Mubarak's Egypt...A Nation Without A State

It took a few hours after noon on Friday, January 25, 2011, for the Egyptian state institutions to collapse in the face of a popular upraising unseen in the Arab world’s biggest nation in decades, after the regime’s repressive apparatus, namely the interior ministry’s central securities, was repelled and largely destroyed by thousands of protesters.

What happened in that afternoon surprised many, but I can’t say it surprised me. I lived for about a year and half in Egypt, from September 2007 to January 2009, between two realms: One was the Western type social environment of upper class rich Egyptians at the American University in Cairo, whose tuition fees were higher than those of many Universities in America. (I was on a fully-funded scholarship).  The other realm was the social environment of variegated ordinary Egyptian middle and working classes that I interacted with in my work at IslamOnline.net and in the street. I was exposed to the two realms sharply divided along the lines of mainly economic status and religiosity.

At some point I came to know that what brought the opposing social and economic classes together in a unified state was repression. The government and the police were perceived by ordinary Egyptians as a fearful monster. One evening, I went to the Boursa area in downtown Cairo, close to Tahrir square, where I used to drink ‘Kousheri’ tea and smoke a pipe while reading a book. I found out that a police unit just passed by and confiscated all the chairs and tables from the cafes in the area. I walked into a café where I used to sit and I asked its owner, Said, about a chair, and he replied: the police took everything. There were a number of young Egyptians standing by when I replied for a laugh: F*** the police! The reaction I received was astonishing to me. Everyone stepped back with unquestionable marks of fear mixed with suspicion on their faces.

Having come from Morocco where police and security forces are often challenged and sometimes even beaten, I could not understand how destitute young men who have nothing to lose can fear the authorities . I could understand the fear of those who benefit from the system, but i could never understand why the wretched of the earth have to fear the authorities.

I was then beginning to take notice of the profound injustice that existed in Egypt. I noticed that the state administration was built upon a system of enslavement—Whoever was in a government position enslaves those underneath and those who were most enslaved were the ordinary poor Egyptians.

State institutions seemed to me completely corrupt and completely disorderly. During my first year, I did not have a residency. Every time I would lodge in an application, I had to wait for three months before I received a response saying: your address is incorrect, resubmit your application and pay a “fine.” Yet ,I was a full time student, I worked I had a bank account, and according to the law I should have been banned from engaging in any such activity without a residency; but I never was, because there was what I called “anarchy--” nothing made sense..everything seemed arbitrary.

I remember when I told an Egyptian colleague at AUC that Egypt is a nation without a state. The definition of a modern state did not seem to exist, but this fact was concealed by forced silence or by the complacence of the rich upper class elites who shared interests with the corrupt regime and with the governing National Democratic Party. Two days ago after Egypt fell in total chaos, I logged into Facebook and I met online with the same old Egyptian colleague. He wrote to me: You were right; We are a nation without a state. What we thought was a state fell apart in a number of hours in the face of popular demonstrations.

Should Morocco have a state religion?

Some people are discomfited to hear or read that no religion, like no mind, enjoys a monopoly on truth and on justice. As in other places, people in Morocco, diverse and heterogeneous, should engage in dialogue, and no one should feel left behind, betrayed, ignored or unrecognized by the law and by the governing institutions that represent only one segment of the populace.

Despite the exclusionary nature of governing institutions, Moroccan society enjoys diversity in religions and in religious practices. Although it is estimated that about 99.7 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim, dozens of subgroups within the Sunni Islamic tradition are found in Morocco, and differences between them can be as dangerously profound as between any two separate religions. Morocco also has sizeable Jewish and Christian populations. It is worthy to note that many converts from Islam to other faiths remain in the shadow and are seldom recognized.

In many regions, the people who are classified as Sunni Muslims can be found worshiping their own idols referred to as marabout, with shrines often called "sidi" for male saints, and "lalla" for female saints. For certain radicals of the Salafi Sunni school of thought, people who visit shrines for prayers can sometimes be accused of apostasy, which requires that they be punished.

This shows that dangerous differences exist even within certain religious sub-groups. So, it is unwise for a state that claims to allow religious freedom to adopt an official religion, for it would no doubt discriminate against its people and promote religious and ideological tensions.

In Morocco this has been happening for decades since the governing regime began courting Islamists to fight against a growing threat from communists, and when Islamists grew in power they turned against the state, terrorizing its power base. As practiced in Morocco, religion is used as a pawn.

Anyone with deep religious convictions should be bothered by use of religion – theirs and others’ – as a pawn in political games. Those committed to the teachings of any of the major religions should object to use of their belief system as a tool to play one side against another.

The state, any state, should be for all people of all religious persuasions, and the state should never bear the imprimatur of any one religious ideology.This, of course, still is contrary to what we have in Morocco, because we as Moroccans have thus far failed to learn from the history of nations and to examine with an open mind some of the bold choices made by certain nations, such as Turkey for example.

The Moroccan constitution says that “Islam shall be the state religion. The state shall guarantee freedom of worship for all.” It is under this statement—though blatantly unjust and unworkable as it is-- that most of Morocco’s religious affairs are supposedly regulated…but they are not. Under this constitutional statement, anyone should have the freedom to worship anything, yet this is not the case in Morocco. The statement is often understood within the government and its coercive machinery as the right for Muslims to practice Islam, for Jews to practice Judaism and for Christians to practice Christianity. Practicing any other faith or converting from Islam to another religion is most often suppressed rather than protected.

In March 2010, the Moroccan government expelled dozens of American Christians for allegedly secretly spreading Christianity among the poor. It is certainly unethical to exploit people’s biological needs in attempt to convert them from one religion to another for I believe religion should be a matter of personal conviction. But is it illegal for someone to do so? Libya’s Gaddafi does it in sub-Sahara Africa! In Morocco we don’t know if this is illegal because the government often in such cases does not follow the due process of law and instead expels suspects without trial. There is a deep feeling of insecurity within the state about its institutions, including the Justice system that was supposed to uphold the law.

How about when someone is of Moroccan nationality and the government can not expel him or her like members of the Alternative Movement for Individual Freedoms (MALI) that is calling for freedom not to fast in Ramadan. In such cases, government uses its repressive tools to silence, threaten or jail them under fabricated charges of disturbing public order and of the like.

In Morocco we have a government that is paranoid and lost. It is lost between an orthodox love for authority and power and its international commitments to ensure the rule of law and improve the status of human rights and the state of democracy.

Understanding ‘Islamophobia’

Islamophobia has become one of today's buzz words often used loosely to denote practices deemed anti-Islamic, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-fundamentalism. The notion of “anti-Muslimism” was coined to describe many attacks that are often labeled Islamophobic and to contain the essential meaning of islamophobia as a way to better confront this phenomenon.

The notion suggests that most of the attacks coming from the West are not against Islam as a religion but against Muslims as people. In the present day, however, attacks against the faith of Islam in the West are more common as compared to the year of 2000 when this notion was first presented. Islamophobia and “anti-Muslimism” today can be described, using the words of Eduard Said (1987), as “uniformly ubiquitous,” but in a long strategic quest to dispel these practices it is essential that we draw clear lines between them and address them on an individual basis.

The picturing of Muslims in negative stereotypical images has been a ubiquitous practice in the West long before the events of Sept. 11 happened. Said (1987) wrote: “Whether one looked at […] grad school history books, comic strips, television serials, films, and cartoons, the Iconography of Islam was uniform, was uniformly ubiquitous, and drew the same time-honored view of Islam.” (p.6)

In the present day, studies in Europe and the United States attest to the proliferation of anti-Muslim attacks. In Britain, Clived Field (2007) in an examination of opinion polls related to Muslims in Britain, notes that “Islamophobia” has increased since the attacks of Sept. 11, and that Muslims are increasingly seen “as slow to integrate into mainstream society, feeling only a qualified sense of patriotism, and prone to espouse anti-Western values that lead many to condone the so-called Islamic terrorism” (p.447).

In Italy, Rinella Cere, a researcher in contemporary European mass media and culture, notes that Italy has witnessed three major “Islamophobic” waves since Sept. 11. The first occurred when Prime Minister Selvio Berlusconi stated that the European civilization is superior. The second occurred when a prominent political leader proposed the removal of Mosques in the downtown the city of Naples. The third wave began when another political leader, Francesco Speroni, asked the EU Parliament to bar Muslims from entering Europe.

The record-beating “Islamophobic” attack in Europe, however, came when the Danish newspaper Jullands-Posten published cartoons of the Profit Mohammed portraying him as a terrorist. As riots broke out in the Islamic world, other publications across Europe took the opportunity to republish the cartoons on the basis of newsworthiness. This “Islamophobic” trend in Europe escalated into a new phase where it is disseminated through motion pictures following the release of Dutch film Fitna.

In the United States Hollywood produced The Siege in 1998, a film that focused on “Islamic terrorism” contrasted with indulgent Irish white nationalists. But a great deal of American islamophobia is buried in the pages of numerous books and publications released every year and widely distributed in the United States without the knowledge of majority Muslims. One of the well-known authors who work in this Islamophobia publishing industry is Robert Spincer who in his bestseller “The Politically incorrect Guide to Islam” provocatively lists in the book cover five “truths” that make Islam a religion of war and legitimizes the crusades. So what usually comes out in the mainstream media is but the tip of the iceberg and both Islamophobia and anti-Muslimism are rampant in the West.

Remedies

Effective remedies need to come through constructive planning not through blind-folded demonstrations and counter-attacks.

First, it is essential that Muslims themselves define Islamophobia as attacks primarily against Islam or against Muslims on the basis of their religion as a potential threat. Islam as subject of attack needs to be clearly defined because describing an act against a Muslim immigrant on grounds not religious as Islamophobia is likely to be used by extremists to retaliate in the name of Islam. Besides, critics who challenge conservative readings from even within the Islamic world would be prone to accusation of being Islamophobe if this concept is not clearly defined.

Second, the Muslim civil society needs to actively engage in fighting all sorts of discriminatory practices based on universal principles of human rights and not limit their struggle to fighting Islamophobia or anti-Islamism. If Muslims do not demonstrate support for the victims of the London and the Madrid bombings or even for the people in Tibet how can they expect international support for their causes, primarily the Palestinian one. Third, the United States and the European countries need to do more to convince people, especially those working in the media business, that freedom of expression comes with the social responsibility not to be misused.

Finally, it is essential from the modernist theory’s point of view that the current anti-Islamic or anti-Muslim practices stop be seen as a carry-over from the perceived historical conflict between Islam and the West. Why? Because if the current situation is justified in historical contexts as perennialists, such as V .S. Naipaul and Samuel Huntington, tend to do, we shall assume no capacity to reach a solution and we would surrender to ideas of continuous conflict or “clash of civilizations.” Instead, it is important that we focus on the problems as products of present circumstances and developments if we should have any hope to solve them.

Islamophobia has been employed widely to denote both anti-Islam and anti-Muslim attacks, and while anti-Islam attacks have increased markedly since Sept. 11, it becomes necessary to define the meaning of Islamophobia. Without such definition, it is likely that it will be employed as “imperialism,” “communism,” or even “anti-Semitism” to silence people of free speech at home and abroad. Concrete measures need to be taken from both Muslims and non-Mulims, among which it is to confine the problem to its present not the historical context.