The US’s Bet on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Flying Carpet

Neither Abdel Nasser nor Michel Aflaq, neither Salah al-Din al-Bitar nor George Habash strove or have been able to convince the West to accept the national repository as an identity of a nation with the civilization, history and ambition to overcome separation with unity. The reason for that is that Abdel Nasser and the Ba’ath party adhered to the principle of unity and left the principle of political freedom out of the national project. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, the pioneers of the project quite successfully combined their struggle against Turkish and European colonial rule and their adoption of democracy. Also, they initiated parliamentary experiences based on the popular ballot.

There was a serious misunderstanding of Arab nationalism in the West, whose vanity was flattered as it related to its democracy and who crushed the racist European nationalism in an arduous war. The fact that the Arabs had abandoned democracy immediately led the West to reject Nasserism and Baathism and compare the Arab national project to the nondemocratic fascist one of Germany. In the 1960s, the mutual misunderstanding developed into an ideological and political clash between Arabs and the West. Nasserists and Ba’athists bet on a Marxism coated in socialism. It proved to be unsuccessful when applied to the economy. At the height of the ideological Cold War between the West and communist Russia, the Arabs’ embrace of communism was unacceptable, whereas the national unity of a great nation that controls the joints of the seas and oceans and the course of oil energy has been considered a major threat to Western interests.

Thus, nuclear-armed and militarily superior Israel’s assistance was requested to launch a military strike in 1967 against Syria and Egypt, which were involved in an absurd dispute with the Gulf regime of Yemen. This shattered the Arab national project.

The turn of the 1960s into the 1970s (1968-1971) was historically decisive in Arab life, as it witnessed the birth of two alternatives to the national project. The first one was a republican regime — involving Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan — that developed a mysterious relationship with the West. The second was religious and was sponsored openly and implicitly by the United States.

In my article today, I will tackle the U.S. bias towards the religious project in Egypt on the occasion of the presidential election crisis and will defer talking about the republican project until a coming Tuesday. I am content that this project rejected politics, survived repressive security violence and coexisted with a ploy by the various regional and international transformations during its forty years. Finally, it faces popular uprisings.

Why did the U.S. bet on political Islam? It is because they sensed early on that Arab and Muslim societies were making a switch towards religious purity after the failure of democratic modernity’s experiments with improving the living standard.

The first meeting was held in Egypt with Brotherhood and jihadi Islamists, who came to assist it in ‘’clearing’’ the streets and universities of the Nasserists and leftists, who secured and enabled the Sadat regime.

The assassination of President Sadat (1981) did not erect barriers against the continued cooperation between the U.S., the Muslim Brotherhood and the jihadists. Sheikh Omar abdul-Rahman, who issued a fatwa — an official statement or order from an Islamic religious leader — to kill him, was released from President Mubarak’s prison in order to issue a different fatwa permitting the recruitment of Muslim Brotherhood members and jihadists to take part in America's war against the Red ‘’infidels’’ in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Protestant America put communism to the sword of the popular Catholic Pope John Paul II in Eastern Europe through the Polish window. And while they bet on Shiite political Islam as well, they proceeded to depose the Gulf of a shah’s nuisance. Religious authority Khomeini, who resided under Western protection in France, was summoned to substitute him. The U.S.’ bet on the Sunni and Shiite projects was disastrous and tragic. A drone aircraft-based war is fought nowadays between the U.S. and Sunni jihadist Islam. The Khomeini regime got rid of the “U.S.’” secular wing and took advantage of Bush’s transfer of Iraq to an Iran-adherent sectarian regime, penetrated the Levant by allying with the Syrian Alawite regime and established an armed mini-state in the Shiite community of Lebanon.

“Love is only for the first beloved.” In the legitimate love between the intellectual Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood, the U.S. — the great democratic state — looks indifferent to the destiny of an Egyptian cultural and social liberalism dating back to the nineteenth century. Yes, this liberalism contains a lot of fabrication and convolution in an attempt to avoid a clash with religion. However, it was a cultural beacon that illuminated the Arab world. Even Egypt regained its Arabism in the time of Abdel Nasser. The problem with the U.S.’ political ‘’pragmatism’’ is that they do not take into account the interests of the people. They do not respect their cultures and traditions once they believe that their political interests impose political and social options on the developing world, which could be inconsistent even with American democracy and the conservative liberalism of the American society. I am not a supporter and advocate of a “hostility culture” towards the U.S. as was propagated by the Syrian and Iranian regimes, which served the project of Shiite Persian penetration of Eastern Arabism under the guise of serving the Palestinian cause. More accurately, I am not concerned with who wins the presidential elections in Egypt. But I admit that democracy imposes a postulation that the popular majority elect the person or party. However, Egyptian and Arab democracies have not yet benefited from the progress of electronic technology that honestly and quickly sorts votes, especially as related to the popular balanced alignment between Islamists and liberals, as in Egypt.

But the ‘’battle of the ballot boxes’’ did not impose a medical test of presidential candidates’ good health and safety to lead a nation of 85 million people. Muslim Brotherhood candidate Sheikh Morsi underwent a lobotomy five years ago; since then, he is implicitly under the custody of the Guide and his colleague Khairat Shater, the influential motivator of the Muslim Brotherhood’s group. The people have the right to know that the person they have elected is sound of mind, body and logic. Democracy also postulates the subordination of the executive branch, including its civil and military institutions, to the presidential institution. However, the Egyptian military institution is maintaining its independence in advance through temporary constitutional legislation, which is evidence of a lack of trust between the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and any Brotherhood regime. The ‘’revolution of Egyptian judges’’ was tantamount to a mature and conscious defense of Egyptian liberalism against the Brotherhood’s populist threats, the fear of the Brotherhood’s authority swallowing up the state and the legislative authority, and the bringing of the security and military institutions and the judiciary under the authority of the Brotherhood.

Even the ‘’judge revolution’’ did not escape the onslaught of the American media, who are clearly biased towards the Muslim Brotherhood. Thus, the Constitutional Court’s judges were accused of being appointed by Mubarak, and the Criminal Court judges who judged Mubarak were accused by the U.S. of being they under the control of the junta. Finally as to Qatar’s direct and open dealing with Egyptian religious spectrum, I am not against the “interference” of the Arab political and cultural issues. I hope that Qatar expands its relationship with the Egyptian political spectrum that it has restricted itself to riding the Muslim Brotherhood's flying carpet.