Sunday, March 20, 2011

Qaradawi's Return And Islamic Leadership In Egypt

From FPRI:

~MIDDLE EAST MEDIA MONITOR~


QARADAWI'S RETURN AND ISLAMIC LEADERSHIP IN EGYPT

by Aaron Rock



March 18, 2011



Middle East Media Monitor is a new FPRI E-Note series,

designed to review once a month a current topic from the

perspective of the foreign language press in such countries

as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Turkey. These articles

will focus on providing FPRI's readership with an inside

view on how some of the most important countries in the

Middle East are covering issues of importance to the

American foreign policy community.



Aaron Rock is a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow in

Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies,

where he is pursuing a Ph.D. His research focuses on Islamic

religious authority in twenty to twenty-first century Egypt.



Available on the web and in pdf format at:

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201103.rock.egypt.html



~MIDDLE EAST MEDIA MONITOR~



QARADAWI'S RETURN AND ISLAMIC LEADERSHIP IN EGYPT



by Aaron Rock



The revolution in Egypt has raised the specter of an

Islamist takeover and theocratic rule, a repetition of the

1979 Islamic revolution in Iran in which Ayatollah Ruhollah

Khomeini rose to power. Such fears were worsened by the

triumphant return to Egypt of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the

most prominent Sunni scholar in the Arab world with

longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, the

Egyptian press, for the most part, has not drawn this

parallel.



This essay will analyze the Egyptian centrist daily al-Masri

al-Yom's coverage of two key moves by Qaradawi that evoke

parallels with Khomeini's return to Tehran in 1979: his

February 18 Friday sermon which drew three million Egyptians

to Tahrir Square, and his "death fatwa" three days later

against Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. It will explore

both how Qaradawi's actions injected an "Islamic" vision

into the revolution, and why his actions were not perceived

as reflecting theocratic ambitions.



Qaradawi is a product of al-Azhar University, which is

located in Cairo and is a premier center of Islamic

scholarship in the Arab world. He received his Master's

degree in Quranic studies in 1960 and his doctorate in 1973.

Yet, Qaradawi was not just a scholar; he was also a

political activist of the Muslim Brotherhood. This activism

prompted Gamal Nasser to arrest him on several occasions. In

response, Qaradawi left Egypt for Qatar in 1961, remaining

there until the revolution. Yet, exile did not produce

alienation. During the last half-century, Qaradawi

maintained his ties to the Brotherhood, and his theoretical

vision of how an "Islamic" state would function is a key

source of the Brotherhood's political vision today.



The influence Qaradawi's enjoys extends beyond the

Brotherhood and Egypt. In Qatar, he has built a successful

career and has become arguably the most prominent Sunni

scholar in the Arab world-and perhaps beyond. He is the

President of the International Union of Islamic Scholars

(al-Itihad al-'Alami li'l 'Ulama al-Muslimin) and the

European Council for Fatwa and Research. While Qaradawi's

scholarly credentials are widely acknowledged, he has also

pioneered online "Islamic" media. He hosts the most popular

"Islamic" talk show, Al-Sharia' wa al-Haya' (Sharia and

Life) and leads the high volume website "Islam Online." In

short, he possesses both the credibility and media savvy to

influence both scholarly and political debates.



Qaradawi's success suggests that he has situated himself

within the mainstream of the Arab world, yet his ideas defy

painting him as a "moderate" or "radical." On the one hand,

he rejects Islamic "extremism," supports dialogue with non-

Muslims, and argues that democracy is the best existing

political system. On the other hand, he supports suicide

bombings against all Israelis, including women and children.

He has also declared Shi'ites to be "heretics" (mubtadi'un).



His February 18 sermon was a hybrid of religious vision and

nationalist concerns.[1] He began by altering a formulaic

element of the opening of the Friday sermon by addressing

both Muslims and Christians. He then proceeded to analyze

the failures of the Mubarak regime and called for a civil

state (dawla madaniyya)[2], the lifting of the Emergency law

(in effect since Anwar al-Sadat's 1981 assassination), and

the freeing of political prisoners. Yet, his sermon was also

deeply inflected by specifically Islamic religious language

and imagery. He declared that "Tahrir square should be

renamed the Square of the Martyrs of January 25th" and that

the revolution was not just a "victory over Mubarak_but

[also a victory] over oppression (dhulm), falsehood (batil),

[and] thieves (sarika)_." While the frames of martyrdom,

oppression and falsehood are not uniquely Islamic, their

political usage comes out of the struggle of Egypt's

Islamist opposition, both violent and non-violent. They

paint a binary between freedom, truth and ethics on the one

hand and oppression, tyranny and theft on the other. Three

days later, Qaradawi's opposition to oppression and

falsehood was put into practice. He argued that Gaddafi's

despotism was a sin against God, and that, because there is

"no obedience to the created one [i.e. man] in sinning

against the Creator," Gaddafi's blood was licit. He then,

quite animatedly, called on any Libyan soldier "to neither

listen nor obey" (aleh yasma'u wa le yuti'u) and stated: "I

issue a fatwa (ufti) to the officers and troops who are able

to kill Mu'mar al-Qadaffi_.to do so."[3]



The parallels between Khomeini and Qaradawi are striking.

Both returned from exile to galvanize a revolution through

powerful religious imagery and tropes that depict the former

regime as an affront to God. Both were successful in

animating the masses, In addition, Qaradawi, like Khomeini

before him, appeared to be angling for a leadership role

within the revolution. Finally, no transnational "death

Fatwa" has been issued by a prominent Islamic scholar since

1989 when Khomeini declared British novelist Salman

Rushdie's blood licit for his book, Satanic Verses. Yet,

notwithstanding these similarities, the parallels are not

exact. Qaradawi has never articulated a vision of Islamic

leadership that is theocratic, whereas Khomeini's Vilayet

al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurists) was fundamentally

theocratic. Moreover, Qaradawi, unlike Khomeini, is not

considered a candidate for political office.



Nonetheless, al-Masri al-Yom seemingly ignored the parallels

that do exist between Khomeini and Qaradawi. The newspaper

praised Qaradawi in a February 19 editorial titled, "Al-

Qaradawi, in one of the Greatest Speeches of the Modern Age,

Asserts the Continuation of the Revolution." The editorial

proceeded to compare this speech to famous orations by such

figures as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson

Mandela.[4] It declared that Qaradawi's sermon was "not just

to the millions in Tahrir square, but also to all Egyptians,

Arabs, Muslims and the world, so that it will know what true

Islam is." It declared that any parallels with Khomeini

were absurd because "Khomeini returned to rule and erect a

religious state, whereas al-Qaradawi returned to express the

revolution of the Egyptian people, Muslim and Christian, for

the sake of the building of a civil state_" Following

Qaradawi's February 21 fatwa, the paper's editorial

page-known for its diversity-overlooked the parallel between

Khomeini and Qaradawi in their "death Fatwas." Indeed, the

only response in the paper to this fatwa was an approving

cartoon by Jamal al-Sharbini in which Qaradawi says "We

permit the spilling of al-Qadaffi's blood in response to the

killing of protestors" and a questioner asks, "But what

about Mubarak and the blood of the martyrs of January 25th

2011?"[5]



How should we understand this "non-reaction" to the

parallels between Qaradawi and Khomeini? How should we

understand al-Masri al-Yom's coverage? While there

certainly were reactions in Egypt that drew this parallel-an

editorial in Al-Akhbar al-Kubtiya (Coptic News) was titled,

"The Khomeini of Egypt"-this was not the dominant reaction.

Instead, the "Islamization" of the national narrative by

Qaradawi was largely accepted as unproblematic by non-

Islamists such as the editorial board of al-Masri al-Yom.

Indeed, it was mimicked, in key respects, in the paper's

coverage. For example, the editorial piece which praised

Qaradawi's sermon, like its subject, assumed an Islamic

frame for a national event. It compared Tahrir Square to the

Ka'ba in Mecca, but this Ka'ba was one of "Muslims and

Christians, drawing close to God to bless their revolution

for justice and freedom."



A useful way to understand an "Islam" that is not "Islamism"

is to distinguish between "public" and "political" Islam.

Both emerged out of the Islamic modernist movement of late

nineteenth-early twentieth century Egypt which was led by

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh. "Public Islam"

concerns itself with "practical considerations of public

welfare and social justice" while "Political Islam" has been

understood as focusing on "issues of rulers' legitimacy" [6]

and on political rule. In light of the latter's grassroots

Islamization/culturalization project (Aslama/Tathqif),

though, the two can overlap substantially. As for Qaradawi,

he has long been understood to be a representative of

"public" Islam and revered as such. Moreover, a shared

conception of "public Islam" emerged in Qaradawi's claims to

Islamic/nationalist legitimacy and the unproblematic

acceptance of this "frame" by the editorial board of al-

Masri al-Yom.



Post-revolution, though, the political sphere has suddenly

been opened up to the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Qaradawi

is a one-time member and for which he is an intellectual

inspiration. Qaradawi now faces a choice of how far to

venture into the new possibilities that have emerged in

Egypt. While his incentives to take a leading role in the

Brotherhood are unclear -he is 84 years old and has already

been offered and turned down the post of General Guide on

several occasions -will he make a shift to issues of

political debate, such as the role of Sharia in Egypt's

legal system or more broadly of the state in creating an

"Islamic" environment? Will he lend his charisma to the

Brotherhood's political efforts? Or will he remain as a

constellation in his own right-tied to the Brotherhood, Al-

Azhar and an international network of Islamic scholars-and

continue to pursue the issues of public welfare and social

justice on which he has built his following? If he

explicitly enters politics, his success would depend on the

Egyptian public's willingness to follow him.



What does this debate reveal about a Revolution largely

described as "secular," one in which the Brotherhood has

played a role but not the dominant one? Is there a

meaningful long-term difference between "public" and

"political" Islam? While the two visions are certainly not

mutually exclusive, Qaradawi drew millions to Tahrir Square

because he is an icon of "public" Islam. Neither Qaradawi's

popularity nor his rhetoric should distract from the fact

that Egyptian revolution's grievances were based on a desire

for political liberty and economic opportunity. That said,

Islam remains an important framework for public debate and a

reservoir of political symbolism. Accordingly, Qaradawi's

return indicates neither a theocratic turn nor the all-

encompassing "Islamization" of the revolution. Instead, it

underlines the power of religious leadership and language

that will remain important components of any popularly-

legitimate democratic transition in Egypt. Future policy

towards Egypt must resist the temptation to attempt to

decouple "Islam" from political and economic grievances;

rather, it should focus on creating the institutions through

which those grievances can be successfully pursued.



OF RELATED INTEREST



Islam and Islamism Today: The Case of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, by

Samuel Helfont, FPRI E-Notes, January 2010



http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201001.helfonts.islammodernityqaradawi.html



----------------------------------------------------------

Notes

[1] For video of the sermon, see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Haxwcqa2btA.



[2] As distinguished from a theocracy; Qaradawi still

supports a state which acts as a moral force in creating the

conditions in which Islam can be realized in practice. For

more information, see Bruce K. Rutherford, Egypt after

Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 122.



[3] For video of the fatwa, see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bMNmLvAk9k



[4] Al-Masri al-Yom, "Al-Qaradawi, in one of the Greatest

Speechs of the Modern Era, Asserts the Continuation of the

Revolution" (Al-Qaradawi, fi Ihda A'azham Khutub al-Asr

Yu'akid Istimrar al-Thawra), al-Masri al-Yom, February 19,

2011, p. 16.



[5] Jamal Al-Sharbini, "The Fatwa Which Makes Qadaffi's

Blood Licit: Is it an Exclusive Fatwa?" (Fatwa Ihdir Dam al-

Qadaffi_.Hal hiya Fatwa Khususi?)" al-Masri al-Yom, online

edition www.almasryalyoum.com/node/326261



[6] Armando Salvatore, "Qaradawi's Maslaha" in Graff,

Bettina and Jacob Skovgaard-Petersen, eds. Global Mufti: The

Phenomenon of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, (New York: Columbia

University Press, 2009), p. 247.



----------------------------------------------------------

Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute

(http://www.fpri.org/).

No comments:

Post a Comment