GOING PRE-911:

Egypt cracks down on Muslim Brotherhood: The banned group had been grudgingly tolerated, but regional chaos creates an opportunity for Mubarak's regime (Megan K. Stack and Noha el Hennawy, February 16, 2007, LA Times)

Egypt's regime is seizing upon a moment of regional chaos and U.S. inattention to crack down aggressively on the country's most popular opposition group and shore up its hold on power, analysts here say.

In a bald push against the Muslim Brotherhood, the secular government in recent weeks has arrested hundreds of activists, unveiled new restrictions on political Islam and published a stream of anti-Brotherhood propaganda in the state-run media. More than 80 members were jailed on Thursday alone, Brotherhood officials said.

"This is the most brutal campaign against the Brothers since [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak came to power," said Amr Shobaki, a political analyst and Muslim Brotherhood expert at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

With the U.S. distracted by the war in Iraq and increasingly nervous about the regional rise of political Islam, Mubarak's regime appears free to squeeze the Brotherhood, which has long been officially outlawed -- though tolerated -- as an Islamist opposition force.

President Bush's drive for democracy in the Middle East can not be squared with his short-sighted intolerance of political Islam.

MORE:
What the West Can Learn From Islam (TARIQ RAMADAN, 2/16/07, The Chronicle Review)

We in the West have entered a phase of transition, fraught with tension. Just as it is true that our societies must make major adjustments, it is equally essential that Muslims, who have been residing in the West for several generations, respond clearly to the challenges of the modern, secularized societies in which they have chosen to make their homes. For the last 20 years, I have been focusing my efforts on the ways that Muslims can live their lives in the West, becoming Western Muslims: Muslims by religion; American, British, French, German by culture.

To promote that view, I have found it necessary to revisit the Islamic scriptural sources. Some of what we highlight today as core principles of Islam derive from the specific cultures of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia; we read our texts mainly against the backdrop of a period, since the 13th century, when Muslims in those areas were struggling against Western aggression. They emphasized withdrawing from the taint of the West and drew a border between two different worlds: "the abode of Islam" and "the abode of war." That polarized understanding of the world, which relies on a specific reading of only some verses of the Quran and of Prophetic traditions, is outdated.

In my work of the last several years, including To Be a European Muslim (published in 1997 in Europe by the Islamic Foundation) and Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (published in French in 2003 and in English by Oxford University Press in 2004), I have examined the key factors leading to confusion in the minds of Muslims about living between one's culture of origin and Islamic principles. I have attempted to show that one can be entirely European, or American, and Muslim (that is why I have written my books in Western languages). We all possess multiple identities, and we must, as a matter of necessity, put forward the values we share with our Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and atheist fellow citizens of our secularized societies. Social justice, for example, is essential. As the Quran mentions: "God commands you to be just." So, too, rereading the scriptures sheds light on a concept of the citizen's attitude toward the state that is compatible with modern life in the West: The Quran reinforces the idea of consultation when it speaks of the shura, which could be a council of advisers to the government: "The Muslims are those who consult each other regarding their affair." The idea of consultation is also at the heart of Western democracy, and readers of the sources of Western tradition and of Islamic tradition may be surprised to find that the two are not so far different from each other.

We must turn our backs on a vision that posits "us" against "them" and understand that our shared citizenship is the key factor in building the society of the future together. We must move forward from integration -- simply becoming a member of a society -- to contribution -- to being proactive and offering something to the society.

Since September 11, the shift in outlook I call for has become even more urgent. Fear, the obsession with security, and more recently the Danish cartoon crisis over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and Pope Benedict XVI's remarks on Islam's "evil and inhuman" teachings have polarized the debate. In most Western societies, citizens increasingly speak in terms of us (Westerners) and them (Muslims) -- and vice versa.

Therefore I have also tried to tie rereading the scriptures to how, in practice, Muslims can contribute to and be more visible in debates on topics like education, social and urban policy, or marginalization. It is crucial that today's Western Muslims -- men and women -- make their voices heard on such issues; they must refuse to withdraw into religious, cultural, or social ghettos. They must no longer see themselves as a "minority." What I am calling for is an "ethics of citizenship" that would encourage Muslims to make their decisions as citizens in the name of shared principles (competence, integrity, justice, etc.), not solely based on their religious identity.

At the grass-roots level, a "silent revolution" is already taking place in Muslim communities. In everyday life, millions of women and men are building connecting passageways; committing themselves at the social, political, and cultural level; giving shape to a new "we." Muslims have been active, for example, in helping to produce and circulate the Rotterdam Charter. Initiated in 1996 in the Netherlands, and now being circulated for adoption in European nations, the charter pledges to develop and improve police services for a multiethnic society. In London, citizens' groups from across the city are working to bring different communities together on common projects, including steps to end discrimination in the job market and in housing. The political debates and ideological confrontations among Western elites fail to embrace those fascinating processes that are emerging at the local level and obscure the living dynamics of encounter and dialogue that are flourishing at the grass roots.

Those processes, which have been accelerating over the last 15 years, are of enormous importance for the contemporary Muslim conscience. On the theoretical and juridical level, they oblige Muslim scholars (ulema) to return to the founding texts to derive new ways of understanding, fresh responses to the challenges of our age. Indeed, as American and European Muslims in the heart of our industrialized, postmodern societies confront complex scientific, economic, political, and cultural issues, they are not finding the answers they seek from the intellectual output of the ulema living in societies where Muslims form a majority. As a result, for the first time, we are witnessing the reversal of a trend: Western Muslims -- by necessity of their environments, their new understandings, and their new initiatives -- are beginning to have an influence on traditional Muslim societies. Ideas of civil society, of citizenship, of democracy, and of relations with Western secularized or non-Muslim societies are now openly discussed in many parts of the Muslim world; Western Muslims and those living in countries where Muslims are in the majority share in the central debate over what rights and freedoms citizens have. It is, I believe, clear that the experience of Muslims in the West has, and will increasingly have, an impact on traditional Muslim societies.,/blockquote>

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 16, 2007 6:58 AM