A new weekly series about Egypt (Saturdays)

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spent the first twenty years of his life in Cairo, then moved to Beirut where he studied at the American University. He later completed his studies at Mc Gill University, in Montreal. 

André's long career as professor exclusively at the "Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean" was only interrupted when that institution closed it's doors in 1995. 

Egyptian Frescoes part (16 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (16): 1973.

After the sudden death of Gamal ‘abd al-Nasir, in 1970, Anwar as-Sadat (1918-1981) succeeded him at the Presidency of Egypt. Sadat was being faced with a bankrupt and defeated State. His meeting, in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, with King Faisal (1903-1975) ushered a new relationship in the Arab World in which the Desert Kingdom, the rising power in the Middle East, would replace Egypt in influence and leadership. This happened in 1973 when Sadat and Faisal stunned the World, the former by crossing the Suez Canal and conquering the Bar Lev Line, and the latter by imposing an oil embargo on the West that continued to support Israel during the conflict.

Egyptian army after crossing the Bar Lev line

It will be recalled that the effect of surprise of both the war and the embargo was a total one, on the military and economic planes. Sadat proved to be a master of deception and Faisal’s inscrutable face did not betray what was to be. As important, both men had grown to trust one another especially after years of animosity between Nasir’s Egypt and Faisal’s Arabia.  Both men were motivated by the common aim of erasing the shame of 1967. Both men, pious men at that, had committed themselves to pray one day soon at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Both men would, eventually, die at the hand of assassins for dreams Arabs were taught never to dream. And yet, the so-called Yom Kippur War modified the military balance between Egypt and Israel. 

Anwar El-Sadat

Egypt had finally ceased to do the Soviets’ bidding in the Middle East and it brought in the United States to mediate between itself and Israel. This eventually led to a Peace Treaty between Cairo and Tel Aviv. A new reality had just been minted in the area.

In terms of Oil, the embargo caused an oil price shock: the cost of the barrel rose 70% during the war. Stock markets, in the West crashed. Currencies fluctuated erratically. International trade was disrupted. And, Oil Importing Countries incurred huge deficits in their balance of payments while Oil Exporting Countries found themselves in a glut of money. This is when it became imperative for the economies of the United States, Western Europe and Japan, the major importers of oil, to recycle what came to be known as Petrodollars. Oil Exporting Countries were induced to invest in their own infra-structures. This resulted in wealth being accumulated by the most enterprising while employment rose for the most adventurous. More important, it led to social mobility in both Arab and Third World countries as had never been encountered before. Oil rich countries were also encouraged to buy weapons, the most adequate commodity to insure a rapid correction in balance of payment discrepancy. And, in the case of Saudi Arabia, the thin line between Petrodollars and Wahhabi dollars became blurred. Let us delve into the not too distant past of the heart of Arabia and be reminded of what Wahhabism was all about.

Ebn Hanbal

Muhammad ‘abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), the founder of the religious movement within Sunni Islam which borrowed his name, taught that the faith had been polluted by the Ottomans and should be purified. He called for a return to Pristine Islam and for the rejection of all innovations and forms of idolatry. He well belonged to a purist tradition that went back to the rise of Islam: had the Prophet himself not marched from his residence in the City, al-Madinah, once named Yathrib, onto Makkah, Umm al-Qura, in 630, to smash its idols and rehabilitate the one god, Allah? In his example, throughout Islamic History, religious movements whose aim it became to restore purity to the faith rose from the desert, the Almoravide Berbers in 1062, in Marakesh, and the Almohades, in the Atlas Mountains, in 1120, before the Wahhabis, and the Sanusis in Cyrenaica in 1837 and Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi, in Kordofan in 1870.

In 1740, in the heart of Arabia, ibn ‘abd al-Wahhab, a cleric whose sources of inspiration had been the fundamentalists Imam ibn Hanbal and ibn Taymiyya, forged an alliance with Muhammad ibn Su’ud, the tribal chief of Najd.

The Bedouin Warrior and the Charismatic Preacher would share the same vision of Holy War against the Infidels of the Arabian Peninsula. ibn ‘abd al-Wahhab had organized a group of zealots, fighters for the faith, the Ikhwan. These Ikhwan fought alongside ibn Su’ud’s tribesmen with the objective of uniting all of Arabia under the true faith. The conquest of Arabia by Al Su’ud would finally be achieved, many decades later, in 1924, when the young ‘abd al-‘Aziz ibn Su’ud finally occupied Makkah and Madinah, the two most important centers of Islamic teaching. Ibn Su’ud also ordered the burial place of the Prophet to be erased as it had become a place of idolatry. With the expulsion from Hijaz of the ruling Hashemite family of Sharif Husayn, the new kingdom was renamed Su’udi Arabia after Al Su’ud.

Wahhabism remained a nuisance to the Caliphs and Monarchs of Islam ever since its inception, until, in 1960, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Country (OPEC), was formed. This was a time for a Sellers’ Market of oil. Shaykh Zaki al-Yamani, the Saudi Minister of Petroleum and a Harvard graduate, rose to the top of the organization and dollars from sales have kept growing till this day. At the same time, Prince Faisal, brother of the King and minister of External Affairs applied the economic principle of the Cartel to Middle Eastern Politics. His son, Su’ud al-Faisal, the present Minster of External Affairs in the Desert Kingdom, pursued this policy. All this had coincided with the Cold War which was bitterly waged between the Soviet Union and the United States. Saudi money and ideology could be utilized, it now was believed, against Atheism and Materialism in the Muslim World and against Muslim Communists in the so-called Muslim Republics of the U.S.S.R. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, in 1979, America and Saudi Arabia stood side by side while their proxies waged war on the Soviets. They succeeded to come out victorious. Wahhabism could now spread, unchecked, to Kazakstan and Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaidjan, the Caucuses and even the Balkans. In 1977, while Raja and I were in Kota Kinabalu, in North Borneo, we visited an exquisite mosque that Saudi Arabia had offered the city, part of the recycling of Wahhabi dollars. Along with the buildings came the Wahhabi ideology.

Meanwhile, as early as 1954 in Egypt, when the Muslim Brothers attempted to assassinate Nasir, the party was already being accused of collusion with Saudi Arabia. The MB was banned for the first time since the Coup d’État of 1952. The Ikhwan were interned in desert camps yet many of them, including my friend, Mahmud Fathi, and others escaped to Saudi Arabia. After the trial and execution of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the most prominent ideologue of the Ikhwan after Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood, more Ikhwan crossed the Red Sea and sought refuge in the Arabian Kingdom. Radio Makkah, later, relayed that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had sentenced Nasir to death for the crime he just committed against Qutb. Nasir died before such a sentence could be carried out.

Sayed Qotb

When President Sadat was assassinated, in 1981, were the Ikhwan savouring their revenge against Nasir and against the one who had betrayed the Palestinian cause? They were arrested over and over again and, each time many took refuge across the waters east of the Valley. Other Egyptians were also boarding ships or planes to Djeddah, this time to find employment in a land that was now booming with construction. During the visit my wife and I made to that port city, in 1978, and to Makkah and Madinah, on my first sabbatical year which took us through Asia, we came across many Egyptians in the Peninsula. They ran the post office, staffed schools and universities, were employed in offices and on construction sites. All newly built mosques also, starting with al-Haram al-Sharif itself, in Makkah, were erected in the Egyptian style by Egyptian artisans. There are still thousands of professionals, artisans and labourers in Arabia till this day who originated along the banks of the Nile. Whenever they visit their families in Egypt, one invariably notices how much permeated they have become by Wahhabism, in their physical attire, their manner of speech, their piety and their ideology. At the same time, Saudi treasury supports both the Ikhwan and the Salafis in Egypt. More on that in the next frescoe.

Egypt signed a Peace Treaty with Israel on March 29^th, 1979. The Sinai Peninsula was returned to its owners. On the other hand, a lid was put onto the size of the Egyptian Armed Forces. Israel and the U.S. also saw to it that Egypt not grow to the point of ever becoming a menace to its neighbours. No such lid has, on the other hand, been put on Saudi Arabia which compensates its limited population with high financial resources. Now that Ikhwan and Salafis control Egypt’s parliament, the question becomes what the relationship between Egypt and Saudi Arabia will develop into? Wahhabi dollars have religious, ideological and political objectives. Riyadh appears to have fared well as a result of Egypt’s Arab Spring and the elections which just ensued. What if Wahhabi dollars were affected by instability within the Desert Kingdom, one in which forces from the educated classes rebelled against the Wahhabism of the State? It will be remembered that, at the Battle of Sabila, in 1930, ‘abd al-‘Aziz ibn Su’ud destroyed his own Ikhwan under the command of Shaykh al-‘Utaybi, his lieutenant, with the assistance of his tribesmen: he felt then that he was becoming hostage to al-‘Utaybi’s rigid creed and practice.

Tensions between Creed and State are a constant in history.

Juhayman Sayf

On November 29^th, 1979, the grandson of al-‘Utaybi, Juhayman Sayf, engineered the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Makkah until the King’s modern forces, equipped and trained by the United States, stormed the sacred grounds and crushed these descendants of the original Ikhwan from Najd. A younger King from the House of Su’ud may well wish to move further away from Wahhabism or reform it as was historically the case with the Almohades and Almoravids of Morocco, the Sanusis in Lybia, and Mahdism in the Sudan. In the final analysis, purists always lose at the end because they have to deal with human nature, the least of all species to want to remain pure. Add to this that, although Wahhabism enjoys access to wealth, it is having to cope with the Age of Globalization. Officers from the King’s military and the new elites from once autonomous regions of Arabia may well, one day, usurp power or separate from the Central Government in Riyadh and, thus, curtail the role of the Wahhabi clerics further. And, in Egypt itself, the future of an Islamist Parliament will invariably be in jeopardy as opposing factions struggle to draft a constitution then interpret it. And, if al-Islam huwa al-Hall, the solution to Egypt’s problems must rest on Religion, then what may it mean to the many Egyptians whose vision of the future does not concord with that of Theocracy. More on present day Egypt in the next frescoe.