Comrades and
Brothers
Hossam
El-Hamalawy
Hossam
El-Hamalawy is a Cairo-based journalist and blogger.
|
A
joint Muslim Brotherhood and Revolutionary Socialist protest
against the Egyptian regime, August 14, 2005. (Nora
Younis) |
Emad Mubarak is
a busy man. Director of the Association for Freedom of Thought and
Expression, and a lawyer with the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, the
leftist Mubarak cannot hold a meeting without being interrupted by
the ring of his cell phone. The calls these days come from student
members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the officially outlawed Islamist
group that is Egypt’s largest political movement. The students call
to report security service abuses against them on campuses, or to
request his legal counsel while they undergo interrogation by
university administrators.
“Each time I
receive a call, I can’t help but remember the old days and what it
was like being on campus with the Brothers,” Mubarak giggles. In
March 1999, he spent 22 days in Tura prison south of Cairo after
Muslim Brotherhood students assaulted him and eight of his fellow
socialists on campus, turning them over to the police. “Today,
things are different. Leftists and Islamists can sit down and talk.
Most of my clients are Muslim Brothers,” Mubarak said. “I tell them,
‘I’m a communist,’ and they are fine with that.”
From campus
fistfights in the 1990s to joint demonstrations in 2005–2006,
relations between the Muslim Brothers and the radical left in Egypt
have come a long way. In settings where the two tendencies operate
side by side, like student unions and professional syndicates, overt
hostility has vanished, and there is even a small amount of
coordination around tactics. Still, the cooperation remains
symbolic, and leftists and Islamists have yet to join forces to
undertake sustained mass actions against their common foe, the
regime of President Husni Mubarak.
A New Kind
of Leftist
The improvement
of leftist-Islamist relations can largely be traced to two factors.
First is the evolution of a new left in Egypt whose two main pillars
are the Revolutionary Socialist Organization and a growing
left-leaning human rights community. This new left has different
attitudes toward Islamism than those held by the previous “communist
waves.”[1] Second is the generational change within both
the left and the Brotherhood cadres spurred by the revival of
Egyptian street politics, thanks to the second Palestinian
intifada.
Bad blood
between the Egyptian left and the Brothers has a long history, from
the Islamists’ coordination with King Farouq in breaking strikes in
the 1940s to President Anwar al‑Sadat’s encouragement of violent
Islamist assaults on leftist university students in the 1970s. Most
independent leftist organizations in the 1980s and 1990s hewed to a
line on political Islam similar to that of the Egyptian Communist
Party—the dominant faction inside the “legal left” Tagammu‘
Party—equating Islamist organizations, reformist or radical, with
fascism.The only modest exception was Ahmad Nabil al‑Hilali’s
People’s Socialist Party, which briefly flirted in the late 1980s
with theidea that militant Islam was a “movement for the poor”
deserving of support. The majority attitude on the traditional
Stalinist left translated into an alliance, sometimes overt and
occasionally tacit, with the Egyptian secular intelligentsia—and
with Mubarak’s regime. Needless to say, joint political action with
the Brothers was never on the table. A few independent leftist
lawyers like al‑Hilali and Hisham Mubarak were involved in defending
Islamist detainees, but these were individual initiatives. As might
be expected, the Muslim Brothers did not appreciate the “fascist”
label, and they regarded the left with great distrust.
Starting in the
late 1980s, small circles of Egyptian students, influenced by
Trotskyism, gathered to study, eventually evolving in
April 1995 into an organization named the Revolutionary
Socialists’ Tendency. In contradistinction to the Stalinist left,
these activists put forward the slogan “Sometimes with the
Islamists, never with the state” in the literature they distributed
on university campuses and elsewhere.[2] In practice, this slogan translated into
taking up the cause of Muslim Brotherhood students on campus when it
came to “democratic” issues, as when state security banned Islamist
candidates from running in student union elections or expelled
Islamist students from school. The “galleries”
(ma‘arid)—impromptu broadsheets written on cloth or cardboard
and laid out in campus squares—of Revolutionary Socialist students
at Cairo and ‘Ayn Shams Universities regularly carried denunciations
of military tribunals’ sentences handed down to Muslim Brothers. At
the same time, the Trotskyist students confronted the Muslim
Brothers on issues such as freedom of expression and the rights of
women and Coptic Christians. Whenever they felt the Brothers wanted
to impose sex segregation in the classroom, or clamp down on campus
theater and art, or whenever the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide made
sectarian comments about the Copts, the socialists’ “galleries”
would carry vehement denunciations.
As a
Revolutionary Socialist member who was active in the 1990s recalls:
“We were a kind of leftist the Muslim Brothers hadn’t met before.
They couldn’t quite figure us out at the beginning. Anyway, we were
still too marginal for them to bother with. We were only a few
individuals.” This began to change in 1999. On a few occasions in
that year, as one socialist remembers, the Muslim Brotherhood
students at Cairo University allowed the Revolutionary Socialist
students to speak at rallies held on campus against the US
airstrikes on Iraq. The socialist students took this unprecedented
opportunity as a sign of the Muslim Brothers’ recognition that they
were a force that had to be given a place on the political stage. It
was a step in a long, slow process of building trust.
From a handful
of members in 1995, the Revolutionary Socialists grew to a couple
hundred activists on the eve of the second Palestinian
intifada. Their ranks then swelled thanks to their role in
the Egyptian movement of solidarity with the Palestinians, at a time
when the Muslim Brothers largely abstained from street action. The
radicalizing influence of the intifada among youth helped to
reawaken the Egyptian tradition of street politics, which had been
virtually smothered by the Mubarak regime’s fearsome security
services. Cairo and several provinces witnessed their largest and
most boisterous demonstrations since the 1977 uprising following
President Anwar al‑Sadat’s attempt to remove state subsidies for
bread and other staples. Despite the opportunities presented by the
ferment on the streets, the Muslim Brotherhood pursued the policy of
non-confrontation with the regime it had abided by since the 1995
crackdown on its rank and file, culminating in a series of infamous
military tribunals. Not only did Brotherhood students refuse to
mobilize on the street, but they also sought on several occasions to
curb the militancy of demonstrations. [3] In October 2000, for instance, after the
socialists clashed with state security and burned police vans at
pro-Palestinian demonstrations, the Brothers emerged to denounce
“socialist sabotage.” At other times, Islamist students tried to
physically restrain students from marching outside campus
gates.
The
increasingly radicalized political scene created a space for the
left to intervene, but also generated pressure on the Muslim
Brotherhood’s leadership from the organization’s cadre. Leftist
activists then at universities recall “naming and shaming” campus
Brotherhood activists for their lack of participation in the mass
protests. In early April 2002, precisely following the outbreak
of the leftist-led, pro-Palestinian riots at Cairo University,
members of the Muslim Brothers began turning out for events
organized by the Egyptian Popular Committee for the Solidarity with
the Palestinian intifada. “Muslim Brotherhood representatives
from the syndicates starting showing up to our meetings,” says Ahmad
Sayf, the director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, who has been
hosting the committee’s meetings. “They didn’t have much choice, as
they would have lost credibility in their constituencies if they
hadn’t turned out. Still, they only sent representatives [usually,
‘Isam al‑‘Iryan or ‘Abd al‑Mun‘im Abu al‑Futouh, the two most
popular party elders with Islamist youth] and avoided mass
mobilization.” More importantly, Sayf continues, “the Brotherhood
was bowing to pressure from its youth, who were not happy with a
complacent stand vis-à-vis the authorities.” On April 5, 2002,
a group of young Muslim Brothers published an open letter to Supreme
Guide Mustafa Mashhour in the London-based daily al‑Hayat,
questioning the group’s acquiescence in security crackdowns and
demanding more involvement in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
Sayf concludes: “The alternative was approaching the radicals in the
opposition, as the ‘legal’ opposition, namely Tagammu‘, Wafd and the
Nasserists, were too hostile. The radicals in the opposition, on the
other hand, were happy to get whatever help the Brothers were
willing to contribute.”
The Muslim
Brothers initially approached Revolutionary Socialist members,
regarding them as the “least hostile” among the leftist factions, to
suggest that Islamists collaborate with the left in the
pro-intifada and anti-war movements. The move triggered a
debate among leftist circles. Sympathizers of the Egyptian Communist
Party, the People’s Socialist Party, members of the Tagammu‘
bureaucracy and a faction from the human rights organizations
refused any form of coordination with Islamists, though they made an
exception for Magdi Hussein’s Labor Party, whose brand of Islamism
is regarded as somehow “left-leaning.” The usual scene at such
demonstrations was that the crowd would split into two circles, one
led by leftists and Nasserists chanting leftist slogans, and another
led by the Labor Party supporters chanting Islamic slogans. The
Revolutionary Socialists, on the other hand, pushed for close
coordination, supported by left-wing human rights activists such as
members of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center and the Nadeem Center for
the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence.
“Brotherly
Spirit”
In 2003 and
2004, the Muslim Brotherhood stuck to its non-confrontational
policy. While the Brothers kept on sending representatives to
pro-Palestinian and anti-war demonstrations, the main concern of the
organization was charity work, and demonstrating within the
boundaries set by the regime, in complete coordination with the
security services. The regime used the group as a safety valve for
dissent during the early stage of the ongoing war in Iraq, allowing
the Brothers to take part in government-sponsored rallies in Cairo
Stadium, as well as in the provinces. Meanwhile, the left-leaning
Palestine solidarity committee evolved into an anti-war movement,
convening small street actions, which exploded into running clashes
with the police in downtown Cairo on March 19 and 20, 2003. The next
summer, a middle-ranking Muslim Brothers activist spoke of the
increasing frustration among the group’s cadre at the leadership’s
“leaving the street empty for the leftists. When Kifaya came onto
the scene, some Brotherhood youth wanted to follow suit.”
The anti-war
movement, successor of the pro-intifada movement, evolved
again by the end of 2004 into an anti-Mubarak movement, composed of
two organizations. One was Kifaya (the Egyptian Movement for
Change), a coalition made up primarily of members of the breakaway
Nasserist faction Karama, individuals from the liberal al‑Ghad
Party, figures from the Egyptian Communist Party and veterans of the
1970s student movement. The other wing was the Popular Campaign for
Change, which was more Marxist in composition, and included the
Revolutionary Socialists, left-wing human rights activists and
independent leftists. The two organizations more or less fused
together in the months to follow. Kifaya’s sometimes quixotic and
theatrical street actions attracted public attention, and helped to
break taboos in Egypt’s political life by issuing direct
challenges—without euphemisms—to the president and his family.
Shortly after a
series of Kifaya demonstrations, a group of Muslim Brotherhood
activists, notably ‘Ali ‘Abd al‑Fattah of Alexandria, held talks
with Revolutionary Socialists and independent leftists, resulting in
the launching of the National Alliance for Change in June 2005.
The alliance was tactical, and revolved around an anti-Mubarak
platform, with emphasis on vigilance against the prospect of vote
rigging in that year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The
fruits of this alliance did not radically alter the political scene
on the ground. After announcing their intention to hold a joint
demonstration with the left in ‘Abdin Square in July 2005, the
Muslim Brothers failed to show up, citing security pressures. Two
more joint demonstrations were organized in front of the Lawyers’
Syndicate. The first was chaotic, and the second was better
organized, with consensus on slogans and banners. Since the winter
2005 parliamentary elections, the alliance has stayed out of the
streets, but it remains in place as a coordination and
problem-solving mechanism whenever friction arises in workplaces.
The
rapprochement between Islamists and the left continued when students
from the Revolutionary Socialists’ Tendency, Muslim Brothers and
some independents formed the Free Student Union (FSU) in
November 2005, with the aim of acting as a parallel
organization to the government-dominated student unions. The FSU was
centered in Helwan and Cairo Universities, with tiny presences at a
few other universities, including ‘Ayn Shams. Following the rigging
of the October 2006 student union elections, the Brotherhood
threw its weight behind the FSU, sanctioning new branches at
universities such as al‑Azhar, Mansoura and Alexandria. Though the
FSU is far from achieving the ambition of its organizers—nothing
less than a national grassroots student union—the places where the
FSU operates have witnessed another great improvement in relations
between the Brothers and the radical left. Mustafa Muhi al‑Din, a
socialist activist from Helwan University, describes relations with
the Brothers on campus as friendly. “They invite us to their events,
and they show interest in our activities. Maybe the union here is
still not strong, but there’s space for activities. We can be active
and spread our message, worrying about state security, but not about
hassles from the Brotherhood, and sometimes they give us a hand. We
do the same. This makes things easier.” ‘Abd al‑‘Aziz Mugahid, a
Brotherhood activist and president of FSU at Helwan University,
speaks enthusiastically of the “brotherly spirit” on campus. “The
socialists intervened to help us out in solidarity demonstrations
with our sisters who were expelled from the dormitories because they
wore the niqab, and they stood by us when the administration
expelled more than 400 students for security reasons. These joint
activities were not frequent before.”
Generational
Change
The backbone of
the solidarity actions with the Palestinian intifada has been
students in their late teens or early twenties. As political
virgins, they do not carry the baggage of the historical fighting
between the leftists and Islamists, and among leftist factions.[4]
Meanwhile, the
profile of the average young Muslim Brotherhood activist has
undergone its own transformation, rendering a considerable number of
the Brotherhood youth open for coordination with secular groups.
“The Brotherhood cadre has changed,” says Husam Tammam, author of a
recent book on the organization.[5] “They have become socially assimilated. They
are not necessarily the sons of the poverty belts and the
marginalized nowadays.” The Brotherhood’s decisive entry into
electoral politics “came at the expense of their identity, forcing
them to be more pragmatic,” Tammam adds. “So forget about the
Islamic state, the caliphate, and so on. The more the Brothers get
dragged into the political arena, the more they are integrated, and
the more they try to operate according to the rules of the arena.”
Tammam continues: “The Brothers have changed in their relation to
art, society and vision. You can see that well among the [Brothers’]
youth. The youth voted for [Ghad candidate] Ayman Nour. This wasn’t
a central order from the group’s leadership. When the youth are left
without orders, they don’t necessarily follow the group’s
traditional line. In my view, the last remarkable event held by the
Brothers, before they took to the streets, was an event organized by
the Brotherhood students called Muhammad Day that took place on
Valentine’s Day. The Islamist youth thought, ‘How can we love, but
in a “good” way?’ If you compare this to the behavior of the
Islamist youth in 1985, it is completely different. Back then all
they could think about was how to establish the Islamic state [and]
revive the caliphate. They would have looked at Valentine’s Day as a
waste of time. The youth today, however, do not take the same
aggressive approach.”
Tammam’s
observations are echoed by leftists who shared jail cells with young
Brothers during the spring 2006 crackdown on the movement in
solidarity with Egyptian judges exposing fraud and voter
intimidation in the 2005 elections. Blogging about his encounter
with Muslim Brotherhood detainees, independent secular leftist ‘Ala’
Sayf wrote: “They were from this new breed of Islamist that reads
blogs, watches al‑Jazeera, sings sha‘bi (popular) songs,
talks about intense love stories and chants ‘down with Mubarak.’ And
being young, most of them did not have any experience with prison
before. Waiting to know whether they’ll get 15 or 45 days’ detention
for starters, waiting to know whether they’ll be sent to one of the
just-horrible prisons or one of the too-horrible prisons, and in the
middle of it all we got the news that I would be released the next
day.” And with the news of his release, “All of a sudden, they
transformed from just Brothers into comrades! They hugged me, they
clapped, they shook my hand, they laughed and they were genuinely
happy for my release.… When you speak of the 22 who were released
this week, don’t say 22 out of 30 were released, say 22 out of
600…facing the same charges and fighting the same tyrants.” The
Muslim Brothers’ official website invited ‘Ala’ Sayf to write a
message to the Brotherhood youth. On July 24, he wrote them,
calling on them to be “more adventurous,” and advocating more
militant street action.
Today, the
majority of factions on the left still stand opposed to (or express
caution about) joint actions with the Islamists, most notably the
newly evolving Democratic Left (a reformist tendency centered around
al‑Busla magazine), the Egyptian Communist Party, the
People’s Socialist Party and a faction of the human rights
community. But the Brothers and those comrades who will work with
them remain engaged in mutual confidence building. The Muslim
Brothers’ leadership is staunchly gradualist, and always on the
lookout for compromises with the Egyptian regime. That stance will
likely impede a further rapprochement with the radical left, unless
the Brotherhood’s base of youth attains a greater say in when, and
how, their powerful organization bestirs itself.
Endnotes
[1] Leftist historians divide the history of Egyptian
communism into “waves.” The first wave began in 1919 with the
founding of the Egyptian Socialist Party, which later became the
Egyptian Communist Party, only to be destroyed by the Wafd
government’s crackdowns in 1924. The second wave started in the late
1930s with the formation of communist study circles that evolved
into several organizations and factions, with brief periods of
unity; it ended with the dissolution of the Egyptian Communist Party
in 1965. The third wave commenced in 1968 with the revival of the
student and worker movements, received a crushing defeat in 1977 and
officially died with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The
(current) fourth wave started in 1995, with the launching of the
Revolutionary Socialist Tendency.
[2] The slogan was coined by Chris Harman, an
International Socialist Tendency theoretician based in Britain, in
his book, The Prophet and the Proletariat, accessible online
at http://www.marxists.de/religion/harman/index.htm. The book was
translated into Arabic, and distributed widely by the Revolutionary
Socialists in 1997.
[3] See Hossam el-Hamalawy, “Street Politics,”
Cairo Times, September 26, 2002; and Hossam el-Hamalawy,
“Post-War Middle East,” Islam Online, April 30,
2003.
[4] El-Hamalawy, “Street Politics.”
[5] 5 Husam Tammam, Tahawwulat al‑Ikhwan
al‑Muslimin (Cairo: Madbouli, 2005).
