Daily Times

“…the democrats are of course at a disadvantage. Their ideology requires them, even when in power, to give freedom and rights to Islamist opposition. The Islamists, when in power, are under no such obligation. On the contrary, their principles require them to suppress what they see as impious and subversive activities. For Islamists, democracy, expressing the will of the people, is the road to power, but it is a one way road, on which there is no return, no rejection of the sovereignty of God, as exercised through His chosen representatives. Their electoral policy has been classically summarised as ‘One man (men only), one vote, once” — The Crisis of Islam, by British-American orientalist Bernard Lewis.

That precisely is the root cause of the clash between the Islamists and the modernist democrats within Muslim polities. According to Egyptian and international media, on June 30, around 14 million people protested at Tahrir Square, Cairo and in other cities, demanding the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi, who was sworn in a year ago. In three days the military deposed him in a coup. The predicament of the democrats the world over started then. They had to condemn the coup because as Lewis said they have to defend the “rights to Islamists”, whereas Islamist Morsi believed democracy was the road to power to promote his party’s Islamist agenda and concentrate power in the hands of the president. But a point that needs to be considered here before extending unqualified support to the deposed President Morsi is what the clash in Egypt is about. It is a typical narrative of other Muslim polities also. Let’s briefly look at recent political developments of Egypt in a historical perspective. Morsi came to power as a representative of Egypt’s largest Islamist party the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), which was founded in 1928 by Hassan al Banna. It remained banned since the early 1950s when its ideologue Sayyid Qutb was sentenced to death for plotting to kill president Gamal Nasser.

In spite of its conservatism, MB adopted democracy as it could not capture power using militant means. So when people revolted against the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, which perpetuated itself for 30 years, MB was the most organised party. On the other hand, a strong educated class has emerged in Egypt ever since its king Muhammad Ali Pasha started modernising the country in the early 19th century. So it has to be kept in mind that Egypt has two parallel narratives like other Muslim countries.

The conflict between Morsi and modernist-democrats started soon after the legislative assembly was elected. MB and its Islamist allies, which included the ultra-fundamentalist Salafist Party, had an overwhelming majority in the assembly. They tried to steamroll the constitution with many Islamic clauses, which were exclusionary in nature and not acceptable to the modernist-democrats. Taking advantage of majoritarianism, which some critics dubbed as ‘ballotocracy’, MB held a referendum on the constitution. Only 33 percent people voted, of which 64 percent gave approval to the controversial constitution. This in actual terms means that the constitution had the support of only about 22 percent Egyptians. Morsi took the critics lightly and signed the constitution on December 26, 2012, and that is what started another Tahrir Square movement by the modernists to oust him.

Now the argument in Morsi’s support is that he followed the normal democratic path to get the constitution passed by the majority. But a finer point that is missed here is that constitution making is a delicate job in which conflicting interests have to be reconciled instead of pushing the views of a simple majority. To understand this we don’t have to go far. Had the Congress agreed to address the concerns of the Muslim minority in undivided India, most probably the country would not have broken. The Muslims of India would have continued to live in India with greater autonomy in the Muslim majority areas and quota allocations in the provinces where they were in a minority. But the view that all the issues would be decided in the legislative assembly, where Muslims were in a minority, led to the tragic division of the subcontinent. In 1946, Mohammad Ali Jinnah wanted an agreement on the Muslim demands before the legislative assembly was convened. History was repeated by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and the ruling elite of West Pakistan, which was in a minority but wanted major concessions from the majority parties, the Awami League in East Pakistan and National Awami Party in NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [KP]) and Balochistan. In the absence of consensus the military operation was launched in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), which turned the constitutional tussle into a liberation war. Had there been a consensus on the constitution, the country would not have broken. The 1973 Constitution was thus not steamrolled by Bhutto as he tried to take the support of all parties. Again, more recently, the 18th Amendment was also passed with consensus by all parties. In Pakistan the major tussle between the political parties was over devolution of power to the provinces. But the democrats also gave in a lot to the Islamist parties, and although they have never secured more than 10 percent votes, they have formidable street power.

Coming back to Morsi, he pushed MB’s Islamist agenda harder in the constitution, which upset the modernist-democrats and religious minorities. Article 43 of the constitution is committed to enforce Sunni Shariah and that was upsetting for the small Shia community. This encouraged the extremist Sunni mobs and some Shia leaders and their followers were killed. The constitution allows right of worship to only Abrahamic religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. This excludes other minorities like Bahais. Tough blasphemy laws were also introduced. Article 48 restricts to discuss and “contradict the principles on which the state and society are based”, a reference to the principles of Shariah. Article 11 says: “The state shall protect ethics and morals and public order.” Now this is seen as a threat to regulate people’s private life, something which the MMA government in KP tried to do by enforcing the Hasba Bill, which was struck down by the Supreme Court.

We see a similar kind of conflict between the modernist-democrats and Islamists in other Muslim polities also. Recent protests against the Justice Party in Turkey, which is trying to push an Islamist agenda slowly as the country’s constitution is wedded to secularism, are also indicative of a similar clash within Muslim societies.

However, we have to admit that although the clash between Islamists and modernists is sharper in Muslim societies and violent as in Pakistan, it is also prevalent as an undercurrent in Christian, Hindu and Judaist societies. Reason: it is the clash between the people who want to stick to their antiquated religious, cultural, social and moral values and the modern globalised values that are spreading through the information and knowledge explosion. Times have changed, but many people haven’t.

The writer can be reached at ayazbabar@gmail.com