THE WAR OF SECULARISM ......

THE WAR OF SECULARISM ......

Now a similar mistake is being made by U.S. policies through apparent support for the Muslim brotherhood. Clerics on satellite channels who directly incite terrorist acts must be should be held responsible as criminals. Terrorism cannot be defeated only by killing extremist leaders and holding premature elections. Radical Islamist ideology must be analyzed and challenged.

If one were to ask an Arab what has happened to the Arab countries, and why the terrorism and extremism we see today did not exist in the 1950s and 1960s, the answer would probably point to the frustrations and struggles of dual identities: Arab nationalism and Islamism. After the collapse of Arab nationalism, Islamist movements and ideologies emerged to fill the void. The two developments that exposed the dangerous turn to extremism the Islamist movements had taken were the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the recent Arab uprisings, called the "Arab Spring."

From the events of 2001 until the latest Arab upheavals, the West has pursued support for a moderate Islam in the region, to eliminate terrorism. Concepts such as that of a "new Middle East" and support for democracies rather than tyrants became prominent rhetorically. But do leaders in the West realize how rivalries and distrust persist among Muslims, between Muslims, and against other, non-Muslim minorities? Do the values of a moderate and pluralist Islam exist today or have they disappeared completely? If they exist, how can the West support such examples of moderate Islam?

Suspicion among Muslims and toward non-Muslim minorities has a long history, but has become aggravated especially now. Sunnis do not trust Shias and Islamists are suspicious of liberals, and tension is mutual, as each group reacts to the other. Many who do not belong to Islamist parties and who represent minority groups in Egypt and Tunisia are terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood and their more extreme counterparts, the so-called "Salafis" (imitators of the Saudi Wahhabis). An Islamist state could not be expected to guarantee liberty for everyone. Shias, for their part, are anxious about the power of political Sunnism and its impact on them.

Extremist and terrorist ideological networks are present throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The recent terrorist attack on Algeria, in which foreign hostages from Japan, Philippines, Romania, Britain and the United States were killed, is connected to the terrorist invasion of nearby northern Mali. Absence of security, arms smuggling from a collapsed Libya, and rising instability are aggravated, not resolved, by Islamists in power around the region. The horrible situation in Syria, with continued fighting between the regime and armed groups, is a breeding ground for terrorism. Lack of security and stability have spread in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon no less than Tunisia and Egypt.

This shift to extremism in the Arab world did not happen overnight. After the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire beginning in the nineteenth century, Pan-Arabism came forward with a vision of resistance to outside rule through a "new" social order, conceived along Islamic lines. Some Egyptian and the Syrian representatives of Pan-Arab nationalism believed in an authoritarian state that would unify the heterogeneous Arabs into a single nation and creed. Pan-Arab nationalism was secular, and 

was crystallised as a political movement in the 20^thcentury by a Syrian Christian, Michel Aflaq, who founded the Ba'ath ("Renaissance") Party in Damascus in 1940. Aflaq, a Christian, said that Islam could not be dissociated from an Arab nationalist identity, but that the state must be separate from religious institutions. As cited by Kanan Makiya in his 1998 book Republic of Fear, Aflaq wrote, "We wish that a full awakening of Arab Christians takes place, so that they can see in Islam a nationalist education for themselves."

When Gamal Abd Al-Nasser took power in Egypt in 1952, the country became the spiritual home of Arab nationalism. But enthusiasm for this identity did not liberate the Arab nation from foreign hegemony; nor did it generate the freedom, development and democracy that the people and especially the youth desired. Arab leaders in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, as extreme ultranationalists, disregarded the principles of freedom and democracy. One of the main causes of the decline of nationalist ideology seems to have been the 1967 Arab defeat in the Egyptian-led war against Israel.

The failure of, and disappointment in, nationalism allowed Islamists to gain new ground. At the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries, Muslim thought was occupied by the critical, philosophical views of reformers such as the Iranian Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1839-97), the Egyptians Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) and Ali Abderraziq (1888-1966) as well as others who favoured adoption of Western cultural achievements while preserving Islamic belief.

The advocates of that version of reform called themselves "Salafis," or imitators of the Prophet Muhammad and the first three generations of his companions and successors. They resisted the weight of Islamic law on Arab society – a burden much lighter in the Ottoman, Persian, and Indian Muslim empires – and questioned the spiritual tradition of Sufism. But they did not try to expel their opponents from the body of Muslim believers or advocate armed attacks on the West.

These 19^th century "Salafis" were superseded, in the consciousness of many discontented Arabs, by the ultrafundamentalist Wahhabis from the Arabian Peninsula, who later usurped the term "Salafi;" and then by Hassan al-Banna (1906-49), the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mohammed Arkoun (1928-2010), an Algerian scholar of Islamic studies, wrote in his Arabic-language Toward a Comparative History of Monotheistic Religions that this happened for two reasons. First, intellectual capital was absent from Arab world centers such as Baghdad or Cairo; second, an indigenous Arab business class, that would presumably support critical attitudes, had disappeared. Then, after the victory of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia in 1924-25, and particularly following the increase in Saudi energy income, Wahhabi-inspired radical thinking enjoyed huge funding and support.

Now a similar mistake is being made by U.S. policies, through apparent support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Elected leaders in Washington may believe the Muslim Brotherhood to be a moderate movement. Just because the Muslim Brotherhood has been elected, in a questioned democratic process, does not exempt the West from critically examining the movement's goals. Elections and democracy are not the same; and it is often insufficient to have elections without first developing well-established, functioning pillars of democracy, such as freedom of speech and the press, equal justice before the law, property rights, and critically-oriented education that encourages questioning. Previously operating in the background, the elected Muslim Brotherhood now dominates Egypt. That the new Egyptian constitution has been written by Islamists, without input from liberals, leftists, and representatives from Egypt's Christians, is a serious warning sign. In so violating democracy, the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrates its need to dominate the state. A thirst for power and control is not a sign of moderation and compromise.