Imperial secularists, and even supposedly anti-imperialist secularists have taken the debacle of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an opportunity to slam the notion of Islam as a comprehensive social – cultural- political system. There are a few things that need to be set straight – the people of Egypt overwhelmingly want Islam as a principle source for laws in Egypt – see this 2010 Pew Poll that shows 80+% of Egyptians viewing Islam’s role in politics as something positive. And really only a small minority of Egyptians view Islam’s influence on politics as negative (a mere 2%). Given this fact, it would be reasonable to expect that Egypt first relatively free elections would result in a clear victory for Islamic oriented political groups, in this case the Muslim Brotherhood (ikhwan) and the Salafist groupings.
The alarmist secularists, who play right into the hands of the imperialists, repeatedly raise such “concerns” as the banning of alcohol, banning of reactionary sexually focused cinema, and other such implementation of Islamic moral laws – as something backwards. There are other secularists who correctly raise the issue of the ikhwan potential sell out to the economic arm of the imperialists, the IMF, as well as the ikhwan’s lukewarm approach to the question of Palestine, and its continued close relationships with the imperialists, and the zionists. However, these anti-imperialist secularists then use the failings of ikhwan to blame the supposed Islamic nature of the Muslim Brotherhood.
This blaming of Islam by both types of secularists are an affront to the vast vast majority of Muslims both in Egypt and elsewhere – the fact is that Islam will be a political force throughout the region, and to again insist on a secularist constitution or political system, is to impose a dictatorship of sorts – be it of the communist/leftist or liberal-imperialist style. The work that needs to be done is to encourage, strongly encourage the development of independent Islamic thought and movements that are at once – completely rooted amongst the people (not the rotten and useless liberal elites) – and anti-imperialist. In fact, no movement, no political group has the right to claim Islam as their mantle if they do not clarify that close relationship with the zio-imperialists is completely at odds with Islam – that is a comprehensive social-spiritual-cultural-political movement.
There are other issues that need to be considered, liberal-secularists types have been attacking the ikhwan because of low level of participation in the referendum for approval of the constitution. The low turn out indeed does demonstrate the failures of ikhwan – and if they had in fact begun to implement a revolutionary Islamic system in Egypt, including but not limited to serious economic reform, and clean breaks with the zionist entity, the turn out and enthusiasm would be much higher. But be that as it may, it is not at all so unusual to have low turnouts – in the case of Venezuela, for example, that the same secularists would not be so against, the current constitution was approved with a turnout also in the mid 40%s … The problem here is that the reason secularists oppose the constitution has little to do with the turnout, or that it may not adequately represent the will of the vast majority of the people – the problem is that the secularists oppose the constitution because of its mildly Islamic character.
The Ikhwan of-course has disappointed people, it has compromised with the liberal elitist secularists on the one hand, and made deals with the zio-imperialist entities. It has also made deals against the nation of Syria and as a result agains the Islamic Republic of Iran – this has severely weakened the ikhwan politically, and the people who would want an Islamic system even more. We now see, instead, secularists – of both the liberal-imperialist variety, and the failed supposedly anti-imperialist versions – who both do not represent the people – taking pot shots at Islam as a social-cultural-spiritual political system, and at the vast majority of the people of Egypt who do want to see Islam play a much larger public/political role.
Ikhwan is a multifaceted movement, and one can only hope that truly committed individuals and tendencies will rise – and redirect the Egyptian Revolution towards a real Islamic character.
Imperialism and Resistance 