When is a coup not a coup and when does a Muslim become an Islamist?
What you need to know:
- A leader who professes to be a Muslim, and is even elected by his own people democratically, is called an “Islamist” (which has become a dirty word since 9/11)
- When a Hindu bigot proclaims that India is only for the Hindus, and that the sizeable Muslim population does not have a legitimate claim to the country, there are no calls for his resignation
- We must remember that the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the oldest and most formidable movements in Egypt that survived Anwar Sadat and Mubarak and will continue to influence Egyptian society for years to come
When does a military coup become a legitimate means of overthrowing a democratically elected government? Most liberals would say never, but for some strange reason, questions of legitimacy have become irrelevant when applied to the ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
Commentators who support the military coup that overthrew Morsi claim that it was necessary because he did not deliver the promises of the Egyptian revolution, and that his association with the Muslim Brotherhood threatened to make the country a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Hani Shukrallah, writing in Ahram Online, called the events of the last 10 days “a popular revolution” that overthrew an Islamist regime. Others called it “a coup with a civilian face”.
I don’t care how one sugar-coats it; the fact remains that what happened in Egypt early this month was a military coup. Whether or not the military took over the reins of power or handed power to a civilian leadership is not the point. The point is that the military took sides in a conflict, then used the arsenal at its disposal to overthrow the elected leader of a country, even going as far as putting him under house arrest.
This is a military coup by any definition, and it cannot be condoned in societies that claim to be democracies, or which seek to transfer power through democratic means.
The US Government is at pains not to describe what happened in Egypt as a coup because if it did, it would have to withdraw aid to the country, which it is not willing to do, because aid is what gives it enormous leverage in the country, and ensures that Egypt does not break a peace treaty with Israel.
The US faces another dilemma. It is in the uncomfortable position of liking the fact that an “Islamist” (whatever that means) government has been ousted, but disliking the fact that the ouster came about militarily – and worse, not through its own military, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the military of a country that it has been supporting for years, to the tune of $1.3 billion annually.
But then the US and its allies are used to such anomalies when it comes to countries in the Middle East and the Arab world.
What everyone seems to forget is that former President Hosni Mubarak was a friend of the United States throughout his corrupt and authoritarian regime. The US government only started calling him a dictator when there was a groundswell of public opinion against him, and when the masses took to the streets calling for his resignation.
There is hypocrisy all round. A leader who professes to be a Muslim, and is even elected by his own people democratically, is called an “Islamist” (which has become a dirty word since 9/11), but one who exhibits Zionist tendencies, and insists that the territory he presides over belongs exclusively to one religion, is considered a reasonable democrat who is only out to protect Israel.
Similarly, when a Hindu bigot proclaims that India is only for the Hindus, and that the sizeable Muslim population does not have a legitimate claim to the country, there are no calls for his resignation. Where is the indignation when people of faiths other than Islam violate the tenets of democracy and secularism?
On the other hand, when a Christian leader claims to be God-fearing and church-going, no one calls him a “Christianist” or a danger to secularism and religious pluralism. When did Christianity become the norm and Islam the aberration?
In 1993, American historian Samuel Huntington predicted a clash between Christian and Muslim civilisations. That clash became evident after 9/11, when both the Christian and the Muslim worlds started exhibiting fundamentalist tendencies and intolerance.
We must also remember that the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the oldest and most formidable movements in Egypt that survived Anwar Sadat and Mubarak and will continue to influence Egyptian society for years to come.
The ouster of Morsy may force it to go underground and become even more radicalised, which will have severe consequences for Egypt’s “democracy”.
