The Inevitable Struggle in Egypt.

Anyone who believes the differences between the various factions and
movements of political Islam are over strategic aims or the basic
literature by which they are guided would be wrong. In actual fact, all of
them – the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafis, Gama’at Islamiya, Wahabbis,
Jihadists, Al-Qaeda and Hamas – have a common strategy: the establishment
of an Islamic state [the Caliphate] and the replacement of modern
constitutions and organic laws by Islamic Sharia. Such differences as do
exist between them are over the tactics by which this ultimate objective
can best be attained. All the followers of these groups have little
respect for constitutional and legal rules that are not based on Sharia.
That is why they see a venerable legal entity like the Constitutional
Court very differently from the way someone like me, who has studied
French law and holds the role and rulings of the Constitutional Court in
the highest esteem, regards this institution. Before they attain the stage
of what they call ‘empowerment’ they talk of upholding the Constitution
and the law but with little real respect and only in the aim of exploiting
existing constitutional and legal rules to serve their ‘empowerment’
agenda.
A few days ago, Mohamed Morsi claimed that behind the massive
demonstrations held to protest the constitutional declaration he issued
on November 22, 2012, was a conspiracy hatched by remnants of the Mubarak
regime. He announced that the culprits had been arrested, that they had
confessed to being part of the conspiracy and had actually named the
sponsors who financed them [he said the confessions would be made public
at some future date by the Prosecutor General]. A few days later, the
prosecutor charged with holding the detainees Morsi had branded as
conspirators released them for lack of evidence, proving that Morsi’s
accusations were unfounded, that they were, in fact, pure fabrications.
Following the release of the demonstrators that Morsi alleged had carried
out the conspiracy, the prosecutor who had signed the release order was
demoted, a move that revealed the new ruler of Egypt’s desire for revenge
against the man who had dared defy him, not least because this latter
revealed that his boss, the new Prosecutor General appointed by Morsi,
pressured him not to release the so-called conspirators Morsi claimed
were manipulating his opponents.
A study of the history, behaviour and literature of the Muslim
Brotherhood over four decades only confirms their inability to grasp –
let alone agree with – such notions as the modern state, the separation
of powers, the inadmissibility of individuals taking the law into their
own hands to seize what they regard as their rights and the existence of
medieval entities like the hay’et el amr bel ma’rouf wal nahy’an al
monkar [authority for the imposition of righteousness and the prevention
of the forbidden]. As far as they are concerned, the state is an entity
that should strive to model itself after the state of Medina in the
seventh century. Indeed, the followers of political Islam do not
understand the concept of citizenship in the contemporary sense of the
word. This is borne out by their extensive use of the generic term ‘Umma’
(nation) without defining what it means. When the former Supreme Guide of
the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt said “Egypt be damned!” he was being true
to his – and his followers’ – belief that what mattered was the Umma, not
Egypt. If Egypt is today divided into two Egypts, this is a reflection of
the division of Egyptian society into two societies: one that aspires to
belong to a civil state that runs its affairs in accordance with
constitutional and legal rules laid down by the best minds in the
country; another that dreams of an Egypt forming part of the Islamic
Umma, a state constantly looking to the past in search of solutions to
all problems. In this state, Sharia law would replace modern
constitutions and laws. Most of the country’s educated people and
intellectuals rally around the idea of a civil state, while most
uneducated, illiterate and simple folk who are more susceptible to
indoctrination champion the cause of an Islamist Egypt.
The arrival of the Free Officers to power in Egypt and the eras of the
four presidents since – Mohamed Naguib, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat
and Hosni Mubarak – froze an incipient social struggle that is now bound
to erupt, a struggle in which the school aspiring to a modern civil state
will lock horns with the school striving to create a regressive Islamist
state. I believe the forces of civil society will eventually prevail, and
that society will come to accept that its affairs will be run in
accordance with science and modern management techniques while religion
remains a purely personal matter. However, we must recognize that such a
development would more easily come about in a Christian society than in a
Moslem one, where religion permeates all aspects of life: from the
management of society’s affairs to the manner of using the toilet or of
drinking water.

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