Excuses, Excuses – MB Lets Cat Out of Bag

This is a guest post by Abu Faris

****

Back in 2007, considerable concern was voiced across Egypt and beyond with the publication of the Muslim Brotherhood’s draft platform. In a deeply reactionary manifesto, MB pledged to bar women and Christians from becoming Egypt’s president and (shades of Iran) to bring into being a council of Muslim clerics to offer Islamist control over the government and state.

Amongst other things, the publication of MB’s master-plan for the Islamic state in Egypt bought considerable embarrassment and dismay to those who had been previously lulled into a false sense of security by MB’s propaganda machine. As observers of MB will agree, this is a finely oiled engine that daily pumps out the false impression that MB has evolved into a political force committed to democracy and to ending the rule of the authoritarian Mubarak political system in Egypt. However, as Abdel Moneim Said, head of the leading Al Ahram Centre for Strategic and Political Studies, said at the time of MB’s platform:

“It establishes a religious state. It’s an assassination to the civic state.”

That being said, as is the way of things, others clung on, regardless of the evidence of their own eyes, to the belief that the MB were somehow still to be trusted as honest brokers in the democratic renewal of Egypt. Amongst these is the MB writer and intellectual, Dr. Rafik Habib.

In September of this year, Habib published a profoundly weird article on the online English-language MB website, Ikhwanweb, Understanding the riddle of the modern civil state. An article that attempts to rescue MB’s clerical fascist political agenda for the doubting liberals of Egypt via much casuistry and appeal to alleged Egyptian political cultural tradition. One might also wonder what the great and good of the Egyptian Establishment at the think-tank, the International Centre for Future and Strategic Studies, on which Habib holds a place on the Advisory Board, think of his views, given Habib’s enthusiastic support for MB’s political programme.

Habib’s article is a mess – but a revealing mess all the same. He wants to, on the one hand, suggest that the whole notion of civic society is an invention of the West and its alleged running-dogs in the Egyptian Establishment designed to exclude MB and fellow Islamists from the political process. He argues:

The concept of the modern civil state has become part of the political perception imposed on the Islamic movement by political and cultural elites which do not even belong to the Islamic project.

His claim is that this concept of the modern civic state is a political device by which the anti-Islamist Egyptian Establishment can define the Islamist movement as holding to an intolerant and backwards ideology in opposition to the ideals of the civic state.

On the other hand, contradicting the above argument entirely, Habib and his Islamist handlers want to claim that the whole Islamist project is fundamentally interested in the project of strengthening the civic state in Egypt; and that these very ideals of the civic state are at the heart of the Islamist political message.

In order to square this circle, Habib is forced to entirely re-work what is normally meant by the civic state; and crucially, to argue against the connections normally made between this concept and those of democracy and the non-religiously orientated state.

Habib begins this task by defining what the civic state is not. Of course, this is a not a good start: what the civic state is not does not secure a description of what such a state actually is. I may not be two metres tall – this hardly means that I am therefore 200 m tall. However, Habib wants to contrast the civic state with what he calls the “authoritarian state”, a state that he identifies with military dictatorship:

[T]he definition of a civil state is the exact opposite of the military state, it may be ascertained that this is the most accurate definition. The state founded on the rule of the army is not a civil state…

Habib is very keen to inform us that the Muslim Brotherhood and fellow Islamists are deeply opposed to the whole notion of the “military state”. Well, they would be. The Egyptian High Command is deeply hostile to MB; and the Islamists cynically support democratic reforms in Egypt because they believe their agenda is best served in a democratic, rather than military, state. Incredibly, evidence for this cynicism on the part of MB is explicitly given by Habib. MB do not support the “military state” because it is undemocratic in essence; but because in any non-Islamist state, non-Islamists have control over the armed forces. Habib breezily asserts:

They [the Islamists] resist the whole idea of a military State since it is primarily based upon the mandate of the state and not the Guardian’s [God’s – and thereby his self-appointed Islamist lieutenants on Earth’s] domain of army power.

So, MB’s objection to military dictatorship is not that it is an undemocratic form of rule; but that in Egyptian terms, it would exclude MB from power.

Despite the evidence to which he himself alludes, Habib is determined to claim the democratic credentials of the Islamists. He argues:

The secular authoritarian state is similar to the religious, communist or capitalist authoritarian state since they are all forms of the military idea which is the opposite of the Civil. Hence, we notice that the Islamic reform movement constantly calls for the establishing of a civil state in this sense and contradicts all forms of the authoritarian state. The movement agrees that the general Islamic authority can’t be primarily maintained unless we accomplish the mandate of the nation and its full right to choose its own rulers and representatives.

However, what MB and its nodding donkey, Habib, mean by democracy is somewhat at odds from the normal understanding of the same:

Only when the nation is represented by the honourable will it be possible to hold the rulers accountable and ousted for their errors.

Thus “democracy” is, for MB and Habib, not “the rule of the people”; but, rather, the rule of the “honourable” – presumably the best. It hardly takes a rocket scientist to work out who MB think would make up these “honourable”, or best people. As a matter of definition, this would not be democracy but, actually, a form of Islamist aristocracy. Thus the commitment of MB is not to the support and elevation of the democratic ideal, but rather the manipulation of widening democratic reforms in Egypt to further their project of Islamist aristocratic rule. Habib, as usual unwittingly, underscores this cynical and essentially undemocratic position:

Therefore, the civil state in this sense is the essence of the Islamic reform project.

Well, it would be, wouldn’t it?

Having disposed of the notion that for MB, the idea of a civil state has any necessary connection to the notion of a democratic state, Habib is very keen to rid us of that nagging suspicion that the civic state will want to stand aside (at the very least) from any particular religious orientation.

Having basically established that for MB, the concept of a civic state means absolutely anything that serves the political interests of MB, Habib had best find some sort of justification for the same:

[S]ome intellectuals discuss the issue of the Civil State… where the civil state is portrayed as adopting an attitude closer to being neutral in regards to religion. It is, in fact, a secular state adopting a neutral position. In other words, the religion is not a reference and hence its authority is based upon man-made laws and not divine laws similar to all Western political doctrines.

This is, of course, for Habib and his MB handlers a very bad thing indeed. It leads him to once again suggest that the whole notion of a civic state is a Western-inspired conspiracy being foisted upon the Faithful of Egypt:

Therefore, the concept of the civil state conceals the broader conception of the secular state and is persistently trying to impose perception of the secularism upon the Islamic movement. The secular state is actually the complete contrast to the Islamic State since the latter is based upon a Divine source and governed by Islamic law while the former is based on man-made laws.

So, for MB, the secular state is not a civic state at all! Thus, by shifting the goal posts, Habib has engineered the contrast to not be between authoritarian and civic states – but, rather, between the Islamic state and all other states. In this model, only the Islamic state is truly a civic state and all others (whether ruled by the army or not) are more or less effectively “authoritarian” states. If this is doubted as a conclusion, follow Habib on this point:

The secular state is based on the free will of its own people similar to a civil state where both resort to the community for inspiration and reference. The difference between the two can be realized in the community that is reflected in the state. The secular state is meant to govern a secular society while the Islamic State is governed by a divine law and is dedicated to regulate all affairs.

By the mighty beard of Hassan al-Banna! The secular state, however democratic, is not a civic state because it makes no reference to divine law, nor accepts that this latter source of legislation should regulate all affairs?!?! MB accedes that democracy is but a means to an end and that end is a complete termination of control over the state by the people themselves.

Reading like a true acolyte of Qutb, Habib drives home this fundamentally undemocratic point:

When the Muslim community is governed by a secular state, it may be named non-civilian because the society is automatically absorbed by the western values. Here, the authority of the state is not derived from the community but it imposes itself, thus calling itself a military or authoritarian state.

Well, of course, secularism and democracy are vast Western conspiracies designed to enslave the Muslim and Arab world. What these bloody people need, after all, is rule of the mullahs and the way to get there is through the shifty use of elections. But, in the end, democracy (along with all those other dastardly kufr items like women’s rights and freedom of conscience) is a massive Western plot to maintain control over the Egyptian people – so once elected MB will ditch that too.

If ever MB’s superficial and essentially mendacious attitude towards the norms of civic society, including democracy and the modern state, were in question, surely after this these questions are well and truly answered.

So, if democracy and secularism are but Western ploys to control the Egyptian people, what should the civic state (which is actually only ever an Islamist state, naturally) rely upon for its bases? As we have already seen, the Islamist state (which is the only kind of civic state, of course) is based on divine law (Shari’ah) – and this is to be interpreted by the “honourable” (the MB and other Islamists) aristocrats who the people are allowed to “elect” periodically to positions of authority (especially over that ever-present threat to MB, the armed forces). The impression is that “elections” and “democracy” in such an Islamist “civic” state would be about as meaningful as Supreme Soviet “democratic elections” were in the former USSR.

Having “disposed” of such frightful items as democracy and secularism, Habib proceeds to provide an allegedly native Egyptian base for so much MB totalitarianism and authoritarianism (aka, the “civic state”). Playing the patriotic card, Habib asserts that as Islam is the traditional bases of so much of Egyptian culture, then it is perfectly natural that Islam should be the basis of the Egyptian Islamist civic state:

[T]he Islamic reform movement is a social movement basically having a reformist role within reaching a consensus or agreement to restore the Islamic cultural reference as a means for revival, promoting the national identity and resisting foreign invasion. The essence of the curriculum reform depends on the nation’s approval recognizing the fact that it is the main source.

The elite who imitate the western experience while trying to impose its values on the Arab and Muslim societies surely must be asked about the extent of conviction of the civil state. As a matter of fact, the West’s promises are closer to the concept of the military state; furthermore, it is as close as possible to the colonial state occupying land of others and dominating the mind and thinking of others. Moreover, they impose the foreign Western model upon all.

So, in a nutshell, those of you who want a democratic and secular future for Egypt and the Arab world are nothing but the running dogs of imperialism, hell-bent on introducing alien values into the dar al-Islam and forcing people to the ballot box at the end of the bayonet. Fiends! Everyone knows that voting and having a state that is neutral about religion and does not legislate on the basis of religious tenets is a state designed by Shaytaan to enslave the Arab people!

Just so you cannot mistake that those of us who uphold so-called “Western” values are morally degenerate monsters who offer nothing of any value to the Egyptian and Arab people, how about the following:

The Islamic culture, in fact, is characterized as a conservative religious culture based on the absolute and constant religious values resting on constant principles and tenets while civilization of mankind such as Western civilization is distinguished with its capacity to getting rid of ethics and high values with man-made laws that can be amended and modified.

There we have it, if anyone had any doubts: the Muslim Brotherhood has absolutely no intention of building a modern democratic state in Egypt; and do not recommend the same anywhere in the Muslim world.

Next time one reads some Western-educated intellectual suggesting that the Brothers have changed their tune and are now committed to a modern, more or less neutral state, dedicated to the democratic and progressive transformation of Egypt and the Muslim world, one might pause for reflection and consider the totalitarian “conservative religious culture” of MB’s Islamism – dedicated as it is to the aristocratic rule of the “honourable” and the duplicitous, dishonest and exigent support that MB presently gives to democracy as a means of achieving its truly authoritarian ends.