Category Archives: Article

A setback for Islamophobia

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=422125

The Islamophobic movement in the United States has suffered a series of important setbacks in recent months. These developments promise to halt its slow, seemingly inexorable crawl over the past decade toward the mainstream of American cultural and political life, especially on the right. They may even signal the start of a process that pushes the worst forms of anti-Muslim bigotry back into the fringes whence it emanated and where it belongs.

The most noteworthy example of such a setback occurred last week when Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and four other Republican House members sent a letter to various government inspectors general demanding the investigation of, among other people, Huma Abedin, a long-serving personal aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The letter alleged that Abedin was somehow part of a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to “infiltrate” the US government.

The letter was not only widely perceived as vicious and groundless, but also as a prime example of McCarthyite guilt by insinuation and association and the most recent iteration of the “paranoid style” in American politics.

The letter essentially presents a conspiracy theory about Muslim Brotherhood plots to take over the American government or at least influence its policies in a nefarious manner. Its accusations against Abedin were worthy of old John Birch Society charges that various government officials were Communist “agents of influence.” The letter largely relied on the ravings of Frank Gaffney’s notorious Center for Security Policy, which specializes in trafficking paranoia and hatred against Muslims and rival conservatives.

But Bachmann and Gaffney chose the wrong target in Abedin, who is also married to former congressman Anthony Wiener. She wasn’t just a little-known figure with a foreign-sounding name and potentially dubious relatives. She is a well-known quantity in Washington, familiar to leaders in both parties and well-respected and liked. Washington in general was simply not going to suspect without any evidence whatsoever that Abedin was involved in any kind of insidious conspiracy.

The pushback was led by Republicans themselves. In particular, Senator John McCain launched a blistering attack on the letter on the Senate floor. House Speaker John Boehner also expressed dismay, as did Florida Senator and Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio. The Islamophobes’ miscalculation in this case was so severe, and the pushback so forceful, that this incident may well prove a turning point in the battle against anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States.

This wasn’t quite as dramatic as Joe McCarthy’s comeuppance at the hands of attorney Joseph Welch who asked him, “Have you left no sense of decency?” But it’s pretty close. The Abedin incident can and should be cited time and again when Muslim Americans find their loyalty questioned on the basis of their identity alone.

The most shrill, vituperative and overwrought professional Islamophobes in the United States had already been dealt a crippling blow by the right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who cited many of them as direct inspirations and heroes.

The massacre of young Norwegians he committed meant that the logical consequences of the hate inspired by the preachers of Islamophobia were suddenly no longer deniable. Perhaps even more importantly, Breivik’s mayhem wasn’t targeted primarily at Muslims, but at a large summer camp of Norwegian youth followers of a liberal party he detested.

Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, in particular, were badly damaged by Breivik’s barbaric rampage and the fact that he was discovered to have authored an endless, ranting manifesto citing them scores of times and suggesting Spencer would be a good candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize.

And Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum has recently been inflicting enormous damage on itself by persisting in publishing the writings of Raymond Ibrahim. Ibrahim has been not only growing ever more strident but also falling victim to hoaxes including a so-called “sodomy fatwa,” and a supposed campaign by Muslim extremists to destroy the pyramids.

Are there fanatical Muslim clerics capable of such declarations? Of course there are. But did anyone actually say either of those things? It appears not, but Middle East Forum doesn’t want to admit that. Ibrahim’s mistakes are only increasing the already well-established impression that Pipes and his outfit are willing to embrace anything that makes Muslims look bad, even if they are preposterous misrecognitions.

American Islamophobia is largely a creature of the political right. In the 50s and early 60s, William F. Buckley led the campaign to drive anti-Semitism out of the conservative movement for its own good. The same process must be repeated now with regard to Islamophobia.

There isn’t anyone on the American right at the moment with the stature and influence Buckley had. It’s going to have to be a collective effort this time. But the American conservative movement desperately needs to cure itself of anti-Muslim bigotry, and it might finally be starting to do that.

Assad is Doomed

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/18/assad-is-doomed.html

Today’s bombing attack in Damascus is a dagger in the heart of the Assad regime.  The bomb took out key government figures and detonated only a short distance from Assad’s own presidential palace. Reports are sketchy but it is clear that Defense Minister Dawood Rajiha, a recently appointed Christian regime hardliner, is dead. An even more key figure, Assef Shawkat, Deputy Defense Minister and Assad’s brother-in-law, has also almost certainly been killed. Other vital regime figures reported killed include Hasan Turkmani, Assistant Vice President and Chief of Crisis Operations, who is widely blamed for the campaign of torture in the country, and Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar.

Even if the regime survives for many months, or possibly years, today’s bombing will likely be remembered as the beginning of the end.

As has been the case from the outset of the uprising, everything the regime does to violently suppress the rebellion only strengthens it by undercutting support for the government and increasing sympathy for the rebels. An intensification of conflict might buy the government more time, but only deepens the likelihood that it cannot survive, even in a greatly modified form.

Syria Car Bomb OpenZ
Syrian policemen inspect the site of a car bomb explosion on Mazzeh highway in the capital Damascus on July 13. Today’s bombing shows just how successful rebels have been. (AFP / Getty Images)

Several other figures were reported injured and possibly killed, and the blast took place inside the headquarters of the regime’s war effort. The government counterinsurgency and repression campaign is led by a group of less than 20 people, many of whom were undoubtedly in the room at the time of the explosion.

Assad’s brother-in-law Shawkat was particularly hated. Along with Bashar’s younger brother, Maher, Shawkat was a leading individual target for the rebels. He served as head of Syrian military intelligence, among other positions, and was a crucial cog in the family-centered regime apparatus in Damascus.

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which this will be both a practical blow to the regime’s campaign by removing key figures and an enormous psychological and symbolic catastrophe for the Assad dictatorship. It is reported that the bomber was a trusted security officer, possibly even from Assad’s own bodyguard. The message is clear: no one is safe and nowhere is inaccessible to the rebels.

The regime still, in theory at least, has enormous military means at its disposal to crush dissent. Most of the armed forces have remained in their barracks during the fighting thus far, presumably because rank-and-file Sunni Syrian troops are simply not trusted to remain loyal and mass defections are feared. More worrying is the prospect of the increased use of air power by the regime, potentially including MiG fighter jets. The most grim scenario could involve the deployment of Syria’s considerable stockpiles of chemical and other special weapons, as was used by Saddam Hussein against Kurdish rebels and Iranian forces in the 1980s.

But significantly, this bombing comes in the context of the opposition’s touted “Damascus Volcano” offensive, in which the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups are consolidating their forces around the capital in an effort at either a decisive battle or a major psychological victory. Today’s assassinations certainly accomplish the second goal. Whether the FSA was directly responsible for the bombing or not (it has already claimed responsibility, as has a shadowy Islamist group, “Liwa al-Islam”), the assassination of these key regime figures will be understood by the government and the public as part of their campaign.

The rebel “Damascus Volcano” offensive probably won’t succeed in bringing down the government in the immediate term. But even if government forces secure a technical military “victory” and push the rebels out of the capital, the “Volcano” will probably have a similar effect as the Vietcong Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War: a military defeat that nonetheless demonstrates the almost certain outcome of the conflict.

The most likely consequence of the “Volcano” offensive and today’s stunning rebel success in eliminating key regime figures is a huge intensification of the conflict, particularly on the part of the government. The Assad regime still has considerable support in Alawite, Christian and other communities making up a considerable proportion of the population, as well as numerous and horrifying remaining military options. A Balkanization, or “Lebanon-ization,” process in Syria is already well underway, with sectarian and ethnic enclaves emerging throughout the country.

Assad will eventually fall. Whether the process will break Syria apart or not remains to be seen. But if the outside world, and above all the United States, remain passive observers, they can hardly complain about the outcome.

A patronizing narrative pigeonholes Arabs

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=419758

A dominant but highly misleading narrative about the Arab world has taken root not only in the Middle East but also in some parts of the West. This perspective assumes the inexorable rise of Islamist parties and is impervious to contradictory evidence. The recent Libyan parliamentary elections have provided the starkest example of a contrary development.

It is now officially established, and highly significant, that the non-Islamist National Forces Alliance led by Mahmoud Jibril trounced Libyan Islamists, particularly in that portion of the voting process reserved for party lists. The separate results for individual candidates are not yet fully clear, but the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood says it will probably win only between 15 and 20 out of 120 individual seats.

This result was not widely anticipated, to say the least. But what is even more surprising than the outcome has been the reaction to it. The Western commentariat in particular has, with a few notable exceptions, largely reacted to the emerging electoral outcomes in Libya with disinterest, or even in a dismissive way.

The prevailing view remains that Islamists have nearly unassailable appeal at the present moment in Arab elections, and that the Libyan result is an exception that does not challenge that rule. Because Libya cannot be easily reconciled with the conventional wisdom, commentators have been engaging in extraordinary rhetorical contortions to protect their views from highly inconvenient facts.

For instance, columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing in the Washington Post, observed, despite the Libyan results, that what is taking place in the region is “an Islamist ascendancy, likely to dominate Arab politics for a generation.”

There is no doubt that Islamist parties will be major factors in the coming decades. But what Jibril’s victory demonstrates is that the “Islamist ascendancy” is by no means assured or even likely. There is an overpowering assumption, shared by voices on the left, right and center, that Arab politics are relatively homogenous across different states, and this is simply mistaken, even patronizing.

But the varying results in the recent Egyptian, Tunisian and Libyan elections show otherwise. Firmness in sticking to this reductive perspective, despite the evidence of political diversity, is sometimes ideologically driven. However, in many cases it is simply an effort to embrace a comfortable narrative that simplifies a far more complex reality.

A second tactic in challenging the Libyan exception has been to suggest that, while Jibril’s alliance is not Islamist, it is also neither secular nor liberal in the Western sense. Those holding this view extrapolate from this that there is little difference between Jibril’s position and that of Islamists. Such an argument ignores the all-important gap between Libyans who are devout and those who would seek to make religion the centerpiece of politics and national life.

The Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, by contrast, is well aware of this dissimilarity. It has complained that Jibril and his allies don’t agree that “government must enforce Islam in every aspect of its work.” The main aim of the Brotherhood since its founding has been to erase all distinctions between Islam and Islamism, and between Muslims and the Muslim Brotherhood. The argument that Jibril’s coalition is no different than the Islamists only plays into the Brotherhood’s hands in an indefensible manner.

A third argument is that Libya is fundamentally different than the rest of the Arab world because of the legacy of Moammar al-Qaddafi, therefore that the elections mean little. Using this logic, no election results can be said to have regional significance. And if that’s true for one state, surely it’s true for all. But Arab societies are unique. Even the contiguous states of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya are very different.

Fourth, it has been said that the Libyan results are regional and tribal in their consequences, rather than ideological. Islamism may have been defeated but, as troubling, tribalism has triumphed. However, the results of party voting were strikingly consistent throughout most of the country, which indicates otherwise. There is little evidence that this was primarily a tribal or regional vote, though Jibril’s belonging to the country’s largest tribe, the Warfala, certainly didn’t hurt him.

Imagine if Libya’s Islamists had won a decisive victory. We would have heard that this was more evidence of the ineluctable spread of Islamism in post-dictatorship Arab societies. How, then, can the Islamists’ defeat be anything but powerful evidence to the contrary?

Libya shows that Islamists can be defeated in contemporary Arab elections, and this should be celebrated and emulated, not ignored or dismissed. Worse, when the evidence is employed to derive conclusions in utter contradiction with observable reality, then the model that produces such distortions should be dispensed with as utterly inadequate.

The Anti-Balfour Declaration

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/10/the-anti-balfour-declaration.html

Wonder what it feels like to have inadvertently put yourself between a rock and a hard place? Just ask Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Monday the Levy Committee, which he appointed last January, issued its report that was supposed to examine the question of Israeli “state lands” in the occupied Palestinian territories, but has far exceeded its mandate. The most significant aspect of the report is its blunt assertion that Israel is not “the occupying power” in the occupied territories. Its consequent outrageous legal recommendations all reflect that logic; it recommends that all Israeli settlements, including “unauthorized” outposts built on private Palestinian land, and every promise ever made by any official to any settlers, should be formalized.

Here’s Netanyahu’s quandary: Israel either is, or is not, occupying the occupied territories–and the report could well force him to take a clearer stand on that issue. If he accepts its recommendations in full, even if they are not fully implemented, he will in effect be accepting the notion that there is no occupation in the occupied territories. This would reflect rhetoric from his own Foreign Ministry, particularly Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, not to mention many Israeli policies that have treated the occupied territories as part of the Israeli state when convenient to its purposes.

netanyahu-frustrated-openz
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem. (Uriel Sinai / AFP / Getty Images)

However, Netanyahu can’t make the decision solely based on Israel’s policies, because they do not reflect a clear view of the territories’ legal status. In fact, many policies have carefully fudged the question and cultivated an atmosphere of ambiguity about the occupation. A large body of Israeli laws, court rulings, policies and, above all, treaties (including those with Egypt, Jordan and the PLO) all either explicitly or implicitly recognize the territories as occupied. So, of course, does a veritable mountain of international law including UN Security Council resolutions and the ruling of the International Court of Justice on Israel’s West Bank separation barrier.

And, as David Kretzmer, a noted Israeli legal scholar, observed, “If Israel is not an occupying force, it must immediately relinquish ownership of all private lands seized over the years for military use, taken with authority as the occupying force in an occupied territory, and restore the lands to previous owners.”

Finally, there is the obvious corollary to any formal acceptance that the occupied territories are not, in fact, occupied: that Israel views them as de facto and de jure part of its state. Full acceptance of the recommendations of the report would amount to announcing the de facto annexation of the occupied territories. That, too, has its own obvious corollary: Israel is already neither demographically Jewish nor democratic in character. Rather than administering a temporary occupation, it is presiding over a separate and unequal system that discriminates between Jews and Arabs in huge parts of its territory.

In this sense, the report might be seen as an anti-Balfour Declaration: a political statement, which, if implemented as written, would ensure that Israel can no longer continue in a meaningful sense to be a “Jewish state,” except by systematic ethnic discrimination against large parts of its population.

There’s a word for such a system: Apartheid. Only by distinguishing between the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel proper can Israel sustain its objections to any application of this term to its polity. Accepting the Levy Committee’s report would, in effect, dissolve any such distinction and render Israel practically defenseless against the indictment that it is an apartheid state. The long-term legal, political and diplomatic ramifications for Israel are incalculable.

When systematic ethnic discrimination is intended to be maintained rather than temporary, it is a crime under international law. Although Israel is not a signatory to the treaty, this is how the Statute of Rome, which outlines the work of the International Criminal Court, defines Apartheid. More importantly, such a formalized system would be regarded as indefensible not only by the international community but by huge numbers of Jews around the world, particularly in the United States. Long-term support for such an Israeli apartheid state by Jewish communities overseas would likely be placed in significant jeopardy.

On the other hand, if Netanyahu does not accept the Committee’s report or implements it only partially, he will come under fire from significant sections of the Israeli right and the settler movement for implicitly recognizing that Israel is indeed an occupying power in the territories. That, too, has important implications, since settlement activity in occupied territories is strictly prohibited under international law, most importantly Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The Levy Committee attempted to bypss these prohibitions by denying that the territories are occupied at all. But it also accepted spurious assertions that Article 49 only prohibits “forced transfers” of civilians against their will into occupied territories. Such arguments are, almost unanimously, rejected by international legal scholars because in other sections the Convention already prohibits forced population transfers. Article 49, however, explicitly prohibits all “transfer” of civilians into an occupied territory, because it is meant to protect the rights of people living under occupation not to be colonized by settlers from the occupying power.

Defenses of the settlement project therefore invariably reject the idea that Israel is the occupying power, in spite of the unanimous global consensus that it is. Until now, Israel has been able to finesse the question of whether or not it is the occupying power in the territories, and therefore keep the legal status of the settlements similarly ambigous. The new report threatens to place Netanyahu in the extremely precarious position of clarifying whether or not Israel sees itself as an occupying power, with extremely dangerous political, legal and diplomatic consequences for any decision he might take. No wonder he has already referred it to his also recently-created “Ministerial Committee on Settlement Affairs.”

How Jibril Outmaneuvered the Libyan Islamists

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=417700

The preliminary results from Libya’s parliamentary elections are incomplete, but the trend is clear: Former Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril’s National Forces Alliance seems headed for a clear victory over rival Islamist parties. The results so far strongly indicate that, while Islamists could regain some ground in individual seats, overall—especially in the party section of the vote—non-Islamists are headed for a decisive victory.

Demographically, Libya is a small country. However, assuming the result is not somehow reversed, it is highly significant for understanding emerging trends in post-dictatorship Arab societies.

It means, first, that the three post-uprising Arab states that have held elections have produced three divergent results. Islamists scored an overwhelming victory in the Egyptian parliamentary elections, and a narrower but clear one in the recent presidential vote. In Tunisia Islamists earned a plurality. But because non-Islamist parties—which collectively have more seats in parliament—are numerous and divided, the Islamist Al-Nahda is the decisive force for the moment.

This is all the more significant in that the three different results have taken place over the same 12-month period in three contiguous North African countries. Sociopolitical conditions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya are very different, which helps explain the differing results. But the Libyan election contradicts predictions of an unstoppable Islamist trend, or the idea that Arabs in general will elect Islamist majorities in any free elections held under the current circumstances.

Second, Jibril’s apparent victory may well point the way forward for other non-Islamist forces in future Arab elections. In contrast to analogous groups in Tunisia and Egypt, Jibril’s alliance campaigned on its own merits, emphasizing Libyan nationalism and promising order and stability. It didn’t waste time terrifying voters about the threats posed by Islamists. And it included a certain degree of Muslim religious rhetoric in its campaign, while insisting on a non-Islamist stance.

Jibril was politically astute and speaking to his own people when lecturing Western media not to keep referring to him and his alliance as “liberal” or “secular.” In truth, they are neither, at least in the conventional Western understandings of the terms. But they can be reasonably described as nationalist and certainly as non-Islamist. Therefore, in contemporary Arab terms they could be held to represent a secular and liberal alternative to religious reactionaries.

Crucially, Jibril did not make the mistake of ceding Islamic legitimacy to Islamist groups. Instead, he insisted on a share of it for his own alliance—no doubt crucial to his apparent success. His rhetoric on religion and politics reflects an understanding of the need for Arab non-Islamists to deny Islamists the ability to create the impression of an exclusive claim on religious sentiment and civilizational heritage.

Jibril repeatedly stated that, “The Libyan people don’t need either liberalism or secularism, or pretenses in the name of Islam, because Islam, this great religion, cannot be used for political purposes. Islam is much bigger than that.”

This is precisely the kind of intelligent balancing act that moderate, nationalist and non-Islamist Arab political forces can successfully deploy against Islamist rivals in positive campaigns that emphasize what they have to offer their electorates.

And third, the vote can and should be seen as a repudiation of foreign, and especially Qatari, influence in Libya. Qatar spent a great deal of money backing the Libyan uprising, and conventional wisdom at the time of the fall of Moammar Qaddafi held that it was positioned to be a kingmaker in the country. Libyan resentment over this presumptuousness is reflected in the election results. Since Libya has its own growing petroleum income, it enjoys relative economic independence and cannot be held hostage to foreign aid.

Libyan society will still face huge challenges. It is divided along tribal and clan lines, and the election was somewhat disrupted by eastern federalists demanding regional autonomy or independence. And the emerging Libyan government inherits few functioning national institutions from the former regime. Moreover, it will have to contend with the local dominance of numerous unaccountable militias.

But the economic and political elements for a successful Libyan national recovery are slowly falling into place. The obstacles remain significant, but there is every reason for optimism.

The Libyan election also importantly contradicts widespread doom saying about the inevitability of Islamist victories in contemporary Arab elections or the inability of non-Islamist forces to wage effective election campaigns. Early this year, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic observed, “When [Arabs] stop voting for Islamist parties, I’ll revisit my preliminary conclusion that Islamism is on the rise.”

The Libyan elections mean he and others, in both the West and the Arab world, can begin to think again.

No, Spain isn’t the greatest ever!

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=415407

Nostalgia is always dangerous, but privileging the chronologically contemporaneous isn’t a healthy corrective. Spain’s remarkable achievement in winning a second consecutive European football championship on Sunday, following the team’s first world championship two years ago, is hard to overstate. Yet the chorus of voices rushing to proclaim them “the greatest international side ever” does just that.

There are several important objections to this indefensible assertion.

First, this appears to be a stopgap replacement for the bizarre cult surrounding FC Barcelona, which unexpectedly crashed and burned this year. This cult reached virtually messianic proportions, as illustrated in a deranged hosanna by journalist David Winner in The Guardian last April. Since it’s no longer possible to declare the current Barcelona team “the greatest club side ever,” this over-enthusiasm has been transferred to the Spanish national team (which by the end of the match on Sunday was entirely made up of Barcelona and Real Madrid players).

Second, it’s worth noting that there has been a general decline in the competitiveness of the European championship since the end of the Cold War. Eastern European teams, including Poland, Hungary, and the teams emerging from the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, all of which used to pose more serious threats, are no longer real factors.

This decline was established by the championship victory of Denmark in 1992, a team called in at the last minute to replace Yugoslavia, which was then under a sanctions regime. And it was underlined by the victory of Greece in 2004. With all due respect, it’s difficult to imagine either of these two thoroughly second-rate sides, let alone both of them, winning any of the European championships held before 1992.

Third, because football has changed so much and evolved over time, it is practically meaningless to try to pick and choose between sides from different eras. What we can point to, usefully, is a pantheon of great international sides that have punctuated the game with their dominance and redefined the sport in their own era. But it’s not possible or useful to construct counterfactual scenarios about which of these greats was “greater” than the others, because the periods of relative dominance or redefinition have all been noteworthy in their own way.

There’s no question that the current Spanish team is the dominant force at the moment, and the most powerful and influential squad in the past quarter-century. But numerous other past teams had at least as significant an impact.

Even in this moment of Spain-euphoria, a significant minority is loudly and rightly recalling the overwhelming brilliance of the Brazilian team from 1970, which still dazzles more than 40 years on.

Tiny Uruguay won two of the first four world cups, several Olympics, and 15 Copa America tournaments. While they have long faded from the spotlight, the Uruguayans still cannot be underestimated, as the last World Cup in South Africa proved. Italy won back-to-back World Cups in 1934 and 1938, dominating the international scene at the time. Brazil did the same in 1958 and 1962–becoming the only South American side to win a World Cup tournament held in Europe (the reverse has never taken place).

And, although Spain’s most ardent champions point to trophies as “empirical evidence” of “greatness”—as if something so subjective could be quantified—there are at least two major teams that have made huge contributions without major tournament victories.

The most significant of these, without question, is the Hungarian side of the early 1950s. The Hungarians introduced an (initially craftily concealed) original version of the 4-2-4 formation, bringing their center forward back towards the midfield as a pivot point to create far more dynamic spatial interplay on the pitch. They didn’t beat their opponents. They demolished them. The implications of this tactical transformation are still being developed to this day.

Football can reasonably be divided into pre-Hungary and post-Hungary circa 1950s eras. Before it was effectively disbanded by the Hungarian uprising in 1956, this side played 47 matches of which they won 40, drew six and lost just one: the World Cup final in 1954 in a fluke defeat to a West German side Hungary had crushed in an earlier round.

Building on ideas pioneered by the Austrian “Wunderteam” of the early 1930s, Ajax Amsterdam and Holland developed in the 1970s what became known as “total football,” which was also extremely influential. However, it didn’t win the Dutch national side any major tournament victories. But it’s ironic to hear fans of Spain or Barcelona disparage the Dutch legacy, as much of their style makes them direct heirs to that tactical approach.

This only touches on the great sides that dominated or redefined football in various eras. Right now, it is Spain. But proclaiming them “the greatest ever” reflects amnesia, ignorance or an indefensible attachment to the contemporary. Let’s give Spain their due, but not impoverish history in the process. And if they really do the “impossible” and win again in Brazil in 2014, we’ll revisit these claims then.

After Morsy’s win, counter Islamists with citizenship

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=413471

There can be little doubt that the victory in the Egyptian presidential election of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi, represents the greatest single victory in the history of the Islamist movements in the Arab world. So, how should non-Islamist Arabs—including secularists, leftists, nationalists, traditional or mystical Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities, or simply the rational—react to this dramatic development?

First, don’t overstate the problem.

The powers of the presidency are significantly constrained by numerous formal and informal factors. The non-Islamist vote proved much stronger in the presidential election than it did in the earlier parliamentary one. A significant percentage of those who voted for Morsi no doubt did so because they perceived his rival, Ahmad Shafik, to be a representative of the former dictatorship. So the constituency that propelled Morsi into office is not a solidly reliable Muslim Brotherhood one. There’s no reason to conclude that Egypt is doomed to a future dominated by Islamists.

Second, don’t understate the problem.

The Muslim Brotherhood has proven, time and again, that it is, at the moment, the most powerful and effective political party in the country, at least in terms of rallying voters and summoning huge crowds. The Brotherhood may not be on the brink of completely taking over authority in Egypt, but it’s difficult not to see the military and the courts acting in what amounts to a defensive rearguard action against its creeping power. While Egypt isn’t doomed to an Islamist future, if other political forces continue to prove ineffective and, especially, if the Brotherhood can disingenuously continue to conflate its agenda with that of building democracy in the country, Egypt might be stuck with one anyway.

Third, don’t drink the Kool-Aid about Islamists being democrats.

One need only consult statements by Morsi during the first round of the presidential elections a few weeks ago to be reminded how reactionary and extreme the Brotherhood’s social attitudes and political agenda really are. Add that to decades of unchanging Muslim Brotherhood ideology that reflect profoundly undemocratic, misogynistic, homophobic, chauvinistic, paranoid and intolerant attitudes. To view this party and its ideology as anything other than a profound threat to all non-Islamists, if it should ever come to uncontested power, is unforgivably naïve. After a period of genuine constitutionalism, Arab Muslim equivalents of Europe’s Christian Democratic parties, or even Turkey’s constitutional Islamist AKP, will probably eventually emerge. But they will look completely different from today’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Fourth, focus on constitutional structures and constraints on government.

It’s impossible to build Arab democracies without including peaceful Islamist parties, no matter how reactionary and intolerant their attitudes might be. It is an inherent conundrum of representative systems that they must be able to include illiberal, undemocratic elements in what are otherwise liberal, democratic orders. Naturally, there is always the chance that these illiberal, undemocratic parties might actually gain a measure of power. Constitutions, therefore, must constrain the powers of government and ensure ironclad, inviolable protection for the rights of individuals, minorities and women. These protections must be defended by military forces that defend the Constitution, but don’t meddle in electoral politics. And they must be amendable, but extremely difficult to change.

Fifth, begin seriously organizing positive alternative narratives and movements.

Non-Islamist forces in the Arab world under the current circumstances have a marked tendency to focus all their energies on explaining what’s wrong with the Islamists, rather than expounding their own vision. And they tend to be unorganized and disunited.

The recent elections in Tunisia demonstrated both of those characteristics perfectly. Non-Islamist parties won a majority in parliament, but were divided into so many smaller groups that the Islamist Al-Nahda party emerged as the strongest block. And in both Tunisia and Egypt, non-Islamist candidates spent far too much effort trying to scare voters about their Islamist rivals rather than presenting a proactive vision of tolerance, inclusion, competency, jobs, social justice and so forth.

Moreover, it’s time for these forces to develop a positive narrative about the virtues, rights and responsibilities of citizenship inherent to each and every individual through his or her status as a citizen. Such a narrative, which should be at the heart of a region-wide movement, is the best antidote to a sectarian religious-identity cult. Far too much discourse in the Arab world surrenders to Islamists the rhetoric, traditions, civilizational heritage and symbols of Islam. But the Islamists do not and cannot define Islam. And they certainly cannot define an enormously heterogeneous Arab world. A vision of citizenship, on the other hand, can and must.

The result in Egypt will certainly embolden and inspire Islamists across the region. Non-Islamists need to begin urgently and diligently developing a narrative of citizenship and inclusion that can present a powerfully appealing alternative to the Islamist vision.

Good News, Bad News

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/25/good-news-bad-news.html

The good news is that Egypt has just elected its first civilian president in its modern history. The bad news is that a religious fanatic has won. And both the good news and the bad news need to be taken in their broader political context, because neither are straightforward.

The good news is indeed encouraging. Egypt’s Presidential Election Commission, to all appearances, played it straight, even though their four-day delay in announcing the results gave rise to an enormous amount of speculation that some kind of chicanery might be underway. In the end, they announced results that almost all observers agree are credible, although their outgoing chairman, Farouk Sultan, made the country and the world sit through an interminable and very defensive preamble.

tahrir-morsi-openz
Fireworks light up the sky as Egyptians celebrate in Cairo’s Tahrir Square the victory of Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamed Morsi in the national elections, on June 24, 2012. (Khaled Desouki / AFP / Getty Images)

So the Egyptian people have had their say, and it has been respected. This is, by any interpretation, a major step forward in the struggle for democracy. But the new president will inherit an office that has been stripped of many key powers by the recent supplemental constitutional articles issued by the military. The power of the Parliament has also been constrained. The generals appear to be trying to carve out a decisive role for themselves; equivalent to that once enjoyed by the Turkish military.

The good news continues.  Egypt has also avoided an open, street-level confrontation that probably would have resulted had there been any effort to fix the election’s outcome in favor of former Mubarak-era Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. So, rather than resorting to blatantly unlawful measures like vote fraud, the strategy of the military and its allies has been to work through legal and quasi-legal maneuvers to shift the de jure power structure.

So we can look forward to a protracted power struggle in Egypt over the respective authority held by elected institutions such as the presidency and the Parliament on the one hand and existing, permanent institutions (most notably the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) on the other. But for the foreseeable future it is likely to remain a political and legal fight rather than anything involving widespread unrest or violence.

So much for the good news.

The bad news is that Egypt has undeniably elected an extremist president from a radically illiberal party. Egyptians appear divided into three main camps: Islamists and other Muslim Brotherhood supporters; those who are relieved at the defeat of the candidate of the existing institutions but wary of the Brotherhood’s intentions; and those who are profoundly alarmed at Mohammed Morsy’s victory. But anyone who remains unconcerned about the Brotherhood’s ability to secure electoral majorities, demonstrated in both the presidential and (recently overturned) parliamentary ballots, is being woefully naïve.

It was always likely that Islamists would be the initial beneficiaries of a more open Egyptian political system. But they are now—disingenuously but somewhat successfully—positioning themselves as the “revolutionary” vanguard in a long-term struggle for democracy and popular will against “counterrevolutionary” forces in the existing establishment. This creates a dangerous conflation of their profoundly illiberal agenda with liberal imperatives for securing the authority of the people’s voice. It threatens to create a circumstance where, in attempting to secure the trappings of democracy, Egyptians might instead usher in a religiously reactionary new form of oppressive authoritarianism, enforced in the name of “the people.”

For now, the power struggle in Egypt may continue at the legal and political register, but it is possible that violent confrontation has been merely forestalled rather than entirely prevented. The battle will now focus on the drafting of Egypt’s new constitution, which will formalize the emerging allocation of power. This new constitution might require a new presidential election and limit Morsy to a short term in office, at least if the military and its allies get their way.

The upcoming parliamentary reelection will also be hotly contested. Non-Islamist forces proved much stronger in the presidential election than they did a few months ago in parliamentary voting. The Brotherhood has demonstrated its street power through huge demonstrations. And the courts have carefully retained a “nuclear weapon” against it: a recent ruling that could re-illegalize the Brotherhood was postponed until September. If things go badly, they still might get extremely ugly.

If Egyptians wish to find a path to genuine democracy, which balances the right of electoral majorities to exercise power with protections for individual, minority and women’s rights, they will have to find a way of curbing the authoritarian aspirations of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the military. Right now, they find themselves squeezed between two political forces, neither of which has demonstrated any sincere respect for or appreciation of genuinely democratic processes.

Sunday Night’s Alright for Fighting

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/22/egypt-s-post-election-summer.html

Deposed former Pres. Hosni Mubarak is reportedly lying in hospital in critical condition, and Egypt’s post-Mubarak political scene isn’t doing all that much better. Both candidates—the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsy and former Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq—are claiming victory and the Presidential Election Commission has postponed its official announcement from last Thursday to sometime this weekend. Everything is set for a protracted power struggle in Egypt.

 All week the rumor mill has been buzzing with various unnamed officials saying off the record that, contrary to Brotherhood claims, Shafiq, in fact, has won by 200,000-300,000 votes. A report this morning, citing “government sources,” says the Commission is set toannounce Shafiq’s victory on Sunday with 50.7 percent of the vote.

shafiq-openz
Egypt’s presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq (R), the last premier of ousted Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, speaks during a press conference in Cairo. (Patrick Baz / AFP / GettyImages)

If Shafiq is declared the winner, not only will the Muslim Brotherhood angrily dispute the outcome, but many will believe that the tally has been somehow or another “cooked” to ensure the victory of the candidate representing existing Egyptian institutions over the long-standing Islamist opposition group. Earlier this week and today, the Muslim Brotherhood held huge rallies in Cairo in an obvious display of muscle flexing.

Events of the last week have done a great deal to complicate Egyptian politics, but the Brotherhood itself has three key weapons it can use in any unfolding power struggle.

First, it can claim popular legitimacy based on its strong performance in recent parliamentary elections (although those elections have since been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Constitutional Court). And it can claim that, according to its figures and most media reports, its candidate in fact did win the presidency. There’s no question that the Brotherhood is the most effective organizational political machine in the country, and its most powerful party.

Second, it has again demonstrated its ability to bring huge numbers of people into the street. This raises the specter of not only demonstrations, but possibly sustained protests and even riots should Shafiq be declared the victor. Brotherhood leaders have beeninsisting that they will not turn to any form of violence and that an “Algeria scenario” in which foiled elections lead inexorably to a bitter and bloody civil war is unthinkable in Egypt. However, the implications of its display of street-level power were not lost on anyone.

Third, it can try to mobilize support from those who are skeptical about its intentions but categorically determined to break the grip of the military and existing government institutions on power. It can try to pose as the vanguard of the revolutionary forces that overthrew the former regime, even though, in reality, it has had a very tense and fitful relationship with those forces. But in the context of what is being widely perceived as an illegitimate power grab by the forces of the “deep state,” it has the real potential to appeal to even some of those opposition forces who are deeply skeptical about its behavior and intentions.

To promote this narrative and to hedge against defeat, Morsy today announced he was forming a “National Revolutionary Front” with two other key figures who have previously resisted an overt embrace of the Brotherhood: former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei and self-styled “liberal Islamist” Abdel Monem Abol Fotouh.

It’s also possible rumors about an impending Shafiq victory are intended to set up a “surprise” announcement that Morsy indeed has won. This might be intended to assuage concerns over recent declarations by the military accruing to itself extraordinary governance powers, by cultivating a sense of relief that an open confrontation has been avoided, or at least postponed, and that the results of the election will be widely accepted as valid. It’s also distinctly possible that the military, if not other existing government institutions, might believe that a weak and failing Morsy presidency can be useful to its purposes over the long run.

If there is a confrontation, as seems increasingly unavoidable especially if Shafiq is declared the new president, it is likely to be largely political rather than violent. And its outcome will almost certainly be some kind of deal between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military. But such an accommodation will only be possible once the relative strengths of both parties have been thoroughly tested, possibly including in the streets, or when and if both feel they have secured their minimum necessary requirements.

Both the military and other existing government institutions and the Muslim Brotherhood have greatly contributed to the parlous situation in Egypt. Each has tried to shamelessly manipulate existing systems to strengthen its own hand, and both have failed the Egyptian people by behaving highly irresponsibly. Whatever is announced this weekend is unlikely to resolve matters clearly. Look forward to a long, hot summer in Egypt.

The looming power struggle in Egypt

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=410673

A series of dramatic events over the past week seems to have made bitter power struggles in Egypt all but inevitable. Indeed, the situation is so volatile key factors may have shifted by the time this article is posted.

The most obvious is a potential battle over last weekend’s second-round presidential election. The Muslim Brotherhood immediately declared that its candidate, Mohammed Mursi, had defeated former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik by a significant margin. Shafik’s camp angrily disputed these claims, and an official election result announcement isn’t expected until Thursday.

But most independent observers believe that Mursi probably won, although by a much narrower margin than he claims. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, for example, estimated he won by just over 100,000 votes. While other scenarios are possible, the most likely is that officials will report a Mursi victory later on this week.

But such a victory may mean much less than Muslim Brotherhood supporters would have hoped. Over the weekend the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a new “constitutional amendment” transferring broad powers to itself and, most importantly, freezing SCAF’S composition in its current form.

So, even if Mursi is confirmed as president, the prerogatives of the office have just been greatly degraded by military fiat.

This comes on top of a court order dissolving the recently-formed Islamist-dominated parliament and ordering new elections. The Muslim Brotherhood, after several days of silence, has announced that it doesn’t recognize the order as valid and intends to persist with the work of the legislature. This means not only a confrontation with the court, but also with the military, which has made it clear that it intends to enforce the ruling.

So, major confrontations are potentially looming over the outcome of the presidential election, the role of the presidency, the legitimacy of the last elected parliament, and the power of the courts to intervene directly in Egyptian politics. This last confrontation might be greatly intensified on Tuesday, when courts are due to rule on a case that could lead to the formal disbanding of the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization and its return to illegal status. If that happens, the long-term consequences are extremely difficult to predict.

It’s not clear what, if any, impact such a ruling would have on the legitimacy of a Mursi victory, assuming that it is confirmed later on this week. But it makes a direct confrontation likely. As it stands, protracted power struggles, even without a new ruling banning the Muslim Brotherhood as a legal organization, seem unavoidable.

Other potential flash points include a recent military declaration authorizing security forces to arrest civilians and refer them to military tribunals. This, in effect, reinstates the substance of the recently-lifted and long-hated Emergency Law. And the judiciary has also disbanded the parliament’s Constituent Assembly, which is tasked with drafting the constitution.

For many Egyptians and outside observers, the recent moves by the courts and the military—even without denying Mursi the presidency, assuming he has really won it legitimately, or again illegalizing the Muslim Brotherhood—already represent a coup d’état by forces associated with the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak. Yet the results of the presidential election suggest that there is a very significant popular constituency for these forces, assuming that Shafik was widely understood as representing them.

Egyptian society, in other words, is deeply divided along multiple axes. Islamists and their allies among revolutionary forces, who prefer anyone over remnants of the former regime, are likely to view ongoing events as a dictatorial plot by a junta to thwart democracy. Most Shafik voters, by contrast, may well see the developments as an unpleasant but necessary step to forestall Islamist domination, which would, they undoubtedly feel, lead to an even more oppressive system, albeit backed up by some degree of popular mandate.

A large number of liberal revolutionaries who were crucial in bringing down the former regime have adopted a stance condemning both the Muslim Brotherhood and the military and its allies. And it’s likely that most long-suffering Egyptian voters are ideologically unaffiliated and simply want jobs, economic security, law and order, and to have their votes recognized rather than bypassed by decrees.

The Muslim Brotherhood traditionally doesn’t like confrontation, but it may be left with little choice and can try to deploy new leverage by claiming a popular mandate. The military has the guns and, for now at least, control of most state institutions. An accommodation is hard to envisage.

The coming months in Egypt, therefore, are almost certainly going to test the relative strengths of these forces. And this struggle will come at the expense of the Egyptian people.