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.”
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