Fundamentalism and Intellectuals in Egypt, 1973-1993 by David Sagiv

Author:David Sagiv [Sagiv, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781135239619
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2013-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

Idris asserts that the phenomenon of fear is surprising because ‘we were and still are Muslims. The illiterate Egyptian fellah knows his Creator well and conducts his prayers at the proper times.’ Idris refers back to the period of the British occupation in Egypt when the call of the Muslim Brothers began to be heard, of which the harbinger was Shaikh Hasan al-Banna. He recalls that al-Banna’s call enjoyed great success, particularly among the young people, and that it was only natural that the Muslim Brothers, as a vast assemblage of Islamic youth, should take part — men and women alike — in the national movement. ‘When we were [students] at university we worked together — Muslim Brothers, Wafd members, left-wingers and plain patriots — in full coordination and without altercations.’ The flourishing of the Muslim Brothers and the close relations among its members, according to Idris, made it a prime front for struggle. During the July Revolution, when the people began to object to the rule of the military, the Brothers also opposed it. Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir, concerned about their growing strength, the more so when he realized they had gone underground and become a fighting military group, moved to liquidate them on a massive scale. He was unable to eliminate the entire Brothers movement because they had scattered among the Arab states and elsewhere, awaiting a more propitious time. Inside, a new radical Islamic movement had already begun to organize. With Sadat’s assumption of power and the well-known stand he took toward the Nasirists and left-wingers as the preface to his joining the American camp, he saw that his only backing, inside and outside, came from these ‘Muslims‘. Under these conditions, according to Idris, the underground organizations multiplied and flourished on completely new foundations. These were no longer political groups, like the Muslim Brothers; they had become a radical organization which bared its teeth and nails. This was sufficient to create a cover under which Sadat could effect a conciliation with the Jews and ‘hand over Egypt, and then all the Arabs, to America and Israel‘. The Khomeini revolution proved to all those who were urging it that it was indeed possible to establish an Islamic state led by shaikhs, preachers and amirs of the underground Islamic groups. In the absence of a nationalist leader following President Nasir’s death, the imperialist circles began to think about replacing ‘Arab nationalism ‘with the ‘Islamic idea‘, but things did not work out as America and Israel wished. For the underground and open Islamic groups sprang from young Arabs who were searching for their identity. They found the greater part of that identity in Islam, and it was essential to round it off with a patriotic national identity. ‘They are, then, patriotic youngsters, as we were in the 1950s and 1960s‘, declares Idris. They joined the Islamic movements in good faith, pure and untainted, battle-ready, with a powerful craving to brandish the banner of the Islamic nation and of religion’.35

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