"Islamism at the Crossroads"

An article with this title appeared in the Al-Ahram Weekly, 16 - 22 February, 2012. This is the premier English language newspaper in Egypt and became our main source of information during our stay there.

The author, Gihan Shahine, states that the results of Egypt’s first free parliamentary elections "indicated that a majority of Egyptians may want an Islamist government." He goes on to point out that "Egypt’s largest and best organized group, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party now constitutes the largest bloc in parliament, followed by the ultraconservative Salafist Nour Party which unexpectedly is the second largest political group in the parliament."

The article summarizes the concerns of liberal and secular groups as well as Coptic Christians that the new government will push for an Islamist agenda. There are numerous secular opinion makers who are expressing serious doubts about the sincerity of the Muslim Brotherhood’s contention that it is a moderate group that wishes to implement Shari’a Law without sacrificing personal freedom.

So, the big question is whether the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party will move to the right and align with the Salafist Nour Party or aim for a centrist coalition that includes secularist parties. Some analysts have postulated that perhaps Egyptians were not seeking Islamist rule but voted for the Freedom and Justice Party candidates because they had integrity and clean hands.

While this article shed a great deal of light on the political situation in Egypt, it also raised questions in our minds. The first question concerned the meaning of the terms Islamist and Islamism. In the western media, these terms are often used to describe a radical interpretation of Islam such as the one that drives members of Al-Qaeda to crash airplanes into buildings or the Taliban to practice brutal repression of women and massacre Afghan civilians. Is this the same interpretation of Islamist and Islamism that Gihan Shahine uses? Clearly not!

What, then, is the definition of these terms for the Egyptians? Further research was clearly needed to elucidate this.

As a start, we obtained a copy of the Constitutional Declaration of 2011, the interim constitution that guides Egypt during the transition, from the website of Egypt’s Cabinet of Ministers.

http://www.cabinet.gov.eg/AboutEgypt/ConstitutionalDeclaration_e.pdf

The first two articles of this essential document state:

Article 1

The Arab Republic of Egypt is a democratic state based on citizenship. The Egyptian people are part of the Arab nation and work for the realization of its comprehensive unity.

Article 2

Islam is the religion of the state and the Arabic language is its official language. Principles of Islamic law (Shari’a) are the principal source of legislation.

So, if Islam is the state religion and Islamic law (Shari’a) the source of legislation, isn’t Egypt Islamic already? Or is Egypt Islamist?

A search of the constitutional history of the country shows that an article similar to the current Article 2 was introduced into the constitution in 1980, when Anwar Sadat was President. Thus, in theory, Shari’a law has been the source of legislation for many years! One could wonder what if anything, will change with the new parliament, labeled Islamist by Al-Ahram, as they begin to make policy? What will change may be not so much that the country will become more Islamic but that it will be a democratic state based on citizenship rather than a state ruled by a dictator and his confederates and enforcers.

Returning to the question about the meaning or the terms Islamist and Islamism we have concluded that these are ambiguous and that their meaning is not well understood among our readers who are mostly American and European non-Muslims. Therefore, we have adopted a new Pioneer West policy: The words Islamist and Islamism will henceforth never be used in our writings!