The divide between devotees of political Islam and relatively secular-minded nationalists has roiled the aftermath of the 2011 revolutions. The youth organizations that made the 2011 revolutions were predominantly leftist or liberal. They revolted against corrupt police states run by family cartels and their cronies. They had allies among labor unions and office workers.
These movements demanded free, fair parliamentary elections as the next step. But the groups best organized to campaign, canvass and fund-raise were the Muslim religious parties. The Muslim religious parties got about 60% of the seats in the Egyptian parliament in fall of 2011. Although that parliament was struck down by the courts for electoral irregularities, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Muhammad Morsi, won the presidency in June 2012, and installed many party hacks in high positions. The Renaissance or al-Nahdah, religiously-inflected party won 42% of the seats in the Tunisian parliament and gained the prime ministership, though they had to ally with liberals and leftists, from which the president and speaker of parliament were drawn.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya did poorly in the summer 2012 parliamentary elections there, a significant number of independents lean toward the religious right, though not a majority.
These outcomes were branded an "Islamic winter" by Neoconservative critics of the Arab world.
But in fall of 2013, things look different. A youth movement, Rebellion (Tamarrud) staged enormous demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt on June 30 and after, provoking a military coup and a thoroughgoing crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been largely broken and driven underground. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been condemned by the officer corps and activist youth as dictatorial, secretive and grasping, as in short a kind of cult. The generals now dismiss it, in fall of 2013, as a terrorist organization, having arrested 2000 party leaders. As a military-appointed commission crafts a new constitution, it is likely that it will outlaw religiously-based parties permanently. Most Egyptians are believers and either practicing Muslims or Coptic Christians. But most of them from all accounts have turned on the Muslim Brotherhood.
In summer of 2013, as well, Tunisian youth and the labor activists of the UGTT (French acronym for General Union of Tunisian Workers) challenged the Renaissance, Muslim-religious prime minister, Ali Larayedh. They blamed him for being soft on Muslim terrorists and allowing two assassinations of members of the far-left Popular Front. They demanded him step down in favor of a caretaker government that would oversee free and fair parliamentary elections. Throughout the summer, thousands assembled regularly at Bardo outside the parliament building, and the alliance of the crowds with the powerful UGTT gave them a bargaining chip. If the country's workers struck en mass, it would paralyze the Tunisian economy, already limping. So by the past weekend, the Renaissance Party had agreed to step down in favor of a caretaker government. Many among the Tunisian demonstrators use a militantly secular discourse.
The Muslim religious parties are not in control of Egypt and nor do the have a firm grasp on power any more in Tunisia. They are merely influential in Libya, with leftist and pragmatic members of parliament dominating the scene politically.
Likewise in Yemen, the religious right has not taken over the country. The old ruling party is still in power, and it is relatively secular and nationalist in character. In northern Syria, as strong division developed between the Muslim fundamentalist rebels against the regime, and the more secular-nationalist Free Syrian Army. There have been firefights between the two. There was therefore a vast and thorough-going reaction against the religious parties in summer and fall of 2013.
The fears among secularists of the imminent imposition of a rigid form of Islamic law over a vast stretch of the Arab world has somewhat subsided. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has lost most of its popularity outside committed cadres, who are being marginalized. The Renaissance Party in Tunisia had already announced in spring 2012, that they would not try to implement sharia or Muslim canon law. The president of the Libyan parliament in 2012-13, Muhammad Magaryaf, openly called for the constitution of that country to be a secular one.
The turn against political Islam was most dramatic in Egypt. Deposed president Muhammad Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood, was captive to the religious right, invested in austerity and smaller government, and contemptuous of workers and the political left. In his year in office (June 30, 2012-July 3, 2013), the nation's first freely elected head of state squandered Egyptians' willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt. He has acted like the president of the somewhat cultish Muslim Brotherhood, rather than like the president of the whole country.
On taking office in summer 2012, Morsi did not appoint a government of national unity. He named no politicians from other major parties to important cabinet posts, nor did he reach out to the revolutionary youth. Although he made a neutral technocrat, Hisham Qandil, his prime minister, he put members of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in charge of key cabinet posts. He thus created the impression that he was trying for a "Brotherization" of the government.
Despite Egypt's sagging economy, Morsi did not make stimulating it his first priority, and instead tried to please the International Monetary Fund with austerity policies, rather on the model of the Mariano Rajoy government in Spain. The Brotherhood's class base is private business, whether small or large, and Morsi was distinctly unfriendly to the demands of labor unions and to those of the public sector, which account for half of the country's economy. In 2009, economists such as Paul Krugman warned that Barack Obama's stimulus was far too small. Morsi, steward of a much more fragile economy, put forth no stimulus at all.
Once he became president, Morsi had an opportunity to address the inequities in the constitutional drafting committee, which was disproportionately in the hands of fundamentalist Muslim Brothers and Salafis, marginalizing liberals, leftists, women and Coptic Christians. It had been appointed by the first elected parliament, of fall 2011, which was dominated by the Brotherhood and the Salafis, but was struck down because of widespread electoral fraud. Morsi had promised that the constitution would be consensual, but that constituent assembly was highly unlikely to produce a widely acceptable organic law for the nation.
In November 2012, Morsi abruptly announced on television that he was above the rule of law and his executive orders could not be overturned by the judiciary until such time as a new constitution was passed. He seems in part to have been trying to protect the religious-right-dominated constitutional drafting committee. His announcement enraged substantial sections of the Egyptian public, who had joined to overthrow dictator Hosni Mubarak precisely because the latter had held himself above the rule of law.
In response to the massive demonstrations that his presidential decree provoked, Morsi pushed through a constitution that is unacceptable to a large swath of Egyptians. Even though two dozen members of the drafting committee resigned to protest key provisions of the draft constitution, which they saw as back doors for theocracy, Morsi accepted the Brotherhood/Salafi draft and presented it to the nation in a countrywide referendum. Egypt's judges, who are supposed to preside over and certify the balloting, went on strike, but the president forged ahead anyway. Only 33 percent of voters went to the polls, many of them supporters of the president. The constitution was passed by only about 20 percent of the electorate (63 percent of the one-third of voters who came to the polls), but much of the country clearly was uncomfortable with it. Morsi's promise of a consensual document was hollow. The referendum could not be certified as free and fair by international standards. The constitution put the interpretation of some Egyptian law and policy decisions in the hands of the head of the al-Azhar Seminary, which struck secular Egyptians as a step toward an Iran-style theocracy.
All the trouble Morsi caused by announcing himself above the law and ramming through a controversial constitution with some theocratic implications caused a new round of demonstrations and instability, which harmed Egypt's prime fall-winter tourist season. Tourism represents 11 percent of the Egyptian economy and employs more than 2 million professionals, but travelers looking for pyramids, not protests, often stayed away after January 2011. In 2011, tourism was off by a third. Even as visitors began coming back in spring of 2013, they spent less money than they would have three years ago, since hotel and other prices have fallen. Tourism from the Gulf oil monarchies was moribund (Morsi had bad relations with the United Arab Emirates, and besides, many Gulf travelers had been trying to escape the stifling atmosphere of fundamentalist governments in Egypt's easygoing cabarets, many of which had closed or canceled belly dance performances). The falloff in tourism revenue cost Egypt billions in income and foreign currency reserves. The Brotherhood, made up of religious fundamentalists, appears to have been not very interested in the tourist sector, which depends after all on liquor, cabarets, beaches and bikinis or on foreigners' fascination with ancient Egyptian idolaters-i.e., on everything Muslim fundamentalism stands against. The instability also harmed foreign investment, even from the Gulf oil states, since no one wants to build a tourist hotel or office building that may not make money under Brotherhood policies.
The collapse of tourism and the lack of private investment caused Egypt's foreign currency reserves to fall from $36 billion to $15 billion in only two years. Because the foreign reserves were the tool used by the Central Bank to defend the value of the Egyptian pound, it suddenly lacked the ability to prevent devaluation against the dollar. Since early in the last decade, the pound has been allowed to float against other currencies but the float is "managed." The decline in value of the pound caused food and diesel prices to rise (Egypt is a net importer of food because it covered its best farmland along the Nile with concrete in order to urbanize). A third of Egyptians live on $2 a day, and they are very sensitive to food and fuel price inflation. Morsi was widely thought to have been more interested in winning political victories over his opposition and promoting the interests of the religious right than in getting the economy humming again. Once the constitution was approved, Morsi moved to create the fiction that he had a functioning legislature, packing it with Muslim Brothers. The lower house of parliament elected in fall 2011 had been struck down by the courts, since the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis had run party candidates for most of the seats set aside for independents (one third of the total), and these party candidates easily defeated unknown and poorly funded independents. Morsi abruptly appointed 90 members to the previously largely ceremonial upper house, a significant number from the Freedom and Justice Party and its allies or fellow travelers of the religious right. He then declared that the upper house could independently legislate, even in the absence of the elected parliament, and even though only 7 percent of its seats were elected. The religious right began crafting legislation. The courts struck down the upper house in June. Also in June, Morsi suddenly appointed 17 provincial governors (governors are appointed, not elected, in Egypt). Several of them were Muslim Brothers or Salafis, and one was a member of the al-Gama'a al-Islamiya, a former terrorist group. Adel al-Khayat was appointed to govern Luxor, the site of the Valley of the Kings and a major tourist destination. The Gama'a had conducted a terrorist strike there, killing dozens of tourists in 1997. Luxor was not willing to forgive the Gama'a, and demonstrators demanded that the appointment be withdrawn. Again, that Morsi was using his position as president to turn the Egyptian government over to the religious right, and sometimes to its most extreme wing, frightened and angered liberals, leftists, Coptic Christians and women.
Morsi's various decrees, announcements, policies and appointments have created apprehension among millions of Egyptians that his primary goal is deploying the power of the state to impose religious fundamentalism on the country and to ensconce his Muslim Brotherhood permanently throughout the government and the judiciary. The fear of liberals concerning Muslim fundamentalist groups had long been that they would behave as the German National Socialists or as the Stalinist Communists had, participating in elections only until they won, and then arranging for a one-party state thereafter. There is no evidence that Morsi had such a design, and he did try to schedule parliamentary elections in April, but the plan was struck down by the courts because he did not consult them on the enabling legislation. But Morsi, given the widespread fear of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, had a responsibility to go out of his way to allay those anxieties. Instead, he reinforced them at every turn. Egyptians had been galvanized and politically mobilized by the events of the past 30 months, and refused to be quiet in the face of what they saw as incompetent government and unfair Brotherization.
The assassination in July 2013, of the leftist leader of the Popular Front, Mohamed Brahmi, provoked turmoil between the religious party and secularists in Tunisia. (He was the second politician from that party to be killed in 2013). An estimated 50,000 mourners came out in Tunis for the funeral of the assassinated leftist. Brahmi was shot 14 times outside his home by an unknown assailant. A major suspect was extremist Boubakr al-Hakim, a former recruiter of fighters for Iraq, who fought against US troops there himself. In the industrial city of Sfax, the Popular Front mounted a march in Brahmi's honor, and some pitched tents in the downtown. They demanded the dissolution of parliament and the formation of a national unity government. In some provinces demands were launched that the Renaissance Party governor be dismissed. After days of demonstrations and turmoil, Prime Minister Ali Larayedh addressed the public in Tunisia. Despite calls that he resign in favor of a national unity government, he insisted that he would remain in office, and he resisted a major cabinet shuffle. He did make a concession in guaranteeing that new elections for a regular parliament would be held on December 17. That was the third anniversary of the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi touched off the Tunisian and other Arab revolutions.
The ruling Renaissance Party's head, Rashid Ghanoushi, said in the aftermath that the Constituent Assembly was a red line, since it was fairly elected and is the repository of legitimacy (i.e. he initially refused to accept its dissolution). He also backed PM Larayedh in remaining at the head of the government. Ghanoushi went on t.v. saying that you have to enter a house through its doors, and if you want to get rid of the Renaissance government, that is permitted, but you have to do it via the ballot box. He apparently feared that Larayyedh would be made to step down and the fundamentalist-dominated parliament would be dissolved, allowing the secular middle class to take back power.
Also in the aftermath of the assassination, Tunisian troops tracking Muslim extremists near the Algerian border got into a firefight with them and 9 troops were killed. For a small country such as Tunisia, it was a very high death toll, and Tunisians are upset because they are not used to this sort of thing.
The left and the middle and upper class secularists tended to blame the murder on the ruling Renaissance (Ennahda) Party, a party of the religious Right. Some outright accused Renaissance of being behind the killing, while others felt that the party had not been vigorous enough in curbing the al-Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia, led by former Afghanistan jihadi Abu Iyadh. The Renaissance Party had alienated the strongly secular, Francophone middle and upper classes of Tunis and some other major cities by appointing fundamentalists to key positions in the press and administration. Blasphemers were prosecuted and the rights of women were threatened.
After the assassination, the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) called for a series of general strikes, which appear to have been widely observed, given the shuttered storefronts visible in video from Tunis and other cities. Activists also staged marches in Tunis and in several other cities. They called for the fall of the Renaissance (al-Nahda) Party government and the dissolution of the elected transitional parliament. In Gafsa, a phosphate mining town and hotbed of union activism, a number of demonstrations were held in subsequent months.
Over 50 members of parliament announced that they were suspending any activity in the Tunisian Constituent Assembly, the transitional parliament and constitution-drafting body. They had been tempted to simply resign from the 217-member body, but then they would have been replaced, so they froze their activity instead. Some of them joined sit-ins outside their own parliament building.
The slain parliamentarian, Brahmi, hailed from Sidi Bouzid, the provincial town where Mohamed Bouazizi set himself afire in late fall of 2010, setting off the Tunisian and other Arab political upheavals. Angry crowds in Sidi Bouzid province set fire to the Renaissance Party HQ. City leaders declared that they had formed a self-governing council and had seceded from Tunisia until such time as the Muslim fundamentalist Renaissance Party government had fallen.
The situation in Tunisia was critical, as the political left, joined by well-off secularists, squared off against the religious Right. The primary issue was Prime Minister Ali Larayedh's apparent inability to provide basic security in the country. But disputes over labor policy and neoliberalism were also behind the split.
Leftists maintained that the constituent assembly was elected to serve for only one year, until Oct. 23, 2013, by which time it should have drafted a new constitution and begun moving to the election of a regular parliament. They felt that the Renaissance Party dragged its feet on the constitution in order to remain in power long after its mandate had expired. The government maintained that the constitution was nearly finished and that elections would be held some time in fall 2013.
The assassination caused public outcry because many Tunisians believed that the transitional government had not been vigilant about curbing Muslim extremism. The fundamentalist Renaissance Party (Ennahda) had the office of Prime Minister and several other key cabinet posts, including the Interior Ministry. Many leftist and secular Tunisians believed that Prime Minister Ali Larayedh had been soft on the extremists because he did not want to alienate the right wing of his own party.
Many secular Tunisians, and those committed to human rights, also feared that the draft constitution that was to be reported out in fall of 2013 would contain repressive articles, because of the undue influence of the religious right, of which Renaissance forms part.
The Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties (Ettakattul) of Mostapha Ben Jafar, a leftist party in coalition with Renaissance, threatened to withdraw from the ruling coalition. The Forum only had 20 seats out of 217, whereas President Moncef Marzouki's Congress for the Republic had 29 and the Renaissance Party had 89. Since President Marzouki stuck with his partnership with Renaissance, Larayedh would actually still have had 118 seats, a slim majority, even without the Forum. The alliance with Marzouki thus gave Larayyedh the courage to defy the demonstrators for two months, before finally offering in late September 2013 to resign in favor of a caretaker government of technocrats that would oversee new elections. Larayedh thereafter reneged on the promise, provoking further demonstrations.
Although the Prime Minister of Libya, Ali Zeidan and a majority of representatives in parliament are nationalists or leftists rather than fundamentalists, the Muslim Brotherhood is a major force even among independents in that body. On the streets, religious militias sometimes grab power through the barrel of a gun. They face opposition, however. In Benghazi in early September 2012, before hard line fundamentalists attacked the US consulate and killed ambassador Chris Stevens, civil society organizations attempted to push back against the fundamentalists. "It appears that the simple rule Benghazi's people thought of applying was based on other experiences in which the radical Islamists or militants in general managed to grow, prosper, and expand by seeking protection from the tribes, as happened in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. But the civil movements which became very active [in Benghazi] after the fall of Al-Qadhafi's regime were the ones that formed alliances this time with the tribes, the notables, wise men councils, and civil society figures against the militants. This is akin to the "Sahwat" in Iraq. The alliance managed to expel the brigades from the town and encouraged the nascent Libyan authorities to tighten their restrictions on all armed manifestations..." [Abd-al-Sattar Hatitah, al-Sharq al-Awsat, Sept. 30, 2012, trans. US Open Source Center]
In May 2013, Benghazi was shaken by a series of attacks on police stations and small gelatino bombings that caused no deaths and little damage, but rattled nerves in the city. On Friday, crowds gathered outside the city's major five-star hotel, protesting the continued insecurity. After the September 11, 2012, attack on the US consulate in the city, large angry crowds forced militant fundamentalist militiamen out of the city. But the cells, collectively called 'Ansar al-Sharia' or Helpers of Religious Law, have safe houses 10 km. out from Benghazi and are able to come in and attack clinics and other soft targets.
The assassination of a militant secularist nationalist in Benghazi just after the assassination of a militant leftist secularist in Tunis raised the question of whether the extremist Libyan and Tunisian devotees of political Islam coordinated the attacks so as to foment turmoil that might form a path whereby they could take over the country.
After the assassination, what were probably extremist fundamentalist terror cells bombed and partially destroyed the courthouse in Benghazi, in front of which crowds gathered on Feb. 17, 2011, to kick off the revolution. Another bomb was set off Sunday evening in Benghazi, as well. Some 1200 hardened prisoners were freed from Kuwayfia Prison.
One of the young lawyers who organized the first revolutionary committee in Benghazi in February 2011, Abdel Salam al-Mismari (al-Musmari) was the person assassinated. He was a vocal critic of militia power in post-Gaddafi Libya, as well as of Muslim Brotherhood power. He opposed the exclusion law that barred people from politics who had worked for Gaddafi.
Angry about al-Mismari's assassination, youth in Tripoli, Benghazi, Sabratha and elsewhere invaded and closed headquarters of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood. Prime Minister Ali Zeidan's reaction to all this mayhem was to reshuffle his cabinet.
The simmering conflict between nationalists and fundamentalist Muslims in Libya was heighted by a US intervention. In early October 2013, US special ops forces managed to track down and arrest Abu Anas al-Libi, one of the masterminds of the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Al-Libi was spirited away to a US vessel in the Mediterranean for interrogation before being taken to New York for trial. Most Libyans oppose al-Qaeda, but many were upset by this affront to their national sovereignty. Libyan radicals, a small fringe, pledged to make take revenge on Zeidan, assuming that behind the scenes he must have consulted with Washington on the taking of al-Libi.
Early morning on October 10, 2013 the news came of the abduction of Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan from a hotel in the capital, Tripoli. He was released Thursday afternoon. The alleged collaboration with the US was the motive given by the militiamen. Some 200,000 armed young men still patrol Libya, irregulars who took up arms during the 2011 revolution against dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and who now receive stipends from the government.
Zeidan broke with Gaddafi in 1980 and helped found a leftist opposition group. He lived in exile in Switzerland as a human rights activist for decades. He was elected prime minister after the relatively successful parliamentary elections of summer 2012.
Libya had been ruled for 42 years by Muammar Gaddafi through STASI-like 'revlolutionary committees' and military units loyal to him. In the aftermath of the 2011 overthrow of Gaddafi, these forces collapsed and left behind a vacuum of power. The government did not move fast enough to train a new nationalist military. It seemed to get little help with training from the US and Western Europe.
Libya is dominated by the militias thrown up during the revolution of 2011. It has also suffered from a concerted campaign of terrorism by shadowy terrorist groups, especially in the eastern city of Benghazi. This summer, striking oil workers, militiamen and eastern autonomists cut in half Libya's annual oil production by taking over the petroleum facilities. These actions may have weakened the government further by bringing into question its ability to pay government workers.
In Syria the opposition to the one-party rule of the Arab nationalist socialist Baath Party was a mixture of nationalists and devotees of political Islam. Leftists and urban secular middle and upper class actors at first collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious forces in protesting the regime, from March of 2011. But as the struggle turned into a civil war, the more successful guerrilla groups in the north of the country turned out to be the hard line Salafis, some of whom declared an affiliation with the al-Qaeda of Ayman al-Zawahiri. This turn to fundamentalist extremism among the most prominent fighters deeply frightened the secular Sunni middle classes in Damascus and Aleppo. In addition, Syria is 10-14 percent Christian and 10-14 percent Alawite Shiites, both of them deeply afraid of Sunni extremism.
In late September 14 bands of fighters in Syria broke with the moderate Syrian National Council led by Ahmad al-Jarba and repudiated its Free Syrian Army. The importance of this development should not be underestimated. It threw a scare into Baghdad and Amman, and provoked serious thought in Tel Aviv and Europe about the wisdom of supporting the opposition in Syria.
Embarrassingly enough this development broke while al-Jarba was at the UN General Assembly, where he met with Secretary of State John Kerry and UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The Americans insisted on three points: Pursuing the plan to sequester Syria's chemical weapons; an increase in aid to the opposition, including humanitarian aid; and proceeding with a negotiated settlement at Geneva. Al-Jerba, who wanted outright victory, cannot have been happy to hear all this. And then his fighters abruptly joined al-Qaeda, much weakening him. The Americans postponed their further meeting in Washington with Al-Jarba and with Gen. Salim Idris, commander of the (now diminished) Free Syrian Army.
The American plan, of strengthening the FSA and overcoming the extremists in the opposition so as to force the ruling Baath regime to the negotiating table had by October of 2013 almost completely fallen apart. The turn toward al-Qaeda of so many Syrian fighters just after the attacks on Nairobi of Alshabab terrorists also affiliated with al-Qaeda will make it even harder for the US Congress to support aid to the rebels.
Three of the armed groups that signed the fundamentalist declaration had been considered members of the Free Syrian Army. Also signing the declaration seeking an Islamic state instead of a Syrian National Council were Jabhat al-Nusra, an open al-Qaeda affiliate.
The London-based daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East] suggested one explanation for the defections: money. The Syrian National Council was just not funding the moderate Free Syrian Army very well, while fundamentalist fighters were well paid. The newspaper said, "Despite insistence by the Syrian opposition on organizing the activities of the Free Syrian Army... Military commanders complain of the modest finances that reach the Joint Chiefs of Staff, something that forces the commanders of the brigades fighting on the ground to shift their alliances to the quarters that supply them with money and weapons. Breakaway Brigadier-General Khalid al-Hammud told Al-Sharq al-Awsat that about 50 percent of the FSA brigades receive support from external sides. These brigades are the more effective in fighting the regular forces because they lead the most prominent battles and score great gains, he said. He admitted that he and other FSA generals only controlled 20 percent of the fighters. In contrast, the 30 percent of the opposition fighters who were hard line fundamentalists were well paid, and could hire away the moderate fighters. (Many observers believe that private billionaires in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, along with the Qatari government, fund the extremists).
Just as ethnic competition roiled the transition from one-party Communist state to democracy of Yugoslavia, so nationalist-religious divides have made the transition from authoritarian states to parliamentary regimes difficult in the Arab world. That is, hard line political Islam has functioned like a form of sectarian nationalism. Yugoslavia had its Serbian chauvinist, Slobodan Milosevic, while Egypt had its religious chauvinist, Muhammad Morsi. The backlash of the nationalists and secularists in Egypt and Tunisia has put in question the future of political Islam in those countries in the near term. The militancy and violence of the fundamentalists in Libya and Syria has threatened long-term stabilization of those societies. Those observers who believed, however, that the Middle East was doomed to be taken over by the fundamentalists were clearly premature in their judgment. We are back to wondering whether there can be a legitimate place for political Islam in Arab politics.
JIME Center.All rights reserved.