Shibley Telhami
By Shibley Telhami
From millions in Cairo’s Tahrir Square two years ago, revolting against Hosni Mubarak’s repressive rule and chanting “Silmiyya, silmiyya” (peaceful, peaceful), to a bloody Wednesday, with hundreds dead and many more wounded as security forces stormed sit-ins by supporters of ousted president Mohammed Mursi. From a mostly peaceful transition to a violent crackdown. From calls for democracy to a state of emergency.
How did Egypt turn so dark? Much of Egypt’s crisis comes down to a battle over identity. Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood overestimated the extent to which Egyptians identify with Islam. And now, with their violent repression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the generals who ousted Mursi risk underestimating it.
Over the past decade, I’ve conducted opinion polls in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and have found two consistent trends. First, citizens identify less and less with their countries and identify more and more with Islam and as Arabs. Second, Egyptians see themselves as the most religious people in the world.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which began the post-Mubarak era with justified confidence in its superior political organisation, surely must have interpreted such trends as great support for its cause. (This belief was expressed by the group’s former murshed, or guide, as early as 2006 when he said, “Tuz fi Misr,” roughly, “To hell with Egypt.”) But the group drew the wrong lessons from these trends.
Arabs, like most people, have many contending collective identities, and the weight of each shifts over time; there is rarely a lasting equilibrium. Over the past decade, the rise in people identifying primarily as Muslim was not all or even mostly due to expanding Islamist aspirations. Instead, it resulted mainly from declining identification with the state, thanks to government failings on domestic and foreign policy. Also, the extraordinarily long tenures of individual leaders — Muammar Gaddafi ruled for 42 years and Mubarak for 30 — made it difficult for people to separate state from unpopular ruler. But a vote against something is not the same as a vote in favour of something else.
Moreover, when Islam itself appears under assault from external forces — as Muslims overwhelmingly perceived it to be in the decade after the attacks of September 11, 2001 — it becomes especially difficult to separate religious identity from popular defiance. You are what you have to defend. For some Egyptians, claiming Islamic identity is about faith, but for many others it is merely about asserting the right to be Muslim and to accept Shariah law in the face of Western assault. Muslims do not want to apologise for who they are, for their faith and for all it entails.
It is too early to measure the impact of the bloodshed on the generals’ public support, but the coalition around them has conflicting aims and values, even if they were united against Mursi — and it is beginning to fracture, most notably with the departure of Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei. The bloody path chosen this past week takes Egypt into the unknown. What we do know is that all Egyptians are prepared to pay a price to have their voices heard. If that can no longer happen peacefully, Egypt must brace itself for the violent radicalisation that makes democracy impossible. WP-BLOOMBERG
By Shibley Telhami
From millions in Cairo’s Tahrir Square two years ago, revolting against Hosni Mubarak’s repressive rule and chanting “Silmiyya, silmiyya” (peaceful, peaceful), to a bloody Wednesday, with hundreds dead and many more wounded as security forces stormed sit-ins by supporters of ousted president Mohammed Mursi. From a mostly peaceful transition to a violent crackdown. From calls for democracy to a state of emergency.
How did Egypt turn so dark? Much of Egypt’s crisis comes down to a battle over identity. Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood overestimated the extent to which Egyptians identify with Islam. And now, with their violent repression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the generals who ousted Mursi risk underestimating it.
Over the past decade, I’ve conducted opinion polls in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and have found two consistent trends. First, citizens identify less and less with their countries and identify more and more with Islam and as Arabs. Second, Egyptians see themselves as the most religious people in the world.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which began the post-Mubarak era with justified confidence in its superior political organisation, surely must have interpreted such trends as great support for its cause. (This belief was expressed by the group’s former murshed, or guide, as early as 2006 when he said, “Tuz fi Misr,” roughly, “To hell with Egypt.”) But the group drew the wrong lessons from these trends.
Arabs, like most people, have many contending collective identities, and the weight of each shifts over time; there is rarely a lasting equilibrium. Over the past decade, the rise in people identifying primarily as Muslim was not all or even mostly due to expanding Islamist aspirations. Instead, it resulted mainly from declining identification with the state, thanks to government failings on domestic and foreign policy. Also, the extraordinarily long tenures of individual leaders — Muammar Gaddafi ruled for 42 years and Mubarak for 30 — made it difficult for people to separate state from unpopular ruler. But a vote against something is not the same as a vote in favour of something else.
Moreover, when Islam itself appears under assault from external forces — as Muslims overwhelmingly perceived it to be in the decade after the attacks of September 11, 2001 — it becomes especially difficult to separate religious identity from popular defiance. You are what you have to defend. For some Egyptians, claiming Islamic identity is about faith, but for many others it is merely about asserting the right to be Muslim and to accept Shariah law in the face of Western assault. Muslims do not want to apologise for who they are, for their faith and for all it entails.
It is too early to measure the impact of the bloodshed on the generals’ public support, but the coalition around them has conflicting aims and values, even if they were united against Mursi — and it is beginning to fracture, most notably with the departure of Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei. The bloody path chosen this past week takes Egypt into the unknown. What we do know is that all Egyptians are prepared to pay a price to have their voices heard. If that can no longer happen peacefully, Egypt must brace itself for the violent radicalisation that makes democracy impossible. WP-BLOOMBERG
