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 (17 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (17): al-Islam huwa al-Hall.

Sixteen frescoes ago, a question had been raised during our visit in Cairo last November, as to what chances of electoral success the Muslim Brotherhood could have during the elections that would be held after President Mubarak was toppled by Egypt’s Arab Spring. It was then estimated the Ikhwan would reap 20% of the ballots. The Brotherhood campaigned under a slogan that it had been using since the end of Nasserism, in 1970. It proclaimed that only Islam could solve all of the country’s ills. Whenever they were asked what, for instance, they would do with population explosion, the problems of transportation, the rise in the cost of living, or the salinity of the soil in the Nile Delta, to mention but a few of the country’s ailments, they answered with confidence: al-Islam huwa al-Hall. Seventeen frescoes later, we know that the Ikhwan, in Egypt, along with a more radical brand of Islamists, the Salafis, today hold the majority of seats in the newly elected parliament. Their next objective is to wrest the presidency from traditional parties. Then, they promise, will they give the country and its people their true Islamic direction.

Westerners and Westernized Muslim Arabs have been distraught by the recentmost democratic elections which brought about Islamists to power, startin

Hassan El-Banna

g with Hamas, in Gaza, Palestine. Western powers who recently advocated the end of authoritarian regimes, which they supported for decades, have been caught totally unprepared with such results at the polls. The actual successes of the Islamists in freely held elections represents the beginning of a trend that shall follow the course of social and intellectual changes which never stopped since Islam was born in Arabia in the seventh century. That is bluntly to state that, although the term Salaf is often utilized today to mean a return to the time of the Prophet, in fact, throughout Islamic History, the Salafis appeared in times of crisis in Muslim societies in order to correct what they saw as deviations and departures from what ought to be and ought to remain. As we write today, the Muslim World is in serious jeopardy. In the case of Egypt, dislocations in social mores and relations had become unbearable at the eve of the Second World War as a result of economic development, British imperialism and the World War of 1914-1918. One Hasan al-Banna founded, in 1928, a Muslim Brotherhood to bring his compatriots back to the path of the Salaf. The Egyptian Ikhwan embarked in social work to alleviate the suffering of a proletariat which the money economy in Modern Egypt had brought about. British occupation and the presence of a foreign element, the Khawagat, warranted that the citizenry be reminded of its true identity and its creed. The Second World War and the creation of the State of Israel had, furthermore, made the Brotherhood expand its influence. Its leadership became convinced, at some point, that power should be usurped by force. al-Banna was assassinated as a result and the membership of the Ikhwan interned in detention camps in the oasis of the Western Desert. It must be noted that, during the earliest internments, facilities lacked to accommodate all the challengers of the Regime. Communists, Liberalists and Muslim Brothers were put together and much intellectual ferment resulted from this coexistence of opposing points of view. The Ikhwan came out of their incarcerations much more seasoned, ideologically, and their resolve was strengthened.

Egypt, I wish to emphasize, is comparable to no other Muslim country. When it opened its gates to Islam, early in 641 AD, the imposing capital which the Fatimids built, in 969 AD, the Victorious, al-Qahira, grew to become the heart of Islam. The city was erected along the trade routes between East and West. 

Al-Azhar

Al-Azhar Mosque and its Madrasah became important centres of Islamic learning. Unlike Baghdad and Damascus, al-Qahira was spared from destruction during the Mongol invasions around the 1300’s. The city emerged, along with the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah, as a clearing house for ideas and news which transiting pilgrims, on their way to the Hajj, carried to and fro at the speed of caravans. At the Battle of Marj Dabiq, in 1516, when the rising Ottomans Turks defeated the Mameluks of Egypt and incorporated al-Qahira into their Empire, al-Azhar’s ‘Ulama’ competed in science, knowledge, culture and influence with those of Istambul, Makkah and the great centres of trade and learning in Syria, Mesopotamia, the Indian Sub-Continent and Central Asia. And, when one attempts to ponder over the role of Change in Islamic History, once again, Egyptian Islam rose to the call. It shall be interesting to consider what will be meant by al-Islam huwa al-Hall for the Egyptians and for the Muslims at large in the first half of the twenty first century. One just has to remember the impact which Shaykh Muhammad ‘Abduh, an Egyptian, had on the reconciliation of Islam and Western Sciences in the nineteenth century. The same exercise had occurred during ‘Abbasi times, in Baghdad and Umawi times, in Spain, earlier in Medieval times. ‘Abduh’s teachings and writings reached the madrasahs of al-Zaytuna, in Tunis, of al-Qayrawan, in Morocco, of Timbuctu, in Mali, and of Deoband, in Northern India. He influenced Shaykh Musa Jarullah in Kazakstan. And, in Egypt itself, his impact on the thoughts of Shaykh Rashid Rida, his disciple and the editor of the widely circulated al-Manar periodical, reached in time Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Ikhwan, himself.

Al-Ikhwan

At the eve of the Second World War, the Ikhwan were waging their fight against the presence of foreigners in their country. They also were alerted to the extent to which Egyptian Muslims were adopting Western ways and drifting away from their religious practices. One should simply be reminded of a quote attributed to Khedive Isma’il (1830-1895), the grandson of Muhammad ‘Ali Basha, that best illustrates such fears. The Khedive proclaimed, clear and loud, at the opening of the Suez Canal: ‘’My country is no longer in Africa. We are now part of Europe’’.

Or else, the Ikhwan fought Sufi rituals which they considered a departure from Pristine Islam. Theirs was a battle on two fronts, the external one and the internal. al-Banna founded a brotherhood that would spread his message. The membership was drawn from educated and semi-educated individuals, professionals and artisans, all the products of the Modern sector of Egyptian society. As the years passed during which the Ikhwan were jailed for what appeared as their subversive activities, both under the Monarchy and the Military Regime that ensued, the replacement of the old guard was coming about with men and women, doctors, lawyers, journalists, engineers, university professors and entrepreneurs, all graduates of secular universities, many of them well traveled, an array of the Egyptian middle class, all more sophisticated that their elders: none are graduates from al-Azhar and none are ‘Ulama’ although they know their religion well. Their piety has been coupled with their knowledge in matters pertaining to matters of faith and to the fate of the Muslim Nation. These new elites are the product of their times. They today question, as no others have before, the West’s definition of Egypt’s modernity ever since Muhammad ‘Ali Basha opted for a transformation of his realm in accordance with the definition given by Westerners.

Cairo

Westerners do not seem to have, so far, gauged the extent to which, amongst Arabs and Muslims, a feeling of anger runs in their minds as they watch, day after day, their lands, their rights, their dignity being trampled by non-Muslims from the United States and Europe. Already after 1830, merchants and pilgrims, travellers from North Africa, told of stories of French brutal occupation in Algeria. Such news continued to reach Egypt from the entire North and West African continent, the Sudan, the Caucasus and Crimea, from India and Central Asia and beyond, from all the confines of Dar ul-Islam, the Muslim realm. In 1917, Cairenes were made aware of the Sykes-Picot Agreement which would divide the Near East between the British and the French in spite of commitments to the contrary and, that same year, of a Balfour Declaration which eventually created a Jewish State in Palestine. And, in this day and age, the so-called War on Terrorism justifies Western aggression against Muslims. Modernists and secularists, in the East, are mentally a party to Western values yet, emotionally, they feel that the Other, who ceaselessly baffles them by his insensitivity, his immorality and his double standards, well deserves that political Islam rise to oppose Western unchecked appetites.

Dialecticians, amongst historians, invariably try to seek and understand the thesis which caused an antithesis to emerge. The reverse process is far from easy to achieve as each thesis was once its own antithesis. The question becomes, therefore, how far in the process does one have to revert to in order to understand the animosities between East and West, between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. One could start with the rise of the Arab religion within the contexts of an essentially Byzantine Christian and a Sassanian Zoroastrian world in the eighth century. The Arabs from Madinah sent raiders west, as far as Spain, in 711, until they were stopped at Poitiers, in 732, when they crossed the Pyrenees. In the east, they reached the Indus River, in 674. The Ottoman Muslims, also, occupied the Balkans and knocked at the doors of Vienna twice, in 1529 and in 1683. Then the tide was reverted and has been so ever since. Some scholars suggest that the raids of Muslims against neighbours were responses to the threat to Arabia by the dominant religions of the times. Be that as it may, our frescoes, seventeen of them, so far, have attempted to trace the manner in which responsible Egyptians, reacting to centuries of decadence and obscurantism, envisaged their future, from the time of Muhammad ‘Ali Basha, in the early nineteenth century, when a choice was consciously made to borrow heavily from the West, till today when, as a result of elections which brought to parliament Islamic Parties, the solutions to Egypt’s problems are being sought in Islam, no longer in the West. Ever since colonized peoples embarked upon the arduous task of ridding themselves of the shackles of European and, later, American imperialisms, one witnesses efforts to revert to one’s original identity while retaining the benefits of science and technology which the West continues to nurture. Muslims are no different than others in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The slogan al-Islam huwa al-Hall must be perceived in this perspective. Remains for the critical mind to figure out how this shall be translated.

Sayed Qotb

Meet Sayyid Qutb. He was born in Upper Egypt in 1906. He was a man of varied interests and many achievements. In the forties, his written works became part of the curriculum in schools and universities. He was the author of a commentary on the Qur’an in 30 volumes. His two most read books were Ma’alim fil Tarikh, Milestones, which dealt with the bounds of Islamic history, and al-‘Adalah al-Ijtima’iyah fil Islam, Social Justice in Islam. Qutb had joined the Ikhwan upon his return from the United States, in 1950. He rapidly became the principal ideologue of the movement and edited its weekly review, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. Qutb had hoped to play an important role in shaping the 1952 Revolution when Nasir visited him in his home, soon after the Coup in search of advice as to which direction his movement ought to take. Qutb believed for a long while that the Free Officers would install an Islamic State in Egypt. Little did he understand that the loyalty of the military was to itself, never to civilian powers. In fact, when the Ikhwan gave up on Nasir and engineered an assassination attempt on his life, Qutb was arrested, jailed, tortured along with all prominent members of the Brotherhood. And, on August 26, 1966, he was hanged for treason. Charges against Qutb were simply borrowed from Ma’alim al-Tarikh, his own Milestones.

Sayyid Qutb’s ideas had been maturing ever since his youth in his native Asiyut where he learnt to distrust the Madrasah trained teachers of Islam. When he moved to Cairo to become a teacher, he was disturbed by the degree of Westernization his fellow Muslims had fallen into. He had heard of Hasan al-Banna and admired him greatly. He disliked the British and the Khawagat and was committed to the struggle alongside the Palestinian people. He never grew, however, to be an Arab Nationalist; he was a Muslim first and foremost, not unlike Rashid Rida, early in his century, and Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani, the companion of Muhammad ‘Abduh, during the century before. And yet when, in 1949, he won a scholarship to study Education Administration in Colorado, he did not imitate al-Banna who had refused to further his studies in France: Qutb travelled to the United States. Qutb never married; he was a shy man. In America, he clung to his religion and identity and, the ideas he formed for himself about the West in general, were most unfavourable of it. He thought American materialism had corrupted the Americans whom he found kind but superficial, generous but pretentious and condescending. His readings on Marxism, also, indicated to him that Soviet materialism was as corrupt as Capitalism had been. Only in Islam could he find solace for the present and the future of mankind.

Qutb had been a witness to the brutality of military rule in Egypt. Before that, under the Monarchy, he also stared corruption and exploitation in the face. He had joined the Ikhwan because he felt Egyptians were confronted with moral decay. Only faith, Iman, could pull his compatriots from the abyss. Also, solely would the Law of God uplift and save the Community of Believers. Social justice, for instance, would not result from either Arab Socialism, as the Military rulers promised, or from Fabian Socialism and Social Darwinism, as the disciples of Salama Musa (1887-1958), the prominent British-trained university professor, preached. Believers became fair towards their fellow men because of their beliefs. The application of the Shari’a and the institution of the Islamic State would assist them in this endeavour. Qutb’s notion of justice was new amongst Muslims and al-‘Adalah al Ijtima’iyyah fil Islam was circulated widely throughout the Muslim World. It placed the onus on the person, a radical departure from the conventional wisdom which resulted from Medieval times in which the Caliph symbolized the entire politico-religious system and regulated the lives of men and women in the smallest details. Qutb was challenging the revered al-Mawardi (972-1058) and his Ordinances of Government, al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyyah.

After Sayyid Qutb’s execution, his brother Muhammad fled to Saudi Arabia. He was invited at King ‘Abd ul-‘Aziz University to teach his brother’s ideas.

Ayman El-Zawahri

Was it that the Su’udi Monarchy was sending a message to its own Wahhabi ‘Ulama’? Meanwhile, the fact that two prominent al-Qa’ida leaders, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the Yamani Anwar al-Awlaki, were disciples of Qutb causes one to miss on the course which Islam and Muslims have been following in the past fifteen centuries. With a sense of perspective, the rise to prominence of Qutb and the political coming of age of the Ikhwan in Egypt, Tunisia and, eventually, elsewhere in the Muslims World, one could suggest that the Non-Western World is ripe for experimenting with systems of values and models of government which are other than those that were imposed by Europe and that are presently upheld by the United States. At the same time, the Ikhwan in the limelight are bound to confront the rich and vast compendium of trends in Islamic Thought, now that they have been taken seriously. The next frescoe will deal precisely with that new reality.

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.

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 (15 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (15): What If...

What if ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 in Cairo) was mistaken when he predicted, in his Introduction to Universal History, his Muqaddimah, that Horus the Falcon God who came out of his defeat and humiliation at Falujah, in the Neguev, would storm al-Qahira, the Victorious, and loot, in vengeance, the country of his birth?

Horus the Falcon God

The god with one eye representing the sun and the other the moon, had started with noble and wise purpose: he spared the life of a King, he called for Muslims and Copts to join in his dream of renewal, he induced the 6% who owned 65% of the most fertile land to share it with the destitute Fallah. After all, the Falcon God and the middle rank officers who followed him were children of Egypt's recent past. They were the immediate heirs to Muhammad 'Ali Basha, the Founder of Modern Egypt. Their nationalism had been forged for them by S'ad Zaghlul, the Father of the Nation. They were finally schooled in the verses of Ahmad Shawqi, the Prince of Poets, who proclaimed: "innama al-Umamu bil Akhlaqi wa idha ma Dhahabat Akhlaqahum Dhahabu", it is Morality which makes a People; once a Nation loses its principles, it is bound to vanish.

At the initial stages of their government, the inexperienced members of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), under the chairmanship of Gamal 'abd il-Nasir, showed unmistakeably their dedication to pursue the tasks ahead. Egypt had grown into an unjust society in which the King flaunted his riches while the peasant earned fifteen piasters a day. Dysentery, bilharzia and trachoma were chronic diseases that disabled society. The military and its people had been humiliated by British occupation and by defeat in Palestine. What if, having appraised the changes that were occurring in the world and in the Middle East, as a result of the Second World War, and after Ambassador Caffery of the United States had contributed to the success of their Coup d'État in 1952, what if the Free Officers would intelligently have taken advantage of our new age to bring about revolution and change, modernization and prosperity? 

One of the earliest slogans used by the RCC, in 1952, became "al-Din li'llah wa al-Watan lil-gami' ". Religion should not interfere with Citizenship. Posters had been pasted across the land that showed a Coptic Church steeple and a Minaret side by side. The problem with Egyptian Society, after 1945, lay in that the world war had divided the nation instead of uniting it. The Arabic-speaking majority had to contend, on the one hand, with a significant Coptic minority that had been drawn closer to the British and, on the other hand, with originally foreign Khawagat residents, often Egyptian born, whose numbers and influence had increased as a result of war in Europe and whose roles, as agents of economic and social progress, was undeniable. The task ahead for the Free Officers ought to have been that of forging a new sovereign nation in which Muslims and Copts shared in a common purpose while the Khawagat continued their modernizing influence, this time, under the aegis of a national government as had been the case since Muhammad 'Ali Pasha and his descendants when they invited them to Egypt, until 1878, when a system of Capitulations shielded them from Egyptian Law.  The time was ripe for a constitution to be drafted and submitted to the people that would define citizenship and correct social and political anomalies that had resulted from Lord Cromer’s imperialist administration.

Yet another task awaited the RCC, that of negotiating the end of British military presence in the Suez Canal by putting a full stop at the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1924.

John Foster Dulles

In 1953, John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State in President Dwight Eisenhower's cabinet, toured the Middle East. During his stop in Cairo, he met with Nasir and presented the Egyptians with a project to set up a Middle Eastern Defense Organization (MEDO) whose Head Quarters would be in Fayid, along the Suez Canal. The aim of this military alliance in which the United States, Britain and the states of the region would guarantee the security of the international waterway and the Middle East against the Soviet Union, this alliance, not unlike NATO in Europe, would assure Egypt, the host country, a role of prominence. The British would surrender their installations on the Canal to MEDO. Their contingent would fall under a unified command in which Egyptian officers would hold significant positions. In the alliance, the Egyptian Armed Forces would be equipped and modernized by America, as had been the case with Turkey’s Forces in NATO. No member of the alliance would attack another, as Israel has been doing repeatedly ever since. The United States, also, committed itself to finance the building of a High Dam in Aswan, a pet project of the Revolutionary government, and to contribute to the industrialization of Egypt, a tall agenda indeed, which would have touched upon education and training at all levels of Egypt’s activities. 

The third What If deals with character, morals, ethics and values. You may recall that, in 1907, Egyptians who were impressed by the ways of the British, founded a National Sporting Club, al-Nadi al-Ahli. Egyptians took, for the first time, to Western sports and, soon, excelled in them. The idea behind the founders of the NSC was to provide the youth with the means to build their personality and overcome any cultural traits that thwarted individual and group activities in an industrial age. Three words are still current amongst the people in their daily lingo, Insha'a l-lah, God Willing, Bukrah, Tomorrow, and Ma'lish, Not to Worry, the three conducive to slackness. Jokingly, Egyptians refer to this their indigenous IBM system, each of the letters referring to one of these three traits of character. This proverbial nonchalance has resulted in low rating at work and irresponsibility and continues to hamper the rise of a work ethic which would enable the Egyptian worker to compete in the world arena. To the Reformists of the beginning of the nineteenth century, IBM prevented Egypt from moving ahead. They believed this could be remedied amongst the upcoming elites by way of sports as well as schooling. Over sports, one had to visit, prior to 1952, the mushrooming sporting clubs across the land to see the young, boys and girls, train in earnest as they competed in the swimming pool, on the tennis and squash courts and in the football and basketball fields. The Egyptian Boy Scouts movement, also, took its lead from the British Lord Baden Powell with the same purpose in mind. In terms of schooling, secondary schools were finally established that would bridge the gap between national identity and modernity. One can safely say that, at the eve of the 1952 Coup, there existed in Egypt indigenous elites who were the envy of Arabs and Muslims alike. The RCC had, at their disposal a treasure of Egyptian skills, knowhow and expertise who were ready and dedicated to rebuilding their country.

After 1961, in an article in al-Ahram,

H. Haykal

Hasanayn Haykal, a spokesman of the President, wrote about the experts and the knowledgeable in Egypt, Ahl al-Khibra. The Regime, he emphasized had preferred Ahl al-Thiqa, the loyal elements of society, to Ahl al-Khibra. The military who had wrested power from the Civilians were asserting themselves and indicating that they would not share power with any civilian. Over the slogan `al-Din li-llah wa al-Watan lil-Gami'`, religion belongs to God and the Nation is everyone's: it was hoped it would become Article Two of the 1956 Constitution of the Republic? Instead, Article Two read: Islam is the Religion of the State. Egypt's opportunity to espouse Secularism was missed. Also, the chance for Egyptian Islam to rid itself of the shackles of Medieval Times was forsaken in the efforts of Nasir to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood who spoke for a majority of the people over matters of Religious Nationalism. Nasir was also vying for the leadership of Arab Nationalism. When he accused the Ikhwan to attempt against his life, during a speech he gave in Alexandria in 1954, the Brotherhood was banned and its leaders arrested. The Ikhwan went underground or else escaped to Saudi Arabia. During those police raids, the Left was also shipped to detention camps in an oasis of the Western Desert.

Al Sanhoury

The eminent jurist, ‘abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895-1971), who headed the Supreme Court, warned publicly against the trampling of individual liberties. Thugs invaded his office and beat the elderly man up. Al-Sanhuri resigned his post and left the country. The Egyptian Military was well in control of the State. This was the beginning of their reign of terror.

In April 1955, Nasir was invited to Bandung, in Indonesia, to represent the Arab World and attend a Conference of Non-Aligned Countries. He was turning his back on MEDO and any friendship with the United States. That same year, the Soviet Bloc agreed to sell him arms.

The Aswan Dam would also be built by the Soviets at the cost of unilaterally nationalizing the Anglo-French Company of the Suez Canal in the summer of 1956. It became a matter of months before war erupted and Britain, France and Israel invaded the Canal Zone. The costly 1956 War in which the entire Egyptian Army was destroyed, would be followed by the wars of 1967 and 1973. These wars would not have occurred had Egypt joined MEDO, later to be renamed the Baghdad Pact. It is claimed that the GNP of the country had fallen 75% by 1972 and there was little money to invest in the youth and the future. Each military defeat, also, drew Egypt closer to the Soviet Union and Egypt became non-aligned in name only while, in reality, it had become involved in the Cold War on the side of the Soviets and Israel stood squarely on the opposite side with the United States. And, while Nasir’s adventurism took him all over the Third World, Egypt was being neglected and abandoned to incompetent stewardship. Egyptians had hoped for a new dawn in 1952.

What they inherited was two decades of disappointments brought about by the ignorant, pretentious, greedy and vindictive falcons that Horus unleashed against the City of their forefathers, to empty their granaries and to leave them materially and morally impoverished.

When one writes in hindsight half a century after the facts, one is bound to see reality in one’s own perspective, through one’s own experience and with the nostalgia of younger years. The Arab World, in general, and Egypt, in particular, are at their worse in standing today in the globe.

Early pictures of Suez Canal

Oil and the Suez Canal have represented a curse for their people and one wonders if their leaders could have handled the Neo-Colonialists better than their ancestors did with Colonialism. And, yet Egyptians have to look to Turkey to reflect on if, what if, the recent past could have been otherwise. In 1952, my Egyptian friends and I welcomed the Coup d’État. I had the privilege of listening to Nasir address the crowds and was mesmerized by his charisma. When I left, after the 1956 War to study in Beirut, I was angry with the West I once so much admired. Then I lived through the 1958 Lebanese Civil War and witnessed American Marines land on Lebanon’s beaches and thought to myself ``how dare they?``. That was when the military in Iraq toppled the Monarchy and put an end to the Baghdad Pact. Came then the Union of Egypt and Syria. Were the Arabs on track again? It took the Six-Day War for me and millions to experience our Rude Awakening. What If, I then told myself, what if the what ifs I reflected upon here and now had become reality.

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 (14 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (14): The Six-Day War.

On June 5th, 1967, at dawn, waves of Israeli fighter-bombers were thrust into the skies of Western Egypt from the Mediterranean Sea. They had dribbled around Egyptian radars that expected them over Sinai. In barely thirty seven minutes, the entire Egyptian air fleet that stood, neatly, on the tarmacs of several military airports was destroyed, an air operation which was reminiscent of Japan’s total destruction of General Mac Arthur’s Air Force on the ground in the Philippines. As this very short and surgically executed operation took place and, during the rest of that fateful day, Egyptian and Arab radio broadcasts were announcing that the enemy planes were being plucked out of the skies by Egypt's air defences. Egyptian and Arab masses in the streets were in a state of delirium. The Road to Jerusalem had finally been opened as Nasir had promised in one of his firee speeches, on January 29th of that same year.

It took the entire day for the truth to emerge. What has since been referred to as the Six-Day War was, in reality, the Thirty Seven Minute War. Indeed, once the entire air force of Egypt was sent out of action, neither its armour, its artillery, its infantry or its navy could fight effectively. It took six days for the cessation of moping up operations to go into effect. It has taken till this day for Egyptians and Arabs to overcome the impact of this stunning defeat. The Six-Day War had announced loud and clear to Arabdom that the 1952 Coup which brought Gamal 'abd il-Nasir to power had proven that he and his Regime were a failure.

Barely after this, the shortest war, had been waged, Yusif Shahin, released his latest movie, al-'Usfur, the Sparrow. Censorship forbade the film to be shown. Audiences had to wait until 1973, after the victorious crossing by the Egyptians of the Suez Canal, during the Presidency of Anwar is-Sadat, to see it. Spectators weep each time they watch the camera hold hands with the script and the melody and take them through their great expectations and the deep pains they experienced as a result of their unbearable disappointments. An entire people's sense of betrayal, its humiliation by a regime that cheated on them, terrorized them and robbed them of their dreams when it urged them to stand up in dignity, is narrated in songs which are drawn from the best of Mahmud Darwish's tradition and from popular Baladi ballads. The message of Shahin appeals to everyone, the intellectual and the commoner, whose pathos was scorched. Way and long before the Arab Youth would muster the courage to rise in anger against its military rulers in an Arab Spring, the cynicism which the Sparrow brought about in Arab masses forewarned, one can see it four decades later, of the first rays of a new beginning that appears at the horizon.

The Revolution had come to correct the wrongs of yesteryears. The Revolution promised Social Justice. The Revolution would vindicate the colonial past and restore the lost pride of the Arab People. The Revolution, also, became committed to economic development and to raising the standard of living of the masses. The self proclaimed leader of the Revolution, Colonel Nasir and his conspirators among the Free Officers, would lead the way for a new Egypt to be born. The intellectuals supported the Revolution. So did the trade-unions. The peasantry acclaimed the Land Reform. Nasir, who was proving to be a formidable communicator, saw his star rise rapidly in the national and world arenas. 

Gamal Abdel Nasser

On October 26th, 1954, in a speech he gave in Alexandria, the one they now called the Rayyis was fired upon but he did not die. The Muslim Brotherhood was blamed for his attempted assassination and a witch hunt began against the Ikhwan. Hundreds were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the desert and abused. Egypt was turning into a police state. The Communists, also, were rounded up and so was any imaginary enemy of the Regime. Fear had set in politics. The military ruled with an iron fist. Meanwhile, the junta was permeating all walks of life in the country. It was said at the time that the way towards social advancement passed through the military academies. Men in uniform were becoming a privileged class which, more often than not, placed themselves above the laws of the land. Some remarked jokingly that, before the Coup, in 1952, Egypt had one king. Now, one could count at least a dozen from the inner circle of the President who flaunted their power and their wealth around. Corruption had taken its roots.

The Egyptian Revolution had been intent on bringing about fundamental changes to the country and such changes did occur. Demographically, for one, infant mortality which had been estimated at 200 per 1000 in 1950 dropped to 50 as a result of improved hygiene and diet. The revolution opened dispensaries in the villages. It also increased the number of schools. As the population exploded in numbers, the trend towards urbanization followed at a critical pace. This measure by the government illustrates how policies were adopted haphazardly by incompetent policy makers who had not anticipated the slums that would mushroom around the cities as a result of overpopulation in the countryside. This haphazardness became the trade mark of the Regime which embarked upon worthy projects which proved, in the end, ill thought and poorly carried out. At the end of the day, when Nasir closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, on the 23rd of May, 1967, he did so while a major part of his Army was bogged down in Yaman, supporting a revolution. On the 5th of June, his air force was destroyed by Israel in retaliation. Between April 18 and 24, 1955, Nasir was invited at a Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Bandung, Indonesia. He was received by President Sukarno and welcomed by PM Nehru of India, President Tito of Yugoslavia and PM Chu en-Lai of China, three major players on the world scene, as the sole representative of 150 million Arabs who stretched from Morocco to Iraq. This was the time when the Cold War was raging between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Nasir's Egypt had gotten entangled in that cold war at great cost to itself. Historians will one day trace the true reasons for this entanglement. At face value, it appears as though Nasir's rashness, his inner anger and his arrogance led him onto the slippery path that caused the 1956 Tri-Partite Aggression against Egypt and brought him into the Soviet fold. It shall have taken the sudden death of its leader, in 1971, for Egyptians to disentangle themselves from a game of nations they proved they could not successfully play.

Bandung Conference

Meanwhile, Nasir's Egypt negotiated an arms deal with the East in spite of America. It received financing for a dam in Aswan in spite of America. Neither Tito nor Nehru had gone that far into the Soviet orbit. When Nasir flatly refused to host the Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO) on his territory, Egypt was abandoned to itself and was attacked on October 29th, 1956, by Israel, Britain and France and his newly equipped army was annihilated as a result. Dependency on the Soviets, meanwhile, was increasing by the day at the expense of non-alignment. The Arab World became divided into pro-Egyptian states and those that supported the Baghdad Pact. The Cold War had finally reached the Eastern Mediterranean, Yaman and the Horn of Africa.

Nasir was neglecting Egypt for the sake of his adventurist foreign policy. Israel rehearsed in 1956 the War of 1967 while the Egyptian Regime deluded itself by making believe it had defeated three powers on its own. The regime, also, toyed with an ideology which combined Arabism and Socialism. Its ideological vagaries were inducing its residents, especially the Khawagat, to consider leaving and some began to depart. As a result of the 1956 War, Jews, French and British citizens and businesses were expelled. And, in 1961, like a mother that turns against her own children, the State started nationalizing Egyptian owned enterprises, including the Misr Group initiated by Tal'at Harb. The country had grown impoverished and out of breath. Egypt's charismatic leader whom all had expected to perform miracles could not anymore. When his sudden death was announced on September 28th, 1970, many commentators explained popular hysteria as a proof that his popularity had not waned. True, the loss of his charisma, for the leader, is often expressed by anger on the part of his followers who turn against him; it may also be expressed by a sense of loss and despair. 

Many will consider the appraisal of the Nasir years harsh on my part and I admit they are. Unless one understands that Nasir was the child of his epoch. His vindictiveness, reflected in his petty actions and in some of his speeches, strip him of the title of a wise and great statesman. His police helped buttress his own insecurities.

Abdel Hakim Amer

His appointment of 'abd al Hakim 'Amir as his Commander-in-Chief denotes his preference for loyalty rather than competence. And yet competence amongst Egyptians there was who were eager to serve uplift their country. These competent Egyptians were, instead, pushed aside by a class conscious leadership which seemed to want to get even with those they had long envied. The Regime preferred to humiliate rather than utilize the many who were the result of several generations of reforms which Muhammad 'Ali Basha had initiated.

Let us, for fun's sake, next play the What If game. The aim of the game is not to make one cry over spilt milk but rather to speculate if, indeed, there were avenues that could otherwise have been borrowed and mistakes that could have been avoided. A footnote to What If should be a reminder that Major Kamal id-Din Husayn, a prominent member of the Free Officers, addressed a meeting of Egypt's intelligentsia, early on after 1952. Attendants were offering points of views and advice to the new powers that be. The Major responded that it was the officer corps that had become today's intellectuals. The new intellectuals he pretentiously referred to were devoid of any skills in determining costs and benefits of their acts. In 1967, barely a decade later, incompetence led to the threshold of the Thirty Seven Minutes Debacle.