RSIS presents the following commentary Egypt’s Third Way: A Blend of Islamism
and Militarism by James M. Dorsey. It is also available online at this link. (To print
it,click on this link.). Kindly forward any comments or feedback to the Editor RSIS
Commentaries at RSISPublication@ntu.edu.sg
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No. 144/2013 dated 1 August 2013
Egypt’s Third Way: A Blend of Islamism and Militarism
By James M. Dorsey
Synopsis
Deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s failure in government may produce
neither a return to former President Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian police state nor a
pluralistic democracy but a regime shaped by a new generation of military commanders
whose vision constitutes a blend of Islamism and militarism laced with
anti-Americanism.
Commentary
THE UNITED STATES quest for stability in the Middle East and North Africa that
amounted to support for autocratic regimes at the expense of America’s projection of its
democratic values was in part fuelled by fear. This is the fear that change in countries
like Saudi Arabia threatened to open the door to the replacement of conservative,
pro-Western rulers by military officers steeped in a vision that combined nationalism
and Islamism.
Significant elements of this vision tap into a widespread sentiment among Egyptians
and Arabs across the Middle East and North Africa and is not alien to Islamist thinking,
even if many would not want to see Islamism literally implemented. This hybrid vision
can be traced back to the emergence of the new generation of military officers in the
last two decades.
Insights from Al Sisi’s papers
A look at papers produced by Egyptian military strongman General Abdel Fattah Al
Sisi and other senior officers as part of their training and education at US military
institutions suggests that the US fear may become reality. It also explains why Morsi
last year put his faith in these commanders, replacing the military’s Mubarak-era old
guard with this new crop of officers who shared his adherence to conservative and
Islamic values. And it provides a reasoning for the military’s apparent decision to not
simply remove Morsi from office but to attempt to significantly weaken, if not destroy,
the Muslim Brotherhood.
In effect, the dispute between the military and the Brotherhood, like the rivalry in
Turkey between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and self-exiled cleric Fethullalh
Gulen, amounts to a struggle for power among Islamists. The difference with Egypt is
that one party to the dispute is the military, along with the security forces, the most
powerful institution in the country.
The thinking of these military officers further suggests that Saudi Arabia’s support for
the military’s ousting of Morsi was rooted in more than a shared rejection of the Muslim
Brotherhood. The kingdom and the Egyptian military have similar visions of an
authoritarian state grounded in Islamic values that maintains close relations with the US
and yet is conscious of the public’s anti-American sentiment and critical of its policies in
the Middle East.
Israeli-Palestinian peace becomes a necessity
The rise of a class of Islamist and nationalist-minded military officers in Egypt gives
urgency to renewed US attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that figures
prominently in the officers’ thinking. Resolving the dispute would potentially remove a
key irritant in US-Arab and US-Muslim relations and put those relationships on a new
footing. Despite widespread pessimism, US negotiators are banking on the fact the Arab
uprisings make peace more important for both Israel and the Palestine Authority.
Also the renewed peace effort is backed by a majority of Arab states, Hamas is
weakened by Morsi’s downfall and a resolution of the dispute would enable Israel to
significantly improve its internationally tarnished image.
Palestine figured prominently in a 10,000-word paper entitled ‘the U.S. military presence
in the Middle East: Issues and Prospects" written in 2005 by General Sedky Sobhy, who
was last year appointed under Morsi as the Egyptian military’s chief-of-staff. While he was
at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania, Sobhy warned in his paper, disclosed by
Cairo-based journalist Issandr El Amrani and various other media, that unmitigated US
support for Israel was fuelling anti-Americanism and embroiling the US in a conflict with
Islamists that it would not be able to win.
Solutions to the Middle East’s security problems “will find their ideological underpinning if
the U.S. were to truly work for a permanent settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict…
Truly international cooperation, and heeding the ideological, religious, and cultural
concerns of the Arab and Muslim world, can successfully change the current course of
events,” Sobhy said. He argued further that US hostility towards the Sharia -Islamic law –
was undermining its democracy effort in the region. That effort “must have and project
political, social, cultural and religious legitimacy,” he wrote.
Reviving principles of the Caliphate
General Al Sisi, in a thesis entitled ‘Democracy in the Middle East’ written a year later
while he too was at the US War College, sounded a similar note that is not dissimilar to
the Brotherhood’s thinking. Al Sisi, widely viewed as a religious conservative with close
ties to Saudi Arabia, focused his thesis on the key role of religion in politics and
argued that democracy in the Middle East and North Africa would only take root if it
demonstrated “respect to the religious nature of the culture,” sought “public support
from religious leaders (who) can help build strong support for the establishment of
democratic systems,” and sustained “the religious base versus devaluing religion
and creating instability.”
Al Sisi asserted further that secularism “is unlikely to be favourably received by the
vast majority of Middle Easterners, who are devout followers of the Islamic faith.” He
pushed the notion that democracy needed to be informed by the ‘concept of El Kalafa,’
the earliest period of Islam that was guided by the Prophet Muhammad and the Four
Righteous Caliphs who succeeded him. The Kalafa kind of government, involving
obedience to a ruler who consults his subjects, needed to be the goal of any
government in the Middle East and North Africa, he wrote.
The military’s dilemma
Traces of the new military leadership’s thinking have been evident since the fall of
Mubarak. Al Sisi defended enforced virginity tests for female demonstrators detained
in protests against the military while it was in power in the first 17 months after the
ousting of Mubarak. He ensured that whatever constitution emerges from Egypt’s
current crisis would maintain the principle that Islamic law is Egypt's “main source of
legislation” – a demand put forward by the Salafist Nour party that supported the
Military’s ousting of Morsi. Al Sisi further thought to drive a wedge between the
Brotherhood’s leadership by reaching out to its followers.
It is a thinking that would serve to secure the military’s key interests in a future
Egypt: control of national security; independence from civilian oversight; immunity
from prosecution; maintenance of its economic empire that accounts for at least ten
percent of Egyptian gross domestic product; and preservation of its independent
relationship with the US. To do so, it will likely struggle with how to balance its
nationalist and Islamist outlook with its vested strategic and economic interest in
close ties to Washington. An Israeli-Palestinian peace would help the military
resolve its dilemma.
All in all, it is a vision that is far cry from the goals a vast number of Egyptians had
in mind when they camped out two years ago on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, forcing
Mubarak to ultimately resign. In the words of national security expert Robert
Springborg in a recent Foreign Affairs article: “If Sisi continues to seek legitimacy for
military rule by associating it with Islamism, it could prove to be a disaster for Egypt.
At the very least, it would set back the democratic cause immeasurably.”
James M. Dorsey is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the
Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog,
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