of Islamism without resorting to civilwar—in short, everything the current crop of Arab leaders isnot.

* * *

Like his American counterpart, PresidentHosni Mubarak is long on tactics and short on strategy. Like mostArab leaders, he has remained in power through a calibrated mix ofcoercion and patronage. Absent any dramatic policy shifts, he will beremembered primarily as a survivor who did enough things right topreserve his grip on power and to subdue potential challengers. Untiltwo years ago, when Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and his new governmentintroduced a bold, if long-delayed, program of economic reform,Mubarak showed little interest in elevating the living standards ofhis people. Egypt’s per-capita income has remained more or lessstatic for a generation, even as the rate of population growth hasmushroomed. Certainly, he has done nothing to liberalize thepolitical environment; citizens who register political parties oragitate for political reform are routinely detained and harassed. Hisperfunctory reelection campaigns garnered the standard autocrat’splurality of 98 percent.

When confronted with aserious Islamist challenge in the 1990s, Mubarak imposed emergencysecurity laws and waged a decade-long dirty war that consumed a greatmany innocent lives. After 9/11, he understood the value of givingthe Islamists enough room to operate and then spotlighting them,according to Saad Ibrahim, “as a ghoul that focuses the West”away from his human-rights record. With President Bush calling fordemocratization and the activist Ayman Nour and his secularopposition party drawing attention to his brutality, Mubarak amendedthe Egyptian constitution to allow for snap elections he knew hewould win. (Nour is now serving a five-year jail sentence on aforgery conviction. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls this a“setback” on Egypt’s road to democracy.)

The only surprisewas the Muslim Brotherhood’s dramatic gains. The group won 63percent of the seats it contested, compared with the NDP’s 27percent. Brotherhood members were conspicuous members of the crowdswho fought with riot police in street clashes that left 11 peopledead and scores injured.

“Real voters were absent,” IhabSallam, a human-rights activist and election monitor, told me.“There were only voters who were bought and those from thereligious stream, which is why the Muslim Brotherhood did so well. Ihad monitors in tears after they got caught in the middle of a battlebetween police and religious voters.”

At each pollingplace, said Sallam, the Brotherhood posted one person inside to guardthe ballot box and four guards outside to escort it to collectionstations. “They are small but well organized,” he said. “They made a strategic decision to enhance their authority [by winning alimited number of seats] without risking a backlash from thegovernment. If they had wanted more, they would have gottenmore.”

I asked Sallam how the Brotherhood might one daygovern.

“It’s hard to say. They change all the time. You can besitting with them, smoking shisha [a water pipe], and they seem verymoderate, very reasonable. That’s how they’re so effective atrecruiting. But they do not have a liberal vision for dealing withothers. In 2004, they released a document that seemed to suggest theybelieve in human rights, but if you read it carefully, it projects anus-versus-them world, with ‘them’ below ‘us.’”

The bestway to counter the Muslim Brotherhood’s strength, according toSallam, is to introduce more parties to the political marketplace.“Within the next four years, the government must do the honorablething and allow for other streams,” he said. “Then, the MuslimBrotherhood’s problem will not be the government but other, secularparties.”

Sallam drained his coffee. “But that will bedifficult for the regime.”

* * *

Could Egypt really goIslamist? The Mubarak government is not ruling it out. In February,it delayed municipal elections by two years, a move MuslimBrotherhood members said was clearly aimed at them. Under Mubarak’snew election laws, independent candidates can only run for presidentif they hold a local council seat, and Brotherhood candidates werewidely predicted to dominate municipal polls.

Theregime cannot indefinitely postpone local elections (to its credit,the Bush administration has criticized the delay), and so long as thepolitical field is limited to two viable players—the regime and theBrotherhood—there is little doubt about the outcome. In putting offthe municipal vote, the government may have had in mind the loomingpolitical battle over price controls, which the Nazif government hasvowed to dismantle. The issue of subsidies has been the third rail ofEgyptian politics for 30 years; Anwar Sadat took them on in 1977 andtriggered riots throughout the country. Any similar backlash willcertainly redound to the Brotherhood’s favor.

Nearly a quarter ofEgyptians live below the poverty line. The government’s aggressiveeconomic restructuring over the last two years has done little toreduce the country’s jobless rate, which most economists say iswell above the official estimate of 10 percent. Graduates ofEgypt’s top universities are lucky to find work in the country’sbloated civil service, the employer of last resort. An entry-levelgovernment job pays an annual wage of about 2,400 Egyptian pounds, or$421.

* * *

Which takes us back to al Minya. When Iarrived at al Catatny’s office for our 6 p.m. appointment, a dozenaggrieved residents were already lined up outside his door, many withthick files tucked under their arms to document theirplight.

Al Catatny arrived and, after a cursorynod to his constituents, disappeared into his chambers. After a fewminutes the door swung open and his attendants waved mein.

From a modest wooden desk, al Catatny rose to greet mein a pinstripe suit and open-collared shirt. He was warm andanimated, despite having been up since dawn. The high walls of hisoffice were white and bare, and the furniture was cheap andmismatched. In the waxwork world of Egyptian politics, al Catatny andhis camp seemed refreshingly rebellious. The old order had been sweptaside by something spontaneous and unpredictable, and even al Catatnyseemed unsure where it would all lead.

“Years ago, the climate precluded opposition,” he said. “On the one hand there was repression, on the other corruption, and that created room for us to grab people’s attention.”

I asked al Catatny about the Muslim Brotherhood’s platform. His reply was studied, but not stale. The Brotherhood, he declared, is for civic society with an Islamic “reference.” It is moderate and tolerant, not extremist and exclusionary. It supports privatization and free-market reforms, though it opposes the corruption that is so often associated with them. “We accept the game of democracy and we seek to cooperate with others in peace,” he said.

With whom? Conciliation with the regime is unlikely, and there is no secular opposition with which to ally.

Al Catatny smiled. “As official parties, there is not much there—it is true. But opposition groups will increase in the coming years. They’ll regroup. The people are fed up. The government says six million are unemployed; sometimes its says nine million and sometimes 12 million. These people without jobs are time bombs. This cannot continue.”

On my way out, I spoke with some of the people waiting for patronage. Nadia Abdullah was hoping al Catatny could find a less demanding job for her asthma-stricken husband, who earns the equivalent of $8.75 a week as a day laborer; Taha Mohammad, an engineer, wanted al Catatny to raise in parliament the matter of a water-treatment plant that was upgraded at a cost to the city of 20 million Egyptian pounds ($3.5 million). Only half the money was spent, said Mohammad, and the rest was pocketed by the contractor; Faruk Nassef Harun wanted al Catatny to ensure that his daughter was given a job at the Egyptian tax agency, where his wife works and which sets aside entry-level jobs for the children of tenured employees.

Harun had introduced himself to me. He is a member of Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, and he wanted me to know how much he appreciates the Brotherhood. “They serve Christians and Muslims equally,” he said. “They even have an office for ecumenical affairs.”

* * *

Assuming its fidelity to the word of Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy is to cinch control over Egyptian politics and establish sharia through constitutional fiat. The most populous and geopolitically vital Arab nation would then go the way of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Sudan to become an orthodox Islamic regime, perhaps to be joined one day by Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and possibly Syria and several of the lesser Gulf states.

Or not. It is just as likely that Brotherhood members really believe their big-tent talk of coalition-building and interfaith harmony. They may also know that hammering Arab states together into a borderless fiefdom is just as absurd and impractical as it was when Nasser and the Syrians tried it in 1958.

More important, however, is what the people in al Catatny’s chambers believe. If they think the Muslim Brotherhood is the only political group in Egypt with the commitment and resources to address their needs, then they will buoy the Brotherhood to power regardless of its intentions. If, on the other hand, there is a political awakening to match the Islamic one, with a proliferation of secular parties competing for voter loyalty, then the Brotherhood will have to reveal itself as either a center-right political party with an Islamist character or an Islamist movement with a regional agenda.

These are two different things. The former would appeal to the moderate sensibilities of most Egyptians. To follow this path would be to swap orthodoxy for legitimacy, an exchange familiar to all radicals who have traveled from the tributaries of politics to its main currents. The latter would alienate all but a small host of Egyptian radicals. To embrace it would be to strangle political Islam in its crib, as just another failed conceit of Arab self-government. <

Stephen Glain is a contributing editor to Newsweek International and the author of Mullahs, Merchants, and Militants: The Economic Collapse of the Arab World.