I had an interesting conversation with Egyptian political analyst Hassan Nafaa the other day in which I heard one of the more convincing explanation of the coup against Mursi. His argument was that the Brotherhood presidency was becoming so well-ensconced that 1. getting it out would become impossible (low-key rigging and putting people in key positions overseeing the electoral process) 2. it was better to force them out entirely and then negotiate from a position of strength rather than agree a compromise that would maintain Mursi, giving the Islamists an upper hand they would make the most of and never lose.
“The army found itself facing massive popular rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood. The country couldn’t go on for another three years (of the Mursi presidency). There was not going to be another good chance like this to show support for people rejecting to the Brotherhood,” Nafaa said. “They (military) were convinced that the Brotherhood had become weak and it could be dealt with from a position of strength, even if they were still able to mobilize crowds on the street. If the Brotherhood had made a deal (before 3 July) it could have ruined this revolution. Despite the Rabaa and Nahda protests, the army and the others are in a stronger position.”
Nafaa is acknowledging a couple of things here: that defence minister and architect of the coup Abdulfattah al-Sisi was not really interested in a compromise, and that the Brotherhood and its supporters are seen as a formidable force, even by the army. Gamal Heshmat, senior figure in the Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party, speaking to me at the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest this week, said Sisi had insisted that Mursi hold a referendum on his presidency within two weeks, but Mursi and the Brotherhood insisted on parliamentary elections to form a new government first. It’s easy to see that nervous elements of the state saw this as simply a chance for the Islamists to entrench their position and so preferred to seize quick gains now.
But things have dragged on and government jitteriness remains palpable. An unnamed official was cited in a couple of international news outlets on Monday saying the infamous plan to disperse the protests would go into implementation within 24 hours. So far it has not come to pass. After the shooting to death of over 50 protesters outside the Republican Guard building in Cairo a week after the coup, international pressure on the interim government to avoid more bloodshed has been intense and a string of mediators have passed through the capital in recent weeks. In the ‘Arab Spring’ era, any official who takes a decision that leads to deaths has to be wary of the consequences, one day, and ministry of interior official have even acknowledged this (see this Samer al-Atrush tweet).
Heshmat pointedly declared that the Brotherhood has the names of those responsible for the carnage last month. “Those killed will get justice and we know who they are that did it. We got information about that from inside their military units. We have the names,” he said. Vice President Mohammed ElBaradei has emerged for the eradicateur semi-official media – all linked to the intelligence services – as the bete noire who is holding the military-backed authorities back from taking decisive action – though perhaps he is just a convenient cover for a regime cornered by the failure of the coup to go according to plan.
Talking to Nafaa, he repeated some of the arguments that have been used by Sisi and other military officials to justify the move against Mursi – striking arguments questioning the patriotic credentials of the Brotherhood as a movement and as ideology. “It’s clear that the caliphate has been the driving force (of the Brotherhood) since the time of Hassan al-Banna and that’s why the Brotherhood has a weak sense of nationalism. Any Muslim is closer to them than an Egyptian Christian. They don’t believe in the Egyptian nation or the Arab nation,” Nafaa said.
This transnationalism has become a rather in vogue argument, not just in Egypt: it is often cited to discredit Islamist activists in the United Arab Emirates, where there is an ongoing repression involving arrests and trials of Emiratis, and Egyptians, seen as linked to the Brotherhood organization. Some Egyptian commentators have called for the Brotherhood’s international organization to be dismantled. The same charges were laid against communists and Arab nationalists in the 1950s and 1960s, and it’s an obviously convenient way of delegitimizing your opponents. Can an Islamist ideological position be fairly tarred as internationalist and lacking nationalist conviction?
If we look at the caliphate as an institution, it operated historically in different contexts which usually involved a territorially-defined state (however loose the loose the borders may have been). The state may have tried to extend its realm at the expense of neighbours, but that’s hardly unique to polities carrying the name ‘caliphate’. One of those entities was of course based in Cairo, seat of the Fatimid caliphate. Today, the Saudi state bears all the key elements of a (Sunni) caliphate – ruler who gives the class of religious scholars room to ensure Sharia rules govern society – and if the Brotherhood entertained the idea of some kind of loose unity of Islamist-led states, that hardly differs from the pan-Arab vision of Nasserist Egypt.
Yes, there is a real dispute over the shape and direction of the Egyptian state, but what many of the Brotherhood’s most vocal opponents tend to confront the Islamists with looks rather more like the Egyptian chauvinism launched by Sadat and honed by Mubarak – especially in light of the anti-Palestinian (and recently anti-Syrian) rhetoric they invariably engage in.
