Interview: Tariq Ramadan on Tunisia and Egypt

Interview: Tariq Ramadan on Tunisia and Egypt


February 11, 2011


by Dr. Dzul










The system in Egypt is corrupt, there is no democracy and the difficulty for the next election is posed by Mubarak’s role and his son’s succession, and not just that – says the influential Swiss-Egyptian philosopher, teacher and writer TARIQ RAMADAN.




Were the Tunisian events a pleasant surprise for you too? What kind of developments will there be?

I have stood against the regime for almost fifteen years. What is happening is great. But we still have to be very cautious. Even if the dictator is out, the system is still in place and we are in a transitional period. Some of his people are still around, and we are in a very tricky situation. In this transitory period the reformers must show moderation. At the same time, the whole system should be dismantled; the fact that the dictator is out is not enough. We still have to be very cautious about the “true” results of this situation. It is clear that there will be no going back; we are moving towards a more democratic system, but this democratic system should be truly democratic, with transparent elections and all the rest.




Now, would you expect similar upheavals in other countries in the area?

Change is the hope we all have. In Tunisia, we saw people being killed, killing themselves just to try to create, to provoke something… but, so far, nothing similar has taken place in other countries and I don’t think that over the short term anything will happen. It will be a long process. All countries are worried, that is certain.




Is it going to happen in Egypt?

The system in Egypt is corrupt, there is no democracy and the difficulty for the next election is posed by Mubarak’s role and his son’s succession, and not just that. The problem is posed by powerful and influential people and the whole authoritarian system that is supporting this regime. Ben Ali’s regime was powerful too. You ask me if something similar to like Tunisia could happen in Egypt? I would not exclude this. I have heard that they want to organize large demonstrations.



Do you think the Egyptian regime could reveal itself as weak as the Tunisian one?

I wouldn’t say that the Tunisian regime was weak. I think it was powerful, but there was a critical moment when all powers, including the army, decided not to remain on the dictator’s side. I am not sure whether the Egyptian army would act the same way. Still, I would not totally exclude the army’s refusal to support the regime, because it is very corrupt.




By “weak” I meant weak in consensus, in other words unpopular.

Yes, there is indeed no support for the Egyptian regime. It is very unpopular, the people are suffering and they are against what is happening. Demonstrations or other events that symbolize something new, something bigger, might trigger some change, but honestly, I don’t really see this happening, because the Egyptian regime has totally taken control of the country for the last ten years. The American administration and supporters of the current Egyptian regime are far more scared here, I think, than they are in the case of Tunisia. Egypt is too critical.




What is happening to the entire region in terms of the involvement of the Islam and political religious movements? Are Islamists important in this situations? The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt should play a more relevant role than it has in Tunisia.

I think that in Tunisia the Muslim Brotherhood has decided not to be visible, not to become really involved and just support change. What happened there did not come from Islamists, it came from the people. It would have been wrong for them to be seen as a driving force. They want to be acknowledged as a player within the system, and this is happening. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is more like a force of resistance, especially since the last elections, when they withdrew after the first round. They play a critical role. If anything happens in Egypt, they will join, like in the Kefaya, the ‘enough is enough’ movement, (a grass roots movement against Mubarak’s regime, editor’s note.).




They are all involved in that, and they have a lot of support. It is not a majority support, and the Islamists know that. But they also know that they will play a role. Things are different in Tunisia; no one can say the Islamists are part of the process of change, because this is not true. But if something happened in Egypt, it would be labelled as a turning point towards Islamism, and that could be used by Mubarak.




Do you think that, after having been excluded from the political process in Egypt, the movement inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood will be more or less radical, more or less democratic?

I think that if you look at what the Muslim Brotherhood has been saying over the last twenty years, it has already changed a lot. They were against democracy, now they are for democracy, for the involvement of the movement. They are changing. They have not reached a “Turkish” level yet. There still is a gap between the Turkish Islamists and the Egyptians. The current Muslim Brotherhood leadership is quite old, closer to Erbakan (old Turkish Islamist leader and Prime Minister, removed from power by a 1997 Army coup, editor’s note.) than to Erdogan (today’s PM and AKP leader, editor’s note.). Strictly speaking I don’t think there will be a revolution. I would rather say that today they will remain legalists, by trying to play the game at the grassroots level.




Are Egyptian and Tunisian Islamists – part of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups – very different from each other? And are there different approaches to democracy and human rights?

This is a critical question. The West should understand that there are many kinds of Islamists, even in Tunisia. For example, Rachid Ghannouchi comes from the Muslim Brotherhood, but in the sixties and seventies he was the only one in this group to say that democracy is the right thing, while the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was saying no. He did not have a problem with democracy. He had a far more liberal and advanced view, even in what he wrote about women, compared to other members of the Muslim Brotherhood, even from within this group! So there was a debate. In Tunisia you also have different trends arising from those who are much more Salafite, literalists.




So there is an internal debate. But who is stronger, who will prevail?

I think that today the mainstream reference in Tunisia is much more advanced. And I would say, that between Ghannouchi and Erdogan, for example, you can see many mirroring positions on democracy, dealing with the West and dialogue. I think they are going the same way. In Egypt it is different. Here, once again, it is not a question of trends, but a question of generations. In the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood “to be younger” means to be sixty! It was not like in the 40s. There is an internal struggle between generations and between trends, and I think that there is no monolithic reality of Islamism today.




In comparing the two countries, one can see that the driving force in Tunisia is much more advanced in dealing with democracy or with women. This is very important. A movement like Kefaya would have been impossible twenty years ago in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood had refused to deal with other political views, such as those of communists, “leftists” or atheists, but they changed, because they understood that you cannot resist the Mubarak dictatorship if you are isolated.




If we don’t want to buy what dictators are saying, “it’s us or them” – meaning the Islamists –, and if we want to get a better sense about what the opposition could be, we need to get a better sense of what these trends within Islamism are. There are people who are moving, changing, and others who are resisting and who are more traditionalist, and sometimes even violent.

A Villa in the Jungle? (The Egyptian Days of Rage)... by Uri Avnery

A Villa in the Jungle? (The Egyptian Days of Rage)

Uri Avnery

February 5, 2011

WE ARE in the middle of a geological event. An earthquake of epoch-making dimensions is changing the landscape of our region. Mountains turn into valleys, islands emerge from the sea, volcanoes cover the land with lava.

People are afraid of change. When it happens, they tend to deny, ignore, pretend that nothing really important is happening.

Israelis are no exception. While in neighboring Egypt earth-shattering events were taking place, Israel was absorbed with a scandal in the army high command. The Minister of Defense abhors the incumbent Chief of Staff and makes no secret of it. The presumptive new chief was exposed as a liar and his appointment canceled. These were the headlines.

But what is happening now in Egypt will change our lives.

AS USUAL, nobody foresaw it. The much-feted Mossad was taken by surprise, as was the CIA and all the other celebrated services of this kind.

Yet there should have been no surprise at all - except about the incredible force of the eruption. In the last few years, we have mentioned many times in this column that all over the Arab world, multitudes of young people are growing up with a profound contempt for their leaders, and that sooner or later this will lead to an uprising. These were not prophesies, but rather a sober analysis of probabilities.

The turmoil in Egypt was caused by economic factors: the rising cost of living, the poverty, the unemployment, the hopelessness of the educated young. But let there be no mistake: the underlying causes are far more profound. They can be summed up in one word: Palestine.

In Arab culture, nothing is more important than honor. People can suffer deprivation, but they will not stand humiliation.

Yet what every young Arab from Morocco to Oman saw daily was his leaders humiliating themselves, forsaking their Palestinian brothers in order to gain favor and money from America, collaborating with the Israeli occupation, cringing before the new colonizers. This was deeply humiliating for young people brought up on the achievements of Arab culture in times gone by and the glories of the early Caliphs.

Nowhere was this loss of honor more obvious than in Egypt, which openly collaborated with the Israeli leadership in imposing the shameful blockade on the Gaza Strip, condemning 1.5 million Arabs to malnutrition and worse. It was never just an Israeli blockade, but an Israeli-Egyptian one, lubricated by 1.5 billion US dollars every year.

I have reflected many times – out loud – how I would feel if I were a 15 year-old boy in Alexandria, Amman or Aleppo, seeing my leaders behave like abject slaves of the Americans and the Israelis, while oppressing and despoiling their own subjects. At that age, I myself joined a terrorist organization. Why would an Arab boy be different?

A dictator may be tolerated when he reflects national dignity. But a dictator who expresses national shame is a tree without roots – any strong wind can blow him over.   

For me, the only question was where in the Arab world it would start. Egypt – like Tunisia – was low on my list. Yet here it is – the great Arab revolution taking place in Egypt.

 

THIS IS a wonder in itself. If Tunisia was a small wonder, this is a huge one.

I love the Egyptian people. True, one cannot really like 88 million individuals, but one can certainly like one people more than another. In this respect, one is allowed generalize.

The Egyptians you meet in the streets, in the homes of the intellectual elite and in the alleys of the poorest of the poor, are an incredibly patient lot. They are endowed with an irrepressible sense of humor. They are also immensely proud of the country and its 8000 years of history.

For an Israeli, used to his aggressive compatriots, the almost complete lack of aggressiveness of the Egyptians is astonishing. I vividly remember one particular scene: I was in a taxi in Cairo when it collided with another. Both drivers leapt out and started to curse each other in blood-curling terms. And then quite suddenly, both of them stopped shouting and burst into laughter.

A Westerner coming to Egypt either loves it or hates it. The moment you set your foot on Egyptian soil, time loses its tyranny. Everything becomes less urgent, everything is muddled, yet in a miraculous way things sort themselves out. Patience seems boundless. This may mislead a dictator. Because patience can end suddenly.

It’s like a faulty dam on a river. The water rises behind the dam, imperceptibly slowly and silently – but if it reaches a critical level, the dam will burst, sweeping everything before it.

MY OWN first meeting with Egypt was intoxicating. After Anwar Sadat’s unprecedented visit to Jerusalem, I rushed to Cairo. I had no visa. I shall never forget the moment I presented my Israeli passport to the stout official at the airport. He leafed through it, becoming more and more bewildered – and then he raised his head with a wide smile and said “marhaba”, welcome. At the time we were the only three Israelis in the huge city, and we were feted like kings, almost expecting at any moment to be lifted onto people’s shoulders. Peace was in the air, and the masses of Egypt loved it.

It took no more than a few months for this to change profoundly. Sadat hoped – sincerely, I believe – that he was also bringing deliverance to the Palestinians. Under intense pressure from Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter, he agreed to a vague wording. Soon enough he learned that Begin did not dream of fulfilling this obligation. For Begin, the peace agreement with Egypt was a separate peace to enable him to intensify the war against the Palestinians.

The Egyptians – starting with the cultural elite and filtering down to the masses – never forgave this. They felt deceived. There may not be much love for the Palestinians – but betraying a poor relative is shameful in Arab tradition. Seeing Hosni Mubarak collaborating with this betrayal led many Egyptians to despise him. This contempt lies beneath everything that happened this week. Consciously or unconsciously, the millions who are shouting “Mubarak Go Away” echo this contempt.

IN EVERY revolution there is the “Yeltsin Moment”. The columns of tanks are sent into the capital to reinstate the dictatorship. At the critical moment, the masses confront the soldiers. If the soldiers refuse to shoot, the game is over. Yeltsin climbed on the tank, ElBaradei addressed the masses in al Tahrir Square. That is the moment a prudent dictator flees abroad, as did the Shah and now the Tunisian boss.

Then there is the “Berlin Moment”, when a regime crumbles and nobody in power knows what to do, and only the anonymous masses seem to know exactly what they want: they wanted the Wall to fall.

And there is the “Ceausescu moment”. The dictator stands on the balcony addressing the crowd, when suddenly from below a chorus of “Down With The Tyrant!” swells up. For a moment, the dictator is speechless, moving his lips noiselessly, then he disappears. This, in a way, happened to Mubarak, making a ridiculous speech and trying in vain to stem the tide.

IF MUBARAK is cut off from reality, Binyamin Netanyahu is no less. He and his colleagues seem unable to grasp the fateful meaning of these events for Israel.

When Egypt moves, the Arab world follows. Whatever transpires in the immediate future in Egypt – democracy or an army dictatorship - It is only a matter of (a short) time before the dictators fall all over the Arab world, and the masses will shape a new reality, without the generals.

Everything the Israeli leadership has done in the last 44 years of occupation or 63 years of its existence is becoming obsolete. We are facing a new reality. We can ignore it – insisting that we are “a villa in the jungle”, as Ehud Barak famously put it – or find our proper place in the new reality.

Peace with the Palestinians is no longer a luxury. It is an absolute necessity. Peace now,  peace quickly. Peace with the Palestinians, and then peace with the democratic masses all over the Arab world, peace with the reasonable Islamic forces (like Hamas and the Muslim Brothers, who are quite different from al Qaeda), peace with the leaders who are about to emerge in Egypt and everywhere.