Egypt: Return of the Fuloul (III)

Perhaps because of the impermanence of this world—and the inherent futility of pursuit after it—and the centrality of the hereafter to Islam, Islamists often begin from the wrong premise that life on earth is not to be taken too seriously, and they imagine this is piety. But this is not piety: this is foolishness and […]

Perhaps because of the impermanence of this world—and the inherent futility of pursuit after it—and the centrality of the hereafter to Islam, Islamists often begin from the wrong premise that life on earth is not to be taken too seriously, and they imagine this is piety. But this is not piety: this is foolishness and as the world fleets away, it leaves them behind, their nations as beggars for foreign aid on the international scene and their children as almajirai on the national scene.
While an individual can vow poverty only after he has got the world—and not before; the Muslim community itself must always struggle hard to be a rich, prosperous, strong and independent nation. It must develop a modern outlook and make itself culturally sophisticated, equipped with the modern skills of governance and efficient economic management.
The same goes for Islamic scholarship. Though it has been deprived of al-Azhar, it must develop a more effective method and new institutions to begin the cultivation of Islamic knowledge in order to create a new leadership class that is equipped with Islamic theological and jurisprudential competence of the required profundity; and an awareness of other traditions, as well as an appreciation and full understanding of the Islam’s rich cultural heritage and differences.
Hopefully, this should help obviate that profound misidentification of enemies that often leads to the disabling distraction of the duo of sectarianism and anti-Christianity bogging down all efforts of Islamists. And perhaps after talking of fuloul, if has now become clear that it is the fuloul of Ikhwan that, like the Phoenix, will, no doubt, rise to haunt and compound this new confederacy of its perennial enemies—the United States, Israel, now openly Saudi Arabia and the legion of all anti-Islamic Westoxicated Egyptians.
But if what has happened to the Ikhwan and its short-lived political experiment has any value as a lesson for the worldwide Islamist community, the most important one is probably its ability to expose the true nature and role of the main client state of imperialism in the Islamic Middle East—Saudi Arabia. For a brief moment, the struggle paired a manifestation of Islam and a regime that used to put great store by its custodianship of the religion’s Holy Places. The choice it unhesitatingly made told a story and had such an impact that a hundred years of writing against it will not have hoped to make on people who have conferred the prestige of Islam on a regime that is its worst enemy.
And of even greater significance is the statement put out by the usually compliant—cringingly compliant—ulama of Saudi Arabia—if indeed a conclave of doktorah can really pass for the ulama of Islam’s founding place—which condemns the Mursi ouster. They admirably dared differ from the royal line. Though couched in its usual, irritatingly pedestrian phraseology, the statement condemned the overthrow of democracy by Egypt’s military class, but it was deathly silent on the Saudi government’s role that made this tragedy possible—or the pressure brought by the Americans.
And so, like its support for despotic regimes and monarchies, America’s support for the destruction of democracy and the proscription of the Ikhwan in Egypt will continue to rankle in the minds of all conscious Egyptians and their sympathisers worldwide as another set of American crimes against the great Egyptian people. And if they once again descend into a spree of Luxor-style murderous nihilism, the world ought to know who to properly blame.
Ikhwan must plan how to rise again after this imposed fall: this will require a profound change of attitude about the world and the need for a sustained pan-Ummatic pursuit after national power and material greatness. This will require instituting a thorough reform of all its social, economic and political programmes and the broadening of its outlook and cultural horizon.
Among other measures, it must also plan for the Egyptian economy, and as one of the vanguards, lay down the blueprint for the future economic integration of the countries of the Muslim World, as a prelude and a complement to real Third World economic integration. On the political front, it should continue with the democratisation of the political process; but first, it needs to resolve that limiting, self-created problem of a post-Islamic Jahiliyyah and the debilitating debates for participating or not participating in it.
And as it secures its borders, it must begin to secure its society; and its Great Teacher has taught it that: ‘The world and everything inside it is valuable but the most valuable thing in the whole world is a virtuous woman.’ But the effect of this is nowhere to be seen in Muslim society, where she is still a stranger, outside the door.
Though it looks like it, the freedom the West has given woman is not the freedom to be—but the freedom to be had. And the equality that woman gets in the new inter-gender relationship is disguised, exploitative subservience in which man is given power and pleasure without responsibility—and the woman is left smiling but carrying the can, or the child or the emotional trauma, as the case may be.
The reality that may come as a surprise to many is that even a cursory glance at gender relations through the ages—from pre-Islamic civilisations to the current gender nonsense of post-modernism—will show that it is Islam that has given woman the greatest measure of respect and freedom; but it is Muslim society that has deprived her of all traces of either. And in this, of all societies, perhaps Northern Nigerian Muslim society is the biggest culprit in which all the divine juridical provisions put in place to free and honour woman have cynically been turned into chains to exploit and enslave her—as suitor turns captor. But, still, in comparison with the West, Islam has no reason to feel any shame or anxiety about its treatment of women, though Muslims have every reason to do so, to the extent that they have not been true to the dictates of their faith.
The hijab, this outward sign of what they imagine is women’s subjection, is not merely about sartorial inelegance; it is a sign of inexploitability that comes with its own attitude of modesty and appropriate language and body language: if it doesn’t, it becomes merely a cultural fashion piece that may only then be bettered by the haute couture that they hold up to the world as their masterpiece. The hijab is not oppression, at least not any more than the bikini is freedom; and if the mahjubah and the nun share something, at least they do share something: the bikini-clad shares nothing with anyone. And it is this culture of nakedness—or nakedness of culture—that Islam disproves of, not beauty or the need of Muslim women for a wholesome feel-good experience.
Islam rejects those aspects of feminism that are against nature and have been rejected by the more sober heads of that movement. For instance, Islam also rejects what Julia Kristeva, one of the less disagreeable of the leading Western feminine lights, has found objectionable and has rejected in feminism. Islam rejects the first phase of feminism that, seeking universal equality between man and woman, overlooks sexual differences.
In addition, it also rejects its second aspect that has tried to invent a uniquely feminine language and culture because, according to the feminists, the existing ones are patriarchal. Besides being impossible, this is really laughable and a ludicrous waste of time. But Islam has no quarrel with its third phase—the need to re-conceive the issue of identity, difference and their relationship. But all this is often lost in the unequal argument between an ebullient West and Ikhwan’s Abdel Qader Audah’s incapable followers and ignorant scholars who are unable to look it in the face in this mass mediated culture of upturned sexual mores. And, unfortunately for Muslims, the world does not care for a beautiful theory that remains locked up in scriptural tomes.
At any event, there has been progress and much pragmatism. If fanaticism is redoubling your effort after you have forgetten your aim, at least now no one will ever accuse the Ikhwan of fanaticism anymore—it has gone democratic, it has headed a government and has played by the rules, it has made one or two mistakes and it has, hopefully, learnt its lesson; perhaps one can only accuse it of being wise only after the event—restating its aim, after it is no longer in position to put effort to realise or defend it.. Ikhwan must begin to participate in the grand geopolitical strategy game by, among other things, first designing a West-free security architecture for the Muslim World, a region that the Ikhwan is destined to lead.
And with the right effort and much luck, democratic Islamic rule will be established again, but the kind that will endure and prevail is the one whose foundation is laid on the graves of those who are intolerant of others within Islam or outside its cultural boundaries. The future is that of freedom and justice—and these will be for everyone or they will be for no one.