By Barry Rubin
HERZLIYA, Israel — This is of gigantic importance (see if anyone else covers it). MEMRI has pointed out the opening of a Muslim Brotherhood campaign to replace Egypt’s current clerical hierarchy with its own people. If that happens…you can imagine. Once Islamists are in place making the “official” decisions on what constitutes proper Islam, an Islamist state cannot be far away.
Let me explain the background briefly. Knowing that control over Islam was vital to maintaining control of the country, the Egyptian regime (like nationalist regimes elsewhere) set out to build a systematic structure for doing so. The head of the al-Azhar Islamic university, the chief qadi, the clerics of different mosques, are government-appointed. Sermons are government-approved. A ministry in charge of awqaf (religious foundations) and religion supervises all of this and hands out the money. And the government also decides which clerics appear on television and radio, or even have their own programs.
Over the last decade or so, the “official” clerics have been radicalized, and they support terrorism against Israel. Yet there is still a huge gap between those who accepted the rule by Mubarak’s regime and those who demand an Islamist regime. They hate the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood hates them.
Now, if all of these official clerics are declared to be corrupt instruments of the old regime and are thrown out of office, the Brotherhood will control “Islam” in Egypt. Equally important, they will control a vast amount of patronage and money. Every cleric will have to get along with them or be unemployed. They could authorize which mosques could open. They would control religious education.
If the Brotherhood is a participant in government, even as a junior member of a coalition, its highest priority will be the religious affairs ministry. To call this dangerous is an understatement.
So we should watch carefully this battle over who governs Islam in Egypt.
To save you a click, here is what Muhammad Zoghbi of the Brotherhood says:
“Al-Azhar was subjected to…the politicization of the positions of the sheikh of Al-Azhar and the mufti of Egypt, as well as the position of the minister of religious endowments. These positions must be filled through elections. By no means should these officials be appointed by the president….
“Therefore I say to the ‘sons’ of Al-Azhar: Let us all join the campaign, led by Sheik Khaled Al-Gindi, until we liberate Al-Azhar, just like Egypt was liberated….The president of Egypt must be subordinate to Al-Azhar and respect it….
“Therefore, I say to the sheikh of Al-Azhar…resign immediately….The mufti and the minister of religious endowments should step down, leaving their positions to God-fearing imams….”
“God-fearing” imams means Muslim Brotherhood cadre. The president of Egypt “must be subordinate” to al-Azhar means an Islamist state. This strategy also suggests that the Brotherhood is recognizing that it will not choose Egypt’s next president–who is more likely to be the nationalist Amr Moussa–so it must start building an independent base of support outside of the government’s and president’s control for its long march toward Islamism at a later date.
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The Turkish Camouflage Model: Arab Radicals Learn How to Hide Your Islamism
Newsweek explains how the “Turkish Model” works:
“As revolutions across the Mideast bring religious parties within sight of real political power, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is becoming the region’s go-to man for Islamist leaders looking for a makeover.”
In other words, be an Islamist but pretend you aren’t. The fact that Erdogan is an ally of Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah is not a good sign for those who follow what might be better called the Turkish Camouflage-Your-Extremism Model
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U.S. Government Discovers That There’s A Competition with Iran But Has No Idea How to “Fight Back”
In testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We are in a competition. I just stress over and over again, we’ve got to be there. We’ve got to fight back.” A competition with who? With Iran, though she didn’t mention its long list of allies: Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, the Turkish government, the new Lebanese government, and the Iraqi insurgents.
The Obama Administration has been in office for more than two years and I’ve been writing about this every day of that period. I have never seen an administration official say anything like this before. And if Clinton or others are aware of this competition why didn’t they “fight back”?
They didn’t fight back in Lebanon, or try to overthrow the Hamas regime. They have ignored the fact that Tehran is winning the competition regarding the current Turkish government. They panicked and quickly helped overthrow (without any idea of what would come next) the staunchest anti-Iran regime in the Arab world (not Husni Mubarak as a dictator but the whole regime). They have given less support to Israel, the main (not by its own choice) enemy of Iran. And they have fallen all over themselves to reward Syria, the main ally of Iran while not diminishing the Tehran-Damascus axis in the least.
What fighting back has been going on?
Clinton made these remarks in urging Congress to support U.S. foreign aid to the Middle East. Yet what has this aid bought? Pakistan ignores U.S. interests and so does the Palestinian Authority. Aid to Lebanon goes to that country’s army which is now, for all practical purposes, in the hands of America’s enemies. As for aid to Egypt, isn’t this now perceived as helping a discredited dictatorship?
There was, however, a hint given by Clinton as to what she meant. Iran was working, “Every single day with as many assets as they can muster, trying to take hold of this legitimate movement for democracy.” In other words, the competition seems to be in the administration’s mind over who can do the most to help the upheavals in the region. Thus, the administration rushed to show that it is eager to undermine pro-U.S. regimes to “persuade” the oppositions to support Washington and not Tehran.
Good luck on that one. In the first test of this proposition, the new Egyptian government let Iran’s warships use the Suez Canal for the first time in 32 years. Those ships are now based in Syria, the country the Obama Administration was supposedly going to woo away from Iran. In Lebanon, a free election has led to a Syria-Iran-Hizballah dominated government. In the Gaza Strip, U.S. pressure for letting Hamas participate (albeit under a previous president) was so successful in helping the “legitimate movement for democracy” that Hamas won.
Clinton also made another remarkable statement about how the effectiveness of al-Jazira and the idea that the United States is losing the “information war.” Hilary: al-Jazira isn’t so popular because–as you seem to think–it is providing better news coverage but because it is inciting radical Islamism which has a welcoming audience nowadays.
No policy the U.S. government can follow and no gimmick is going to persuade people in the region to love the United States. That has a certain relationship to the fact that people think America is weak, Iran and its allies are winning, and the United States sacrifices its friends. It also implies that people friendly to you won’t do well in free elections. And that’s not because Obama isn’t charming enough or the United States isn’t distancing itself more from Israel. It’s a basic fact of political culture, ideology, and the power of demagoguery, too.
The beginning of wisdom for U.S. policy in the Middle East is the end of the strategy used by the White House for the last two years. And that certainly isn’t in sight.
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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. GLORIA Center site: http://www.gloria-center.org He may be contacted at barry.rubin@sdjewishworld.com