What Do We Expect from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists?
by Alaa El Aswany
Tarek el-Bishri is a distinguished judge and a great historian from whose valuable books we have learned the modern history of Egypt, but he belongs, intellectually at least, to the Islamist school of thought. Bishri knows of course that when a revolution succeeds in overthrowing a system of government then the constitution that arose under that system automatically lapses and the revolution has to draft a new constitution that fulfils its objectives. This is a fact that Bishri knows well, yet in spite of that, in the aftermath of the success of the Egyptian revolution and the overthrow of Mubarak, instead of Bishri insisting on writing a new constitution, we were surprised to find him obeying the military council and accepting the chairmanship of a committee the council formed to make limited amendments to the 1971 constitution. The military council then asked Egyptians to vote in a referendum on the amendments recommended by Bishri’s committee. The council then turned against the referendum result and declared an interim constitution of 63 articles, without consulting Egyptians. Bishri’s cooperation with the military council had the effect of depriving Egypt of a new constitution that might have put us on the right track, instead of leading us down the dark tunnel in which Bishri’s committee left us and which, a full year later, we are trying, and failing, to get out of. The question is: how can a man as learned, upright and patriotic as Bishri take on a task that he knows for certain will obstruct the course of the revolution? The answer is that through his committee Bishri wanted to ensure the political dominance of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which he belongs. The Muslim Brotherhood’s interests required an alliance with the military council and compliance with its wishes. Bishri wanted to serve the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood because he believes that to be in Egypt’s interest.
Another fact: policemen and soldiers have committed horrendous abuses against demonstrators in three successive massacres – Maspero, Mohamed Mahmoud and the cabinet offices. They killed demonstrators with live ammunition, blinded them by firing shotgun pellets into their eyes, dragged women along the ground and molested them. The tragedy culminated in the scene of the woman they dragged along the ground, stripped of her clothes and kicked with their boots. This brutality brought worldwide condemnation, but a well-known sheikh appeared on one of the religious channels with two salafi sheikhs and the three of them thought that dragging women along the ground and molesting them was so funny that they had trouble controlling their laughter. When Dr ElBaradei issued a statement condemning the abuse of female demonstrators, the television sheikh commented in jest: “A true believer! They (meaning the liberals) are all acting pious now.” And when the newspapers reported that a woman wearing the niqab had been dragged along the ground and trampled by soldiers in army boots, the television sheikh said, “Do we know who put a niqab on this woman? She might have been infiltrated to drive a wedge between the salafists and the army.”
The idea is clear and important. The television sheikh who makes a big scene if the police prevent a woman wearing the niqab in some Western country (in accordance with the local laws) doesn’t lift a finger if an Egyptian woman in niqab is molested, because she doesn’t belong to his group and he doesn’t know who made her wear the niqab. The television sheikh can’t imagine that virtue exists outside his group . In his opinion you can’t have a conscience and condemn abuse unless you’re pious, and you can’t be pious unless you’re Muslim, and you can’t be pious unless you belong to the Brotherhood or the salafists. Any injustice or violation of someone’s humanity doesn’t much interest the television sheikh as long as the victims are not from his group. Everything that serves the interests of the Brotherhood and the salafists is true religion, and the sheikh considers everything that delays the process of them coming to power as intrigues, or at least trivial things not worthy of attention even if they are crimes of murder or molestation. The third fact: in a spontaneous reaction to the molestation of Egyptian women by policemen and soldiers, women staged a march under the banner “Free Women of Egypt” to condemn the abuse of their fellow women. The head of the women’s section at the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, Dr Manal Aboul Hassan, then came out and accused the demonstrators of being financed from abroad and of having foreign agendas (the sam























