Beyond State Idolatry in Post Mubarak Egypt

A. Rashied Omar

INDEX

Egypt After Mubarak: Beyond the Idolatry of the State

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Al-Azhar: Beyond the Politics of State Patronage

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Al-Azhar Should Resume and Widen its Vatican Dialogue

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Dr. A. Rashied Omar is a Research Scholar of Islamic Studies and Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA and Imam of the Claremont Main Road Masjid, Cape Town, South Africa.

Egypt After Mubarak: Beyond the Idolatry of the State What we are currently witnessing in Egypt is a transformative moment, a historical juncture that has been described by the pro-democracy demonstrators in the streets of Cairo as a Tunisami, a wave of social activism that has swept a Tunisian despot from power and now in Egypt. The question on many people’s mind is: What comes next?

I hope Egyptians will embrace a lesson citizens in my own country of South Africa have learned the hard way: beware the idolatry of the state. After the first democratic elections in 1994, civil society organizations that were at the forefront of the struggle for liberation in South Africa became progressively weakened because the dynamic anti-apartheid leadership was absorbed into state structures. As a consequence, civil society in South Africa has become reliant on the state to provide solutions for the myriad social challenges that remain, and has lost the cohesiveness of the social movement that generated the demise of apartheid.

The lesson to be learned from the South African experience is simple: Be sure that civil society is not fully co-opted by the state, and strive to maintain strong and critically independent civil society organizations and social movements.

An Organic and Grassroots Social Movement No matter what happens next in Egypt, after these remarkable events, Egypt, Tunisia, the Middle East, Africa, and the world will never be the same again. The three-decades-old despotic rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is over-thanks to the resilience of the Egyptian protesters who kept their street demonstrations going for 18 consecutive days.

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Ordinary people in Egypt - poor, middle class, young, old, men and women, educated elites and workers – are using the power of collective action and social solidarity to shape their own destinies. Which is to say that the “uprising” was a genuine grassroots movement for social change and emancipation.

If there was any significant element to the protest movement in Egypt, it is the inspiring role of young people. They are creatively employing innovative social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and the internet, to mobilize their social movement.

Many analysts have pointed out that there is no single dominant party in the opposition movement, neither a single charismatic figure leading the protests. Perhaps this is as an advantage rather than a liability, since it allows for a resilient and organic leadership to be forged in the trenches in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in the streets of Egypt.

Claim No Easy Victories The sacrifices that the Egyptian people have made for transforming their country are indeed enormous, but the lessons they have learned and nurtured along the way are priceless. The Egyptian people’s organizational strength and resilience will stand them in good stead in the post-Mubarak period when they face the difficult task of transforming and building a new social order.

As any student of world history or advocate for social justice knows, regime change is no panacea. The end of a repressive regime is not the change but rather the opportunity for change.

The power of the nation-state to transform its political economy and shape its own destiny has been drastically reduced and curtailed in our globalizing era. Powerful global economic and political forces will do just about anything to protect their economic and geo-strategic advantages. Small wonder the United States of America was willing to annually provide 1.3 billion in foreign aid to prop up the oppressive Mubarak regime

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and is now ambivalent in public, but resolute behind the scenes in securing its interests.

The Egyptian people cannot become weary or let their guard down in the struggle for social justice and transformation.

Every new day of the post-Mubarak era should be viewed as a new opportunity to reinvigorate and strengthen their collective efforts at mobilizing and organizing the masses for social change. Such organizational fortitude will enable the Egyptian people to face up to the difficult task of transforming and building a new social order.

Poverty Eradication: Barometer of True Democracy A recent report by Egypt’s largest independent newspaper, AlMasri al-Yawm, released information from Egyptian authorities investigating the former ministers, businessmen, and officials who were banned from traveling and whose assets were frozen.

It shows a number of the former Egyptian cabinet ministers are millionaires, with Mubarak leading the flock, having assets conservatively estimated at between 40- 70 billion Egyptian pounds (approximately 7-12 billion US dollars). All this while close to 20% of Egyptians live under the poverty line and unemployment is estimated to be as high as 30%.

This report speaks to the endemic corruption and greed that Mubarak’s regime has flaunted in the face of its struggling and poverty-stricken citizens for the past thirty years. The real challenge facing the Egyptian social movement will be not only to concern itself with free and fair elections whenever that happens, but more importantly, to build new democratic institutions that will root out endemic corruption and address the needs of the poor. I am optimistic that the rudiments of such a platform for social change do indeed exist within some young, grassroots intellectuals in Egypt.

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The Cairo School: Going Beyond the State-Centered Paradigm In the late nineties I was exposed to the innovative thinking of one such group of Egyptian intellectuals who described themselves as the “Cairo School”. Combining the great intellectual legacy of Islam as well as the seminal work of the Italian social critic, Antonio Gramsci, the “Cairo School” argued that the pervasive power of the modern state has disempowered the masses and led to their political marginalization. Real people become a faceless electorate and mere statistics devoid of the ability to act in the modern state. Furthermore, the modern state has bred in individuals and groups low social and political ambitions and inertia.

They thus argued that social activists needed a paradigm shift: a shift in thinking and action. Desperately needed, they proposed, is that citizens rid themselves of the ill-founded obsession with the state, as well as the lie that their fate lies with the state. They proposed that social activists focus their energies and resources away from the state in the search for solutions to societal problems.

The innovative insights of the “Cairo school” resonated with my own experience in post-apartheid South Africa.

Real change comes from below, not from above. It comes from civil society organizations, not from the state. These civil society organizations include trade unions, the media, educational institutions, civic bodies, youth and women’s organizations, environmental groups as well as religious institutions and organizations. Civil society is these nongovernment organizations, which are constituted by ordinary people who represent their interests.

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The Struggle Continues After Mubarak The Tunisami that has inspired a huge social movement in Egypt, the Middle East, and Africa and indeed across the world must not retire. It will have to maintain its momentum and continue to pressure its new political leadership-and indeed world leaders in general- in order to fulfill the aspirations of all of us for a more just and humane world.

The critical question now is: Will Egyptians realize — as we South Africans have learned too slowly and agonizingly — that the end of a repressive regime is not the change we have been waiting for but rather an opportunity for change

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Al-Azhar: Beyond the Politics of State Patronage The great Islamic polymath, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d.1111), bemoaned the lack of intellectual independence, integrity and critical distance from the state that the Muslim scholars in his time. He laments this in his book, Ayyuhal Walad, and advises his young disciples neither to get too close to princes and sultans nor to praise them excessively. But even more than that, Imam Ghazali warns them not to accept generous gifts from rulers, even though it may be permissible: “Coveting things from the rulers and those in power will spoil and corrupt your religion, since there is born from it flattery and “kowtowing” to those in power and unwise approval of their policies.”

Ebrahim E. Moosa has eloquently summarized al-Ghazali’s strong critique of his contemporaries in his book, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (2005): “Most scholars are sycophants, groveling at the feet of political leaders, displaying egotistical behavior, driven by insatiable materialism.”

Al-Ghazali’s critique of Muslim scholars and their subservience to the state in his time is just as relevant to today’s relationship between the Egyptian state and the religious scholars affiliated to the citadel of Islamic learning in the Muslim world, Jami`at alAzhar al-Sharif, or al-Azhar Islamic University. The new political order now emerging in Egypt perhaps provides an opportunity to put al-Ghazali’s warnings into practice.

The Nationalization of Al-Azhar During the past half century, a tradition of religious legitimation of the state - and religion’s co-option by the state - has become endemic in Egyptian society. It was first engineered by Gamal Abdel Nasser, shortly after his military coup on July 23, 1952, when he nationalized all “waqf” properties - land and assets associated with religious endowment. Because the prestigious

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al-Azhar University depended on income from such land to operate, this move curtailed its autonomy and made it completely reliant on the state for financial support. According to Scott W. Hibbard in his book, Religious Politics and Secular States (2010), the nationalization of waqf properties also allowed the government to distribute waqf resources in such a way as to “reward those who followed [its] lead…and punish those who did not.”

The nationalization of waqf assets was followed in 1961 by a radical state-imposed reformation of the al-Azhar University, including of its traditional curriculum and appointment of faculty, especially the prestigious position of Shaykh alAzhar, or the head of al-Azhar University. Nasser believed that creating a state-controlled monopoly on religion would be useful for buttressing his regime against both internal and external enemies. This policy of state manipulation of religion was scrupulously pursued by both of his successors, Anwar Sadat (1970-1981) and Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011), for the past forty years.

Shaykh al-Azhar’s Uncritical Support of the Mubarak Regime The problematic nature of this policy of state hegemony over religion is well illustrated by the ambivalent political stance of the Shaykh al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmed el-Tayeb, during the Egyptian uprising against the Mubarak dictatorship. Shaykh el-Tayeb found it extremely difficult to offer public support for the demands of the pro-democracy demonstrators. All he could manage in his public pronouncements was to echo the failing regime’s call for “stability” and it’s accusations that foreign agents engineered the uprising. Is it disingenuous to suggest that Shaykh al-Azhar’s stance can be attributed to the fact that he was not only appointed by Mubarak but also served as a high ranking member of his National Democratic Party?

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As in the case with all of Mubarak’s loyal supporters, the Shaykh al-Azhar’s is now coming under critical scrutiny for his complicity in the Mubarak regimes three decades of blatant human rights violations and financial corruption. Al-Azhar tacit and often open support of the regimes draconian policies is currently being evaluated like never before.

To his credit, in his first official statement after the fall of the Mubarak regime, Shaykh el-Tayeb acknowledged that many Egyptian institutions suffered from corruption, and that the pro-democracy protesters who decided to go to the street and protest against this corruption are heroes. Furthermore, in response to a group of al-Azhar scholars who joined the protests and are now demanding that the constitution be changed to prevent a future government from appointing the esteemed position of Shaykh al-Azhar, Dr. el-Tayeb claims that this has always been his position.

The positive response of Shaykh el-Tayeb to the demand that the future head of this prestigious center of Islamic learning be appointed through democratic election rather than by presidential appointment should be welcomed by all Egyptians as well as by all Muslims all over the world. Such a transparent and consultative policy will not only lend greater legitimacy and credibility to this distinguished office, but it will also provide greater independence to al-Azhar and the `ulama (Muslim religious scholars) from state control and manipulation. I believe this should be welcomed as a first step in an ongoing struggle to free al-Azhar from state control.

Winning the battle for the democratic appointment of the Shaykh al-Azhar will indeed go a long way in changing the half-centuryold tradition of state control of the influential al-Azhar University.

However, the longer term goal should be broader: the forging of a different relationship between al-Azhar and state, on the one hand, and al-Azhar and civil society, on the other.

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Beyond the Politics of Patronage It is my considered view that the role of the al-Azhar university and the `ulama in Egypt should not be focused exclusively on seeking patronage with political power. Rather, they should-in accordance with what has been powerfully illustrated in the recent Egyptian pro-democracy protests - seek to become an integral and vibrant part of the broader civil society and network of non-governmental organizations. The al-Azhar leadership needs to resist the temptation to become once again the mere apologists for the powers that be.

It needs to avoid being co-opted by the government or powerful political parties to serve their expedient agendas.

The role of al-Azhar should be that of the nation’s moral conscience alongside other organizations in civil society. The `ulama have a duty to exhort and challenge government whenever they fail to fulfill their political mandate. Government officials are elected by the nation’s citizens, and all citizens – including religious leaders - have a political right and obligation to censure and criticize them when necessary. At the same time, civil society also has a responsibility to support and collaborate with government in areas of mutual concern and benefit.

In addition, al-Azhar University also holds the distinguished position of being the eminent and moral voice of the Muslim world.

In this regard, for example, they have made many praiseworthy pronouncements such as denouncing extremist acts of violence and supporting inter-religious dialogue. This more global role will be further elevated if al-Azhar is seen to be equally critical of unethical and repressive practices by the government of their own country as well as other autocratic leaders within the Muslim world.

The critical question facing al-Azhar Islamic University and indeed all religious leaders in the post-Mubarak era is the following: Will Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s prudent advice be headed?

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Al-Azhar Should Resume and Widen its Vatican Dialogue On January 20, 2011, al-Azhar University in Egypt, the most prestigious Islamic University in the world, announced that it is indefinitely suspending and freezing its ties and dialogue with the Vatican. The reason? The Shaykh al-Azhar, or head of the al-Azhar University, Dr. Ahmed el-Tayeb said that Pope Benedict XVI’s repeated insults against Islam and his claim that Muslims are discriminating against Christians who live alongside them was the reason for the breakdown in relations.

The latest pronouncements by Pope Benedict XVI came on January 2, 2011, when he condemned the suicide car bombing outside the All Saints Coptic Christian Church after a New Year’s mass in the Egyptian city of Alexandria that left 23 people dead and dozens injured. In an address to foreign ambassadors at the Vatican a week later on January 10, Pope Benedict again condemned the New Year’s church attack in Egypt, along with violence against Christians in Iraq, and he added a call on ‘governments of the region to adopt ... effective measures for the protection of religious minorities.’

It appears that the Egyptian government interpreted Pope Benedict’s general appeal to all Middle Eastern governments to do more to assure the safety of their Christian citizens as equating the situation in Egypt to that of Iraq, which they apparently found offensive. Consequently, on January 11, a day after Benedict’s speech to the diplomats, the government of Egypt recalled its ambassador to the Vatican to protest what a government spokesman called the pope’s “unacceptable interference in Egypt’s internal affairs.”

Al-Azhar’s suspension of dialogue with the Vatican raises three interrelated questions for interreligious peacebuilders.

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First, is Pope Benedict XVI’s policy on Islam prudent given the volatile post-9/11 world we live in? Second, does the Pope’s diplomacy with Muslims require more nuance? Third, is alAzhar University over-reacting in its response to Benedict’s remarks?

Pope Benedict’s Relationship with the Muslim World Since the beginning of his papacy in April 2005, Pope Benedict XVI has been unequivocal in advocating a more hard-line policy towards Muslims than that of his predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II. His removal of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald as president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) was viewed by many observers as the first clear indication of this new assertive policy. During the sermon he preached at the inauguration of his pontificate, Benedict explicitly named the Jewish people as those with whom to seek dialogue, while referring to other believers in only general terms. Some Muslims concluded that dialogue with Muslims was low on the papal agenda. Just over a year later, in September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI delivered his infamous Regensburg lecture, offering debatable theological reasons for Islam’s alleged propensity to violence. His assertion outraged the Muslim world and generated demands that he apologize and retract his remarks.

All of the above has not endeared Pope Benedict XVI to the Muslim World. In particular, it has clearly hampered what must be acknowledged is his courageous witness for full religious freedom and protection for Christian minorities living in Muslim majority countries.

As the grand imam of al-Azhar University, Shaykh el-Tayeb, suggests in his January 20th statement explaining the suspension of ties with the Vatican, Muslims perceive Pope Benedict to be mute on the daily violence and killing of innocent Muslims in Iraq and Palestine by American and Israeli forces,

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leaving a blurred impression that Islam and Muslims are to blame for violence everywhere. In this connection, it appears that the Egyptian government interpreted Pope Benedict’s general appeal to all Middle Eastern governments to do more to assure the safety of their Christian citizens as equating the situation in Egypt to that of Iraq-an equation it apparently found offensive. Furthermore, the Pope’s statements seem to have shown very little awareness that Christians were targeted in churches in Baghdad and Egypt in the aftermath of the American-led invasion of Iraq against international law, and as a reaction to Western support for what many believe have been Israeli crimes against humanity in the West Bank and Gaza.

It is unfortunate also that Pope Benedict did not acknowledge the unequivocal condemnation of the Church bombings that came from many diverse voices within the Muslim world, including from the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shaykh Ali Gomaa.

Benedict could have applauded the wonderful example of droves of Egyptian Muslims who attended the Coptic Christmas service on January 7th to serve as “human shields” in order to protect their Christian fellow citizens.

With acknowledgments such as these, the Pope would have been in a stronger position to call on governments in the Middle East to refuse to allow the sectarian agenda of a terrorist minority to be fulfilled. He could have urged they seize this tragic moment as an opportunity to affirm the full dignity and religious freedom of Christians and all other religious minorities in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim World. Such an approach might well have prompted a less antagonistic response from the Egyptians.

Al-Azhar’s Shortsighted Response And yet, rather than freezing dialogue al-Azhar should have called for more dialogue on Christian-Muslim relations.

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However injudicious his portrayal of Islam may be, Pope Benedict’s persistent highlighting of the plight of Christian minorities in Muslim majority settings should be welcomed by Muslims as an opportunity for dialogue and engagement on a contentious but highly significant issue. The religious freedom and well-being of Christian minorities represent Islamic duties of such high ethical standing that Muslims should constantly strive to fulfill them. This noble Islamic emphasis was most eloquently articulated in the Egyptian Grand Mufti, Shaykh Ali Gomaa’s statement condemning the bombing of the Coptic Church in Alexandria. He argued that “(t)he Prophet considered non-Muslims and Muslims as participating in a social contract which was inviolable. The promise of a Muslim is sacrosanct, for as he (the Prophet) said, “Whoever unjustly persecutes one with whom he has an agreement, or shortchanges his rights, or burdens him beyond his capacity, or takes something from him without his blessing, I will be an argument against him on the Day of Judgment.”

Interreligious dialogue concerning the position of Christian minorities within Muslim-majority societies is thus a welcome opportunity for Muslim self-reflection and renewal.

However, such a dialogue should not be restricted to the lack of religious freedom and full citizenship for Christian minorities in the Middle East. It must move on to address other contentious issues such as the Vatican’s ambivalent position on Kairos Palestine, a theological statement endorsed by almost all the Heads and Leaders of Christian Churches in Palestine.

This document describes itself as ‘a word of faith, hope and love from the heart of the Palestinian suffering’ and I firmly believe it is destined to become a watershed moment in the history of the Palestinian struggle against the tyranny of Israeli oppression.

The Egyptian political elite have become extremely sensitive to reactions against the attacks on the Coptic Church in

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Alexandria and have taken umbrage at Pope Benedict’s calls on Middle Eastern governments as well as governments of other majority-Muslim societies to do more to protect its Christian monitories. Al-Azhar University is a state funded body, and it has been co-opted (perhaps against its better judgment), frequently coming out in support of a state that does not respond too well to public criticism.

Here resides one of the major crises of the established Muslim religious leadership in many Muslim majority countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The `ulama or Muslim religious scholars have abandoned their role as the moral conscience of their societies by not speaking out more coherently on the human rights violations and injustices that permeate their societies. Many of them, while speaking out apologetically against certain forms of injustices against Muslims, are providing religious legitimacy to despotic and oppressive regimes. Moreover, non-violent civil resistance campaigns are not tolerated in most Muslim countries, and outspoken religious leaders are either incarcerated or exiled.

Together, Let us Repair Our Fragile World Perhaps most importantly, in its overreaction to Pope Benedict’s recent remarks al-Azhar has inadvertently played into the hands of extremists whose goal is create and exacerbate belligerence between Muslims and Christians.

As one of the foremost Catholic experts on Islam, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, so correctly reminds us, we live in a fragile world and some believe is on the precipice of a catastrophe.

In such a lethal environment, when what is at stake is no less than the sanctity of human life, what is the role of credible religious leaders? Archbishop Fitzgerald provides sage advice within this volatile context when he calls on religious leaders to act judiciously and with great circumspection. Lamentably, Fitzgerald’s wise counsel has been dispensed with under the

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papacy Benedict XVI, and his compelling message has been disregarded with adverse consequences for Christian-Muslim relations. The latest breakdown in relations between Egypt’s highest Islamic authority, the al-Azhar University and the Vatican is a yet another clear case in point.

Christian and Muslim leaders should not allow themselves to be distracted from the task at hand of building bridges of honesty, truth and trust through a true and meaningful mutual dialogue. Muslim leaders have an especially onerous challenge of condemning overreactions and not allowing misguided individuals who act in a thoroughly reprehensible and depraved way to sully the name of Islam.

Despite our current predicament, I am hopeful that Catholics and Muslims will weather this latest hiccup in their relationshipthanks in large part to the strong bridges that were built between our two communities by the late Pope John-Paul II. These strong and firm links will, I trust, help Catholics and Muslims to brave the aftermath of this regrettable episode.

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Dr. A. Rashied Omar is a Research Scholar of Islamic Studies and Peacebuilding at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA and Imam of the Claremont Main Road Masjid, Cape Town, South Africa.