Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (17 page)

The Brotherhood leader’s second arrest was at the hands of President Mubarak in 1995, when he was charged with belonging to a banned organization that called for the overthrow of the state. Habib was tried by a military court under provisions of emergency law. He served the full five-year sentence.

“The real reason for my arrest was that I was going to be nominated again for parliament. So,” Habib said, with an ironic little laugh, “the government eliminated my opportunity to run again, because now I’ve been convicted of a crime.”

His third stint was fourteen months, from 2001 to 2002. Again, Habib was not charged. Egyptian dissidents jokingly refer to open-ended imprisonment without trial as preemptive “just-in-case detentions.”

Habib was still in prison on September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda pilots flew suicide missions into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. During our conversation, I noted that al Qaeda’s ideological chief was Ayman al Zawahiri, another Egyptian, whose early training was with the Brotherhood. And the mastermind of the attacks was Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian.

“I was very saddened and upset,” Habib replied. “I couldn’t imagine that human beings who have a brain could carry out such acts, regardless of the extent of enmity they felt. Immediately, I thought we should stand against these actions, no matter who did them. They contradict Islam.”

The Brotherhood’s deepening involvement in politics has exposed cracks among Islamist groups—and fierce condemnation from militants.

Zawahiri lashed out at the group that first attracted him to politics—for being “duped, provoked and used.” In one of the periodic videotapes delivered from his place in hiding, he warned,

Yet the Brotherhood’s position on the use of violence remained two-faced. Its leaders still supported what they call “acts of resistance” by Hamas against Israel and by Iraqi insurgents against American troops.

I asked Habib if the Brotherhood now accepts Israel’s right to exist, given Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist in 1988. Every Brotherhood official I spoke to refused to use the word Israel and instead referred to the Jewish state as “the Zionist entity.”

“We should leave this up to the people. If the people say it stays, it stays, no problem,” he replied. “We don’t want to impose anything on the Palestinian or Egyptian people.

“But, personally,” he added, “I consider the Zionist entity as an occupier of Muslim land. There has to be a formula where people live in peace. I don’t know what the formula is now. But, no, for us, they live in our country.”

Habib was particularly bitter about what happened after Hamas’s election in 2006. “The United States and Western countries are known for their double standards in evaluating democracy,” he said. “Domestically, they practice true democracy. But abroad, they practice it only to the extent that it serves their interests. That’s why they are doing their best to undermine Hamas’s victory. These countries will continue to support corrupt regimes as long as their interests are served.”

He was even more scathing about America’s intervention in Iraq. In a 2004 interview with the television station run by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Habib had said suicide bombings “redeem self-confidence and hope, because a nation that does not excel at the industry of death does not deserve life.”
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When he spoke to me, an American journalist, in 2006, he was more restrained, but just as angry.

“The United States has violated international laws and returned the world to the laws of the jungle,” he said, jabbing his finger in the air as two deep scowl lines creased his forehead.

“We know that the United States is not a charity organization. It has its interests, but instead of attempting to truly spread democracy, look what it did to Iraq!” he said, getting angrier. “What happened at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay is a mark of shame.”

In a view widely shared in Egypt, Habib reflected, “The United States after 9/11 has adopted a new strategy to establish an empire. It wants to control the Middle East. It’s working on redrawing the Middle East map.”

I asked Habib about the Brotherhood’s own strategy for the future. The movement’s literature lists six broad objectives, each one building on the previous step. Leaders deny that they want to convert Egypt into a theocracy led by clerics. Yet its platform is ambitiously theocratic.

The Brotherhood’s first goal is to build the Muslim individual—“the brother or sister with a strong body, high manners, cultured thought, ability to earn, strong faith, correct worship, conscious of time, of benefit to others.”

The second is to foster practicing Muslim families.

The third is to create an Islamic society.

The fourth is to build an Islamic state.

The fifth is to create a caliphate, “basically a shape of unity between Islamic states.”

The last one is “mastering the world with Islam.”

In the twenty-first century, the Brotherhood appears to be about halfway down its list.

I asked Habib what a twenty-first century caliphate, or a government representing God’s will on earth, would eventually look like. Ironically, on this issue, the United States is something of a model.

“We hope that one day there are states like the United States. Each will have its own laws and leaders and army and everything,” he responded. “But there should be a common constitution and character and border. A federal government like the United States is a very nice example, or what the European Union wants to achieve, where its member countries have their own parliaments and laws but with binding overall policies.”

I asked him what the United States of the Islamic world would include and how big it would be. He took off his glasses and put them on his desk.

“Look,” he said, “The world is moving toward large bodies. It’s like the United States trying to create a larger body in a transatlantic alliance. There’s the G-8 group of industrialized nations. There are the Asian tigers.

“So why shouldn’t there be another big body created here, too, to complement the others?” he said.

“Of course, the Arab world is one phase,” he added. “The Islamic world is a bigger and more comprehensive phase. We know this project will take time.”

Among the three “crats,” the democrats are the weakest—and at the greatest disadvantage. Unlike the theocrats and the autocrats, they are having to build from scratch.

On International Students Day, February 21, 2006, I took a taxi to Cairo University to watch a demonstration organized by Kefaya, the new democracy movement whose name means “Enough.” I could hear it blocks away, and when I arrived, the scene outside the campus entrance had combustible potential.

A tight ring of shoulder-to-shoulder riot police with body shields, face masks, and batons encircled the unarmed protesters. There were at least ten police for every demonstrator. Two dozen large armored vans with little grill-covered windows were positioned nearby, in case of mass arrests. Plainclothed security officials, some with conspicuous cameras, were on the perimeter.

To the rhythm of a pulsating drum, the Kefaya protesters shouted one provocative chant after another, in unison, under the direction of white-haired Kamal Khalil. He and his battery-operated loudspeaker had become fixtures at many rallies.

“Down, down with Hosni Mubarak,” they yelled.

“State Security, you’re the dogs of the state,” they shouted. “Why the security? Are we in prison?”

To the police, they turned and taunted, “What are you afraid of? Come join us.”

“Open up. Open up. Freedom of thought, freedom for the nation!” they cried.

Inside the tall iron campus gates, a second demonstration was underway, creating a clashing cacophony of chants.

Three weeks earlier, an aging and packed Egyptian ferry had sunk in the Red Sea. More than 1,000 Egyptians had drowned with it. It was the worst maritime disaster in the country’s history. Many of the victims were poor laborers coming home from jobs in Saudi Arabia. The government was still scrambling to explain what happened, why its reaction was slow and the rescue slower, why responsibility had not been assigned, and why bodies had not been found, death certificates not issued, and compensation not distributed. Meanwhile, the owner of the ferry company, who also happened to be a member of parliament’s upper house, had gone abroad—amid press speculation that he was trying to dodge investigation or recriminations.

The students had plenty of gripes, but the tragedy was a recurrent theme of their protest.

“Officials travel in limousines and airplanes, but the people take buses and die on ferries,” the students shouted.

“Why put students in prison? Put the ferry’s killers on trial!” they yelled.

“Oh Egypt, oh Egypt, we won’t get scared,” the protesters cried.

“And we won’t back down.”

“
Hor-i-yya.
…
Hor-i-yya.
…
Hor-i-yya,
” they chanted, in accented syllables.

“Free-dom…. Free-dom…. Free-dom.”

Since the first Kefaya rally in 2004, Egypt’s democrats had clearly found their voice. Illegal street protests became a common feature in Cairo. Kefaya’s democrats were the pioneers for a new type of movement, adding energy to stale Egyptian politics and spurring others into action too.

But by 2006, the new democrats had still not found their political mass. Hundreds had dared to show up for the two rallies in blatant violation of emergency law—but not the tens or hundreds of thousands needed to nudge, prod, pressure, or politically force the government’s hand on major reforms.

As the dramas unfolded inside and outside Cairo University’s front gate, I talked to two young women in their mid-twenties. There were at least as many Egyptians watching as participating. Both women wore modest but colorful
hejab
scarves; one scarf was striped and the other was a spring floral pattern.

“If these people would do something, I’d be with them all the way,” said Rebab, who wore the striped scarf. She asked that I not use her last name; as a university employee, she received a government paycheck.

“But this is all they do,” she said. “I’m divorced, and I have a six-year-old son. More than three years ago, I applied for an apartment, and still I don’t have one. I sleep on the sofa with my son in a one-bedroom apartment with my grandparents. Now, the price of sugar is going up, and our chicken is diseased,” she added, referring to the spate of avian flu chicken deaths in Egypt. “We don’t know what to eat. We can’t afford meat. It’s now forty pounds (about seven dollars) a kilo.

“I know people with apartments who applied years after I did. They have connections with the NDP,” she continued angrily, referring to the ruling party. “That’s how things get done in this country. All these people are doing,” she said pointing to the noisy protest, “is demonstrating.”

The day after the rally, I visited George Ishak, the head of Kefaya, to discuss Egypt’s new democratic movements. Ishak is a retired high school history teacher and a Coptic Christian who has snowy white hair and wire-rimmed glasses that rest on a wide nose.

Kefaya’s headquarters is a two-room office on a scruffy hall with what looked like large black skid marks along the wall. The entrance door said “Center for Egyptian Studies,” which is a cover name, because Kefaya had not been able to register as a legal group. One room had inexpensive meeting chairs that were still covered with plastic and piled on top of each other; the second room contained Ishak’s well-used desk, a single old computer, and a fax machine covered with many fingerprints. The door in between the two rooms had half of a broken pane of glass, the remaining section shaped in a menacingly sharp pointed peak.

Kefaya’s full name is the Popular Campaign for Change. It emerged, Ishak explained, in 2003 when friends with disparate political views met over a holiday meal to discuss the future and then agreed to continue talking.

“Marxists, Nasserites, liberals, Islamists—they were all in these meetings,” Ishak added. “We agreed that our country is in miserable condition and that the regime is despotic. But, after that, we had some very difficult discussions because we are not all on the same wavelength. Every week, we tried to come up with part of a statement that was acceptable to all of us. Those first seven months were very hard.”

In the end, the Kefaya “declaration to the nation” was sparse, just over one page. It was signed by 300 prominent Egyptians, including a senior Muslim Brotherhood official who had twice served in parliament.

To address its disparate membership, the manifesto had two parts. One section lambasted the “odious assault” on Iraq, the “Zionist devastation” of the Palestinians, and American designs “to recast the fate of the Arab region.” It called for mass political efforts “to ward off this peril to the survival of the Arab peoples.”
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The second section addressed the route to democracy for Egypt. It called for the rule of law. It demanded an end to the political monopoly by the president’s party. It urged a two-term limit on the presidency. And it appealed for separation of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.