Theocracy v Democracy
The terrible events in Egypt present a challenge to democrats everywhere, but one thing the Army coup has demonstrated - is that there's an awful lot more to democracy than just winning an election.
After all, as every school debater knows, Adolf Hitler came to power through the ballot box - but what he's remembered for is for the way he established a terrible tyranny - by quickly quashing any political opposition and centralising the levers of power - before moving on to his Final Solution and waging war on his neighbours.
So, I thought this was an intelligent article by David Aaronovitch which appeared in the Times the other day because it does not offer easy solutions - but neither does it pull its punches about the violence of the Army-led coup or the need for the political forces surrounding Islam to face up to some fundamental issues about what it means to share power and respect other people's civil rights.
I don't doubt for a minute that if I had been living in Egypt in June 2013 - that I would have been one of the many demonstrators on the 'Arab street' demanding that President Morsi should go - because his government had overstepped the mark and was threatening to turn Egypt into yet another dreadful 'theocracy' in the middle east.
Because one thing that truly democratic countries are prepared to accept - to defend within their constitutions and rule of law - are the rights of minorities of all kinds, their right to live in peace, side-by-side with their neighbours - in an atmosphere of genuine tolerance and freedom of expression - freedom of worship even.
Yet there is an obvious difficulty in certain parts of political Islam at least in coming to terms with the notion that your neighbours are 'equals' - particularly if religious and political leaders are as one by regarding all non-believers as 'apostates' or 'infidels'.
And as we can see in Syria, this kind of deep rooted religious intolerance also extends to fellow Muslims - who are being killed in their tens of thousands - because different branches of Shia and Sunni Islam find it impossible to share power and live peacefully with their neighbours.
If an Arab Winter comes, we will all shiver
By David Aaronovitch
Neither side in Cairo’s bloody violence understands democracy. Their failure is likely to spill over national borders
The news from Egypt first dribbled out yesterday and then gushed until it formed a familiar red pool. “They’re killing us,” said the Muslim Brotherhood as the Army and police went in to clear the semi-permanent protest camps in Cairo.
“No civilian casualties,” said the Health Ministry. Then “two soldiers have died”. At midday or so pictures from makeshift morgues appeared on Twitter showing a dozen male corpses in a small storage room. The first death tally from news agencies began to come in: 20, 30, 50 — by 7pm UK time it was coming up for 150. The first journalist deaths were also being announced: a respected Sky News cameraman, a local reporter, the blogging friend of someone I follow on Twitter. At about the same time the authorities declared a month-long state of emergency. It could be a very long month.
This is how hope dies. Beaten to death by the stupidity of the Muslim Brotherhood and the brutality of the Army. Neither could, in the end, bear the compromises that a democracy requires of its leaders and protagonists. This is how to make winter out of spring. Though it should be said, in case there is any doubt about who deserves the lion’s share of the blame, that in Cairo yesterday unarmed protesters (however ill-advised their protest) were shot dead by soldiers with machineguns.
Egypt, the largest country in the Arab world, always was the most important testing ground for the possible renaissance of the region. Its politics were complex and difficult but not without people of talent and education or a rich civil society. It was possible that, with good will and determination, the Egyptians could make a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
I saw a supporter of the ousted President Morsi claim the other day that the imprisoned leader was Egypt’s Mandela. Only in the sense that they had both been in prison was this true. Had Mohamed Morsi been a Mandela then perhaps this tragedy — which could yet become a catastrophe — might have been avoided.
Had Mr Morsi realised that winning elections is the beginning, not the end of the political process. Had he understood that people vote for all kinds of reasons and that you can never presume that a vote cast is the same as a soul won to your cause. Or that those who do not support you can be as passionate and motivated as you are and must still be somehow accommodated in your new world. But it is a feature of all-encompassing political ideologies — from communism to Islamism — that they fail to see life through the eyes of their opponents.
So Mr Morsi, the Brotherhood and other Islamists won 62 per cent of the vote in the 2011-12 parliamentary elections, partly because of their good organisation and the disarray of the secular parties. After first promising not to run a candidate for the presidency (in order to share power) they reneged on this and Mr Morsi won narrowly in June last year.
With both the presidency, which immediately assumed greater powers, and a parliamentary majority, the Islamists pushed through a constitution that was illiberal and potentially theocratic. It gave wide powers of interpreting Egyptian law to the Cairo religious school of al-Azhar (a sort of Philip Pullmanesque cross between All Souls College and the Convocation of Cardinals), which would be governed by 40 religious scholars, all to be male and over 55. It guaranteed freedom of religion for monotheistic religions but not others, took away the prohibition of sex discrimination and banned anything deemed an “insult” to the prophets of Islam. Article 10 requires the State to “safeguard and protect morality and public decency”. And so on.
By early this summer Islamists had half the governorships in Egypt. Incredibly the new governor of Luxor was a member of a group that had formerly targeted and murdered tourists in the area. Only when the Minister of Tourism resigned in protest was the appointment revoked.
It is hardly fair to blame Mr Morsi (although Egyptians did) for failing to improve the economy in his 12 months in office. By and large his foreign policy was pragmatic. But he had seriously alienated minorities such as the Christian Copts (10 per cent of the population) and made the educated and aspirational youth of Egypt — the kind of people no modern country can do without — feel as though they had lost all they thought they had gained in deposing the old Mubarak regime. So they demonstrated the hell out of Cairo in June.
Early in July Mr Morsi was overthrown and people who should have known better celebrated and people in the West who did know better sat on their hands. However you dressed it up, a democratically elected president had been overthrown by street demonstrations and an army coup. This was a baseline violation of democratic principles. But it was also dreadful politics, for where did the military and their supporters expect those who had been most jubilant when Mr Morsi was elected to go? Did they think that these people — as convinced in the justice of their cause as Mr Morsi’s opponents were in theirs — would just give up and go back to their towns and villages?
They didn’t, so the scene was set for yesterday’s massacre and creation of martyrs and the pictorial symbols of martyrdom. Now one of three things can happen. The military can reassume authoritarian power over the long term and crush the inevitable resistance with torture and imprisonment. That might contain the violence and it’s just conceivable that in time an enlightened general will find a way to hand back power to civilians. Or not.
Or, worst of all, Egypt’s Islamists — hundreds of thousands of them — will conclude that only violence works in their country and find the means to set off an insurgency like the one that killed tens of thousands in Algeria in the 1990s after the military intervened to prevent an Islamist election victory. Except this battle is most unlikely to be contained within national borders; it would become a catastrophe, not just for Egyptians and probably not just for the region, but for all of us.
Or maybe (and I can hear the groans almost as the thought thinks itself) the international community can help. So far it has limited itself to anguishing about violence and suggesting that people might like to give peace a chance. But there are many levers that the US and other countries have for putting pressure on the military to reinstate President Morsi (isn’t that the right thing to do, Mr Obama?) and begin a process of dialogue about national reconciliation and compromise. The Government of Turkey, for all its own hubristic treatment of its opponents, could be well placed to help to talk the leadership of the Brotherhood and its supporters into seeing their past mistakes and making a new start.
If these actors act then possibly the United Nations could play a role in hosting discussions, confidential contacts, back-channel encounters and even negotiations.
Should we think this is all impossible I’d advise everyone to stop moaning about surveillance, metadata and e-mail records and give the NSA, GCHQ and all our agencies whatever power they need to spot the incoming. If the Arab Winter has begun in Cairo, we’re all going to shiver.
Neither side in Cairo’s bloody violence understands democracy. Their failure is likely to spill over national borders
The news from Egypt first dribbled out yesterday and then gushed until it formed a familiar red pool. “They’re killing us,” said the Muslim Brotherhood as the Army and police went in to clear the semi-permanent protest camps in Cairo.
“No civilian casualties,” said the Health Ministry. Then “two soldiers have died”. At midday or so pictures from makeshift morgues appeared on Twitter showing a dozen male corpses in a small storage room. The first death tally from news agencies began to come in: 20, 30, 50 — by 7pm UK time it was coming up for 150. The first journalist deaths were also being announced: a respected Sky News cameraman, a local reporter, the blogging friend of someone I follow on Twitter. At about the same time the authorities declared a month-long state of emergency. It could be a very long month.
This is how hope dies. Beaten to death by the stupidity of the Muslim Brotherhood and the brutality of the Army. Neither could, in the end, bear the compromises that a democracy requires of its leaders and protagonists. This is how to make winter out of spring. Though it should be said, in case there is any doubt about who deserves the lion’s share of the blame, that in Cairo yesterday unarmed protesters (however ill-advised their protest) were shot dead by soldiers with machineguns.
Egypt, the largest country in the Arab world, always was the most important testing ground for the possible renaissance of the region. Its politics were complex and difficult but not without people of talent and education or a rich civil society. It was possible that, with good will and determination, the Egyptians could make a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.
I saw a supporter of the ousted President Morsi claim the other day that the imprisoned leader was Egypt’s Mandela. Only in the sense that they had both been in prison was this true. Had Mohamed Morsi been a Mandela then perhaps this tragedy — which could yet become a catastrophe — might have been avoided.
Had Mr Morsi realised that winning elections is the beginning, not the end of the political process. Had he understood that people vote for all kinds of reasons and that you can never presume that a vote cast is the same as a soul won to your cause. Or that those who do not support you can be as passionate and motivated as you are and must still be somehow accommodated in your new world. But it is a feature of all-encompassing political ideologies — from communism to Islamism — that they fail to see life through the eyes of their opponents.
So Mr Morsi, the Brotherhood and other Islamists won 62 per cent of the vote in the 2011-12 parliamentary elections, partly because of their good organisation and the disarray of the secular parties. After first promising not to run a candidate for the presidency (in order to share power) they reneged on this and Mr Morsi won narrowly in June last year.
With both the presidency, which immediately assumed greater powers, and a parliamentary majority, the Islamists pushed through a constitution that was illiberal and potentially theocratic. It gave wide powers of interpreting Egyptian law to the Cairo religious school of al-Azhar (a sort of Philip Pullmanesque cross between All Souls College and the Convocation of Cardinals), which would be governed by 40 religious scholars, all to be male and over 55. It guaranteed freedom of religion for monotheistic religions but not others, took away the prohibition of sex discrimination and banned anything deemed an “insult” to the prophets of Islam. Article 10 requires the State to “safeguard and protect morality and public decency”. And so on.
By early this summer Islamists had half the governorships in Egypt. Incredibly the new governor of Luxor was a member of a group that had formerly targeted and murdered tourists in the area. Only when the Minister of Tourism resigned in protest was the appointment revoked.
It is hardly fair to blame Mr Morsi (although Egyptians did) for failing to improve the economy in his 12 months in office. By and large his foreign policy was pragmatic. But he had seriously alienated minorities such as the Christian Copts (10 per cent of the population) and made the educated and aspirational youth of Egypt — the kind of people no modern country can do without — feel as though they had lost all they thought they had gained in deposing the old Mubarak regime. So they demonstrated the hell out of Cairo in June.
Early in July Mr Morsi was overthrown and people who should have known better celebrated and people in the West who did know better sat on their hands. However you dressed it up, a democratically elected president had been overthrown by street demonstrations and an army coup. This was a baseline violation of democratic principles. But it was also dreadful politics, for where did the military and their supporters expect those who had been most jubilant when Mr Morsi was elected to go? Did they think that these people — as convinced in the justice of their cause as Mr Morsi’s opponents were in theirs — would just give up and go back to their towns and villages?
They didn’t, so the scene was set for yesterday’s massacre and creation of martyrs and the pictorial symbols of martyrdom. Now one of three things can happen. The military can reassume authoritarian power over the long term and crush the inevitable resistance with torture and imprisonment. That might contain the violence and it’s just conceivable that in time an enlightened general will find a way to hand back power to civilians. Or not.
Or, worst of all, Egypt’s Islamists — hundreds of thousands of them — will conclude that only violence works in their country and find the means to set off an insurgency like the one that killed tens of thousands in Algeria in the 1990s after the military intervened to prevent an Islamist election victory. Except this battle is most unlikely to be contained within national borders; it would become a catastrophe, not just for Egyptians and probably not just for the region, but for all of us.
Or maybe (and I can hear the groans almost as the thought thinks itself) the international community can help. So far it has limited itself to anguishing about violence and suggesting that people might like to give peace a chance. But there are many levers that the US and other countries have for putting pressure on the military to reinstate President Morsi (isn’t that the right thing to do, Mr Obama?) and begin a process of dialogue about national reconciliation and compromise. The Government of Turkey, for all its own hubristic treatment of its opponents, could be well placed to help to talk the leadership of the Brotherhood and its supporters into seeing their past mistakes and making a new start.
If these actors act then possibly the United Nations could play a role in hosting discussions, confidential contacts, back-channel encounters and even negotiations.
Should we think this is all impossible I’d advise everyone to stop moaning about surveillance, metadata and e-mail records and give the NSA, GCHQ and all our agencies whatever power they need to spot the incoming. If the Arab Winter has begun in Cairo, we’re all going to shiver.
