Frank Viviano Writes     Terrorists put heat on secular states Social conditions breed threats Cairo -- Across the Middle East, warning signals are flashing for the very concept of the secular state as the Islamic extremist tide that brought unprecedented mayhem to America threatens the political status quo of an entire region. In interviews with ordinary citizens, political analysts, academics and leading representatives of the Muslim underground, there is almost unanimous agreement that secular governments are in serious trouble -- from Tunisia and civil war-torn Algeria and Lebanon to the constitutional monarchies of Jordan and Morocco. And at the storm's center is Egypt -- the oldest state in the Middle East, and its most populous. The second largest recipient of U.S. military aid, Egypt is the fulcrum of American foreign policy in the Arab crescent -- where Washington is often viewed as the main prop of increasingly unpopular regimes. "Secular government is in deep crisis because it does not rule by the will of our people. It is not their choice," says Esam El-Arian, a major figure in Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the militant organization that gave birth to the Islamic fundamentalist movement in the 1920s. "If the Muslim Brotherhood was legalized and allowed to run in genuinely free elections, it would almost certainly enjoy a runaway victory," says a well-known political analyst in Cairo, who asked to remain anonymous. The analyst's reluctance to speak on the record underlines what many say is a chief source of grass-roots Arab disillusionment with the political status quo: Secular government in the Middle East often means authoritarian government, with little tolerance for dissent of any kind. In Egypt, the governing party of President Hosni Mubarak -- now entering his 21st year in power -- enjoys a dubious 85 percent majority in the 454-seat national parliament, largely due to the banning of strong opposition groups.   IMPOSED BY FORCE "Secularism was imposed on us by force, and it is maintained by force," says El-Arian, who was released 18 months ago from prison, where he had been held for five years on vague charges of Muslim political activity. Heavy-handed police methods are common here in the best of times, and ubiquitous during crises such as the Gulf War, the current U.S. war on terrorism and other waves of violence that have swept over the Middle East in the past two decades. Last week, when a Chronicle reporter sought the assistance of an interpreter for street interviews in a heavily fundamentalist district of Cairo, three successive candidates declined, even when offered the equivalent of a full month's average Egyptian pay for a single day's work. "It's too dangerous for me. The police won't allow it, and they're watching everything and everybody right now," one of the interpreters said during a meeting at a downtown hotel. A crackdown on dissident journalists, social nonconformists and vocal critics of government policy has been under way in Egypt for the past several weeks. "The regime is striking out in every direction, against nongovernmental organizations and intellectuals, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood," says human rights activist Gasser Abdel Razek. "Mubarak has expanded the field of his targets."   PREVENTING TERRORISM The government responds that its activities are well within the boundaries of Egyptian law. Spokesmen point out that the U.S. State Department, in its 2000 report on world terrorism, commended Cairo for the fact that "no act of terrorism has been recorded in Egypt since 1999, thanks to its security measures." Such measures were employed in large part to suppress Egypt's Islamic Jihad, which has since become a key component of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Its leaders are among bin Laden's chief lieutenants, according to investigators. "In a sense, it was a godsend for the government that Egyptian Islamic Jihad was driven out of the country by the crackdown," says Maye Kassem, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo. "It diverted them away from domestic targets." Since the 1981 assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, an estimated 30,000 Muslim fundamentalists have been arrested and jailed, according to human rights organizations. Most had alleged ties to Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al Gam'a al-Islamiya, extremist offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood responsible for such acts as the Sadat assassination and the murders of 86 foreign tourists in Egypt in 1996 and 1997. According to El-Arian, more than 90 members of the Muslim Brotherhood -- today a self-proclaimed moderate organization that rejects the use of political violence -- are currently in prison. Some were apprehended as long as 20 years ago, and only 15 have been formally convicted of a crime. "In America, you can say that you don't like Bush, and nothing happens to you. But we do not dare say we are against Mubarak, and that is a big problem for Egyptians," said a laborer at a building site in a blue-collar district of the city. His fellow workers nodded in agreement. The tightening of civil liberties, especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults on the United States, has occurred elsewhere in the Arab world.   NEW PRESS LAW Last Thursday, Jordan, which ruthlessly suppressed the Black September movement in the 1970s, announced a new press law forbidding journalism that "distorts the nation's image." Offending newspapers will be shut down, the law specifies, and the responsible reporters tried before Jordan's draconian state security court. Arab government spokesmen often cite terrorist atrocities when arguing that the threat of Islamic extremism is too menacing to allow for western-style civil liberties and political freedom. "Just look at our next-door neighbor -- 100,000 dead in a dozen years because they made the mistake of letting the Islamists operate freely for a while," said a high-ranking official in Tunisia. He was referring to the bloody civil war in Algeria, which has pitted a military-backed secular regime against armed Islamic militants. Tunisia itself has outlawed religious movements with political aims, and imprisoned hundreds of their followers, while concentrating on economic reforms that have resulted in the most buoyant growth rate on the African continent throughout the 1990s. In Egypt, where terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists cost more than 1, 000 lives in the last decade, government policies have had a less promising outcome. One of those arrested on charges linked to Sadat's assassination was Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri of Egyptian Jihad. After his release in 1984, al-Zawahiri joined Afghan guerrillas in their war against the Soviet invasion, eventually becoming the Saudi-born bin Laden's right-hand man -- and the alleged planner of the bloody Sept. 11 assault on the United States. Of the 22 men on the FBI Most Wanted terrorist list released by President Bush this week, six are Egyptian, the largest number from a single country. Faced with the real threat of terrorism, notes political scientist Maye Kassem, "many people would be willing to give up political rights over the short term in return for development, for social and economic progress." If a hard-line response to the terrorist threat was the sole charge against Egyptian secularism, its prospects might be brighter. But the disaffection goes well beyond authoritarianism.   SUPPORT FALTERS "The decline of support for secular government has been under way on a massive scale since 1967," says Dr. Mohammed el-Sayed Said, assistant director of the prestigious Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. Secular Arab states, he notes, were profoundly humiliated in the catastrophic 1967 war with Israel, which resulted in the occupation of the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, the West Bank of the Jordan River and other Arab lands. Moreover, secular governments have done little for the poor. The poor make up the vast majority of citizens in countries such as Egypt, where an estimated 35 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Half a century after Gamal Abdel Nasser led a military uprising that installed a secular nationalist regime in power here, the annual per capita gross domestic products stands at barely $1,000 -- roughly 5 percent of the figure across the border in Israel. Forty percent of Egyptians remain illiterate. Pay for teachers in state schools begins at a dismal $35 per month. "Secular nationalism failed to deliver a winning war against Israel," says Said, "and secular liberalism failed to address social issues -- extreme poverty, dispossession, the concentration of land in a few hands." Reeling with demoralization, "a whole generation gave up on both approaches and started looking to the mosque for guidance," he says. "The underlying appeal of the Islamic movements is that they appear to speak for the poor," says a political scientist in Cairo. "Their influence is less about religion than it is about their monopoly today on the language of the oppressed." Unless these root causes of popular discontent are confronted, the forces of religious militancy will continue to rise. "It is nonsense to say that Egypt has controlled fundamentalist Islam," said a leading political scientist who wished to remain anonymous. "Its appeal rises from domestic problems that the government has scarcely addressed. "If Egyptian extremists have successfully managed to launch an international war against the United States, there is every reason to believe their own nation will be among the next targets." back to index page     back to