How long will it take until the Islamists that are now reaping the rewards of the Arab uprisings which they initially shunned – the Salafis, the Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood – are exposed for what they are: backward, mentally retarded charlatans, hypocrites and misogynists?
Writing in the Arabist blog, (“Egypt’s Islamists and tourism”) the writer and analyst Issandr El Amrani says:
We are now at a point when the comfortable role of opposition no longer holds for Islamists; it's time to be serious about one's positions and their consequences.
A few years ago, for instance, the Muslim Brotherhood MPs in [the Egyptian] parliament opposed a law that would tighten the ban on female genital mutilation (a practice that has absolutely no basis in Islam; it's largely a Nile Valley thing) and also opposed a law banning child beatings. If they are just traditionalists, let them say that. But if they want to invoke religion, they better make their case with full theological and scriptural backing.
Unfortunately, female genital mutilations and child beatings are not the Islamists’ only warts.
According to El Amrani, it would seem that the Islamists also believe that it is possible for tourism in Egypt to flourish without alcohol, with segregated beaches and with the manipulation of Pharaonic statues, such as those depicting fertility gods, to conceal nudity.
He quotes a veiled Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Azza al-Jarf, who told a cheering crowd of supporters at a campaign event dubbed "Let's encourage tourism" on 11 December: “Tourists don't need to drink alcohol when they come to Egypt; they have plenty at home… They come to see the ancient civilization, not to drink alcohol." The crowd chanted: "Tourism will be at its best under Freedom and Justice," the Brotherhood's party and the most influential political group to emerge after the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
In addition, prominent Salafi clerics, such as Yasser Bourhami, are advocating restrictions on tourism, the source of livelihood for millions of Egyptians. In an interview with the private Egyptian channel Dream TV, Bourhami described one of his grand ideas for boosting the tourism industry: "A five-star hotel with no alcohol, a beach for women – sisters – separated from men in a bay where the two sides can enjoy a holiday for a week without sins."
Another Islamist genius, Tarek Shalaan, who is a prominent member of the Salafi Al-Nur Party, “stumbled through a recent TV interview when asked about his views on the display of nude Pharaonic statues like those depicting fertility gods”, accordng to El Amrani. "The antiquities that we have will be put under a different light to focus on historical events," Shalaan said.
And there’s more.
However, now that they’re “in power”, at least in Tunisia and Egypt, it’s time to question some of the Islamists’ main planks.
One example is the slogan of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, ‑ “Islam is the solution”. How, exactly will Islam solve Egypt’s economic problems – its grinding poverty and over population? What’s the Muslim Brotherhood’s answer to this, beyond abolishing usury, i.e. introducing “Islamic banking”, which will do absolutely nothing to address the country’s pressing needs?
The answer, alas, is nothing. The Islamists have no economic or foreign or any other policy beyond getting to power and putting women, minorities and others who are not exactly like them in their place. And if you ask yourself how a major party and its variants throughout the Arab world can survive without a policy, the answer is very simple. The answer is common knowledge among Islamists but they are somewhat reluctant to articulate it in public among non-members, for fear of being ridiculed. The Islamists’ answer to all of society’s problems, from unemployment, overpopulation and poor public services to ritual humiliations at the hands of Israel and its ilk, is simply this: if you please God he will solve all your problems. That’s it! You need do nothing further than indulge in activities which, in the Islamists’ eyes, will please God. And he will do the rest. Now you can see why they are shy of articulating this absurd view to the world at large and are comfortable in sharing it only among themselves.
But the big black cloud hovering over all Islamists remains the well-grounded suspicion that they remain anti-democrats and would, when the time is ripe, abolish democracy and institute a theocracy. In my opinion, the suspicion that, in essence, all Islamist parties believe in “One man, one vote, one time” is as true today as it ever was.
According to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Misri Al-Yawm, only a few days ago a member of Al-Nur Party’s Supreme Committee, Shaaban Darwish, told a party rally in Giza that democracy is heresy because it contradicts the principle of allegiance that was used after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, whereby people choose their caliph once and then remain loyal to him.
One must therefore beware of the Islamists’ pro-democracy "propaganda". As Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of Al-Arabiya TV, says ("The Islamists: between propaganda and the truth"):
Since the ouster of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, many people … claim that the image of the Islamists has been distorted by the Arabs and the West to prevent them from political participation. Following the revolutions, the Islamist party leaders rushed to improve their image in the eyes of the West, issuing statements stressing that they would not prohibit bikinis from their countries' beaches, or outlaw alcohol, and that they would accept a woman or Christian as leader.
Of course, these speeches are nothing more than public relations, and something that can only be believed by someone ignorant of the region or the logic of religious parties. If the claim of freedom of religion is true, it expresses the opinion of only a few [religious party] leaders, as the majority of leaders and members of such groups consider "purifying" society to be their first duty, and it would not be long before they turned against those political leaders urging tolerance.
Arab society is going through difficult developments that may lead to more dictatorships under the name of democracy, such as what happened in Iran. Therefore, we cannot settle for reading their intentions and believing their propaganda. If these societies … truly want a democratic approach and want to grant an opportunity for all political forces ‑ including the Islamist and Arab nationalist forces ‑ to participate, they must build a state that is based on a constitution that protects rights, and an army that understands that its duty is not to rule, but to protect democratic institutions such as the judiciary and the parliament, and prevent the democratic system from being overthrown….
In other words, the solution to our countries’ problems is to build democratic, law-governed states that treat all of their citizens as equals, irrespective of gender, colour, ethnicity, faith or no faith.
The solution is not Islam.
