Will Ikhwan-al-muslimeen have a day in the Egyptian sun ? By Kaleem Kawaja

Will Ikhwan-al-muslimeen have a day in the Egyptian sun ?

 

By Kaleem Kawaja

 

 

After 3 decades of the autocratic rule and domination of the Egyptian state by one family and their wealthy cronies, finally the day of reckoning has arrived.  For three decades this clique headed by Hosni Mubarak, supported by the American military industrial complex and the US oil lobby, allowed neither political freedom nor economic emancipation, nor religious expression to the ordinary people of Egypt.  In the face of the brutal onslaught of the Israelis on the impoverished Palestinians, this regime prevented the free expressions of solidarity by the Egyptians.

 

But as the saying goes, every dog has his day.  So now the powerless and helpless ordinary people of Egypt are bringing down this arrogant oligarchy that lived on the support of the foreigners. Noting the crowds in Tahrir square in Cairo for about 12 days now it was impossible to ignore the large masses of Muslim Egyptians offering two Juma congregational prayers on two successive Fridays.  What was unmistakable was the fact that the ordinary Egyptian Muslims are relgious people who find offering congregational prayers in the full view of the western media an important part of their daily lives.  Indeed at a time of crisis and facing many dangers and divisions they felt that the congregational prayer to Allah can keep them united and relieve their national afflictions and emergency.  The message is that the view that Islam can help them in their hour of crisis is not something to be shy about.

 

Surely that must have felt good to the many Egyptians who have good feelings towards the eighty year old Ikhwan-al-Muslimeen, who anchor the life of the Egyptian nation around the core valus of Islam.  Over the last eight decades Ikhwan has seen many ups and downs and has made many mistakes.   When they tried to make Ikhwan militant, that ran against the core values of Egyptians.  Ikhwan faced many hardships from even the venerable Gamal Nasir, the popular hero of Egypt, who has been the only uncorruptible head of the Egyptian state in the last hundred years. Mubarak was just a oligarch who usurped power and kept it with foreign help.

 

At this time while the miseries of the Egyptian people should be the focus for a change in regime in Cairo, in America the media is full of only one concern: will the new regime be friendly towards not only America but also Israel.  Even in this time of Egypt's national peril the American politicians are thinking mostly of the interests of theocratic and brutal Israel.  And they wonder why America is not popular in the Muslim world?  Indeed the manner of discussion in the Ametrican media gives one the impression as if they are talking about one of the states in US itself.  Look at the press statements of the US President and Secretary of State.

 

An interesting element that I observed in the US media is that several American commentators have said that Ikhwan-al-Muslimeen is not an extremist Muslim organization and they do not pose a danger to a secular polity in Egypt.  Apparently some Americans have learned a lesson from the sad experience in Algeria where annuling an election in which the Muslim group had won, caused much instability and violence.  Yet Ikhwan faces many dangers, most from the Israelis and Americans and their henchmen in Egypt who may try to pursuade the Egyptian army to keep Ikhwan out.  Even though of all parties Ikhwan suffered the most for decades at the hands of the Mubarak regime.

 

Let us hope that at this time as several national political groups come together to change the nature of the despotic regime, Ikhwan will project a cooperative and constructive face, allaying the fears of those who fear a militant Islamic face from them.  Like the Istiqlal party in Turkey they have an opportunity to gradually return Egypt to its long peaceful Islamic heritage.  Let us hope that they will not make the mistake that Taliban did in Afhganistan when they mindlessly put militant and sectarian postures as policies of the state, that scared the world and that also did damage to the core peaceful and egalitarian image of Islam as a political force.