File:  Downloaded online picture of Doku Umarov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Chechnya’s Moscow-backed leader said on Thursday he believed police had killed Russia’s most wanted man Doku Umarov, who has called for attacks on the Winter Olympics, but security sources suggested Umarov is still alive.

The death of Islamist leader Umarov would be a breakthrough for President Vladimir Putin in the fight against militants before next month’s Games, on which the Kremlin chief has staked much of his political and personal reputation.

But Chechen regional leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a maverick appointee of Putin, said no body of Umarov had been found.

Umarov featured in a video posted online on Thursday although the green, leafy background indicated it had not been recorded recently.

“We have long been 99 percent certain that D. Umarov was liquidated during one of the (police anti-militant) operations. Now there is evidence that he is not among the living,” Interfax news agency quoted Kadyrov as saying in Grozny, capital of the Chechnya region in southern Russia.

Kadyrov said he based his latest assertion that Umarov was dead on a recording of an intercepted phone call alleged to have taken place between two insurgency leaders who referred to the need to replace Umarov because he was dead.

He produced no further evidence and added that “we have not yet found the body itself, we are looking for it.”

Umarov is the self-styled leader of the Caucasus Emirate, a group waging an insurgency for an Islamist state in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region of southern Russia.

Interfax later quoted an unnamed source in the security forces who seemed to pour cold water on Kadyrov’s remarks. “We cannot confirm the liquidation of Doku Umarov. We do not have any such information,” the source said.

In a video posted online last July, Umarov urged Islamist insurgents to attack the Olympic Winter Games, which begin next month in Sochi, a Black Sea resort on the western edge of the Caucasus mountains.

“I call on you, every mujahid,” Umarov said in the July video, “to use maximum force on the path of Allah to disrupt this Satanic dancing on the bones of our ancestors.”

In the video posted on Thursday, Umarov is seen wearing camouflage fatigues and a beige hat, and sporting his long trademark beard. The video was shot in warm weather in a forest and Umarov speaks about the death of the former insurgent leader of Ingushetia, another region in the Caucasus mountains.

“For those of you who are left, there is an obligation to continue this jihad until death itself because this is an obligation put upon us by Allah and we must carry it out,” he says. He goes on to appoint a new leader for insurgents in Ingushetia but makes no mention of the Winter Olympics.

(Reporting by Thomas Grove; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Muslim student conference held at Ohio State

A conference titled “In the Words the Prophet: The Last Sermon” (s) was held at the Ohio State University recently which attracted a number of participants from Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.

The conference featured three speakers from different parts of the U.S. Self-help author Yasmin Mogahed gave one of the keynote speeches, the Lantern reported.

“The Prophet Muhammad (s) was sent as the most beautiful example, and he is also described as a mercy to all of mankind and therefore, we have to study his example, and what more important way to study him than through his last advice,” Mogahed said.

The event also featured Siraj Wahhaj and Mohamed Abutaleb, a teacher at the Oak Tree Institute of Islamic education.

Staten Island event celebrates Prophet’s (s) legacy

STATEN ISLAND, NY–An interfaith event to celebrate the life and legacy of Prophet Muhammad (s) was held at the Albanian Islamic Cultural Center. It was attended by over 200 people of all faiths.

Imam Tahir Kukiqi provided biographical background on Muhammad’s (s) life and upbringing, his teachings and how throughout his life he had continuous influential reactions with non-Muslims, including Christians and Jews.

“Muhammad’s (s) mission and message was spread love to all humanity,” said Imam Ferid Bedrolli, the center’s secretary.

Assemblyman Michael Cusick (D-Mid-Island) said he was impressed with the way the center has grown with the Island community over the years, embracing everyone regardless of nationality or religion — truly living up to the words of Prophet Muhammad (s).

Nassau County Muslims donate blankets, food

The Muslim Community of Nassau County, a newly formed coalition of mosques and other Muslim organizations, donated some 300 blankets and hundreds of pounds of non-perishable food items to the Long Island Council of Churches last month, the LI Herald reports.

The MCNC formed in October, and comprises several Muslim organizations across the county, including the Long Island Muslim Society on East Meadow Avenue — where the donation ceremony took place — the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury, Hamza Masjid in Valley Stream, Masjid Al-Baqi in Bethpage, Muhammadi Masjid in Elmont, the Hillside Islamic Center in New Hyde Park and Jaam’e Masjid in Bellmore.

According to Habeeb Ahmed, an Albertson resident who belongs to the Islamic Center of Long Island, him and co-founder Mohammed Saleh, a Merrick resident who belongs to the Long Island Muslim Society, asked the congregations to donate money for the blankets, as well as food. “The first initial thing we thought we’d all do is a little bit of charity,” said Ahmed,

He added that the Muslim Community has had a longstanding relationship with the LICC. “I was seeing what good things they do for the whole community, not just for Christians, but for anybody who is in need of anything.”

16-5

By Noor H. Salem

The crisis in Syria seemed to decrease in the media talk, but it definitely did not leave the hearts of thousands in this country. On Friday evening of January 17th, over 400 community members came together to hear Dr. Mohamad Rateb Al-Nabulsi give words of gem, thanks to the Shaam Foundation and the Syrian American Council. He visited many masjids across the country, giving his words of wisdom, touching the hearts of the listeners, and ending with a fundraising for those desperately in need. His lecture did not focus on fundraising, but instead gave tidbits of our purpose in life. He reminds the audience of the fact many forget in their day to day routine: how temporary our lives are. Forgetting one’s death makes one a fool, for no matter how much one accumulates in this life, whether it’s wealth or status, death is the end of the road for all.  “Hasan said: “Human beings are composed of few days, and whenever one day goes, part of this human goes away.” He went on to discuss the benefits of seeking knowledge, beneficial knowledge that is. People’s heart poured out into giving those who are urgently in need in Syria.

16-5

By Juan Cole

File:  A meeting of the UN Security Council

The implementation of the Iran accord Monday signaled a modest but still important sea change in that country’s relationship with the world. As with all good diplomacy, the deal is a win-win for Iran and the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members. The breakthrough is seen as a setback for Saudi Arabia and Israel, and also for the Israel lobbies on Capitol Hill, which fear it announces an end to attempts to contain Iran as a revolutionary force in the region. But in most world capitals, the agreement is being celebrated as a vindication of pragmatism and transparency, and European companies are lining up to get back into the Iranian market. Two pragmatists are at the center of the negotiations: Hasan Rouhani and Barack Obama.

Iran negotiated the deal with the UNSC permanent members plus Germany (called the P5 + 1). It provides for frequent and transparent inspections of the Natanz and Fordo enrichment facilities. In addition, Iran has ceased enriching uranium to 19.25 percent for its medical reactor, which produces isotopes for treating cancer. It can, however, continue to enrich to 5 percent for its nuclear reactors, which produce electricity. The measures are confidence-building steps, intended to reassure the West that Iran has no intention of producing a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear weapons first came to the Middle East when Israel began conspiring with supporters in France and Britain in the 1950s to import the technology. Despite attempts by President John F. Kennedy to forestall this development, by the late 1960s Israel had the bomb. Defense Minister Moshe Dayaneven allegedly wanted to use it in the 1973 war against Egypt. Israel now has a secret stockpile of several hundred warheads, perhaps as many as France or Britain. At the same time, Indian scientists began working on nuclear technology, with an eye on China, which achieved nuclear weapons in 1964. The Indian bomb in turn determined Pakistan to construct its own, with Islamabad detonating its first device in 1998. The Israeli and Pakistani nuclear weapons programs encouraged Iraq to seek a bomb, though its program was never very successful and was dismantled by United Nations inspectors after the Gulf War of 1990-91. The lesson in the Middle East seemed clear. Actually having an atomic bomb equals deterrence from being attacked. Trying to get a bomb and taking too long opens your country to foreign aggression.

By the late 1990s, Iran was in a very dangerous neighborhood. Iraq had used chemical weapons, with U.S. backing, against Iranian troops at the front during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988; the U.S. categorizes these as “weapons of mass destruction.” Iranian intelligence knew that Saddam Hussein wanted a nuclear weapon, and U.S. and Israeli politicians maintained that there was still an active weapons program in Baghdad (this allegation was untrue). Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and China—all neighbors or near neighbors—had the bomb.

The ayatollahs in charge of Iran for the most part have had a horror of nuclear weapons. Ruhollah Khomeini, who became Iran’s religious ruler in 1979, called nuclear weapons “un-Islamic” and initially forbade even reactors for electricity generation. His successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly condemnedatomic bombs in a written fatwa and many oral statements that have the force of law. (Fatwas, or considered opinions on Islamic law, are often given in oral form by prominent Muslim jurists, just as “responsa” or legal opinions are given orally by rabbis in Judaism.) Khamenei says that making, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons are all forbidden in Islamic law, because they cannot be used without killing hundreds of thousands of innocent noncombatants.

Some Iranian hawks and engineers appear to have decided that even though they would never get permission to construct a weapon from the supreme theocrat (who is named by the Iranian constitution as commander in chief of the armed forces and of the security agencies), a nuclear program would still be useful. They appear to have believed that Iran would benefit from what has been called “the Japan option” or “nuclear latency” or “a breakout capacity.” This is the condition of being able to construct a nuclear weapon without actually doing so. Producing a nuclear weapon could make a country a pariah, as happened to North Korea, unless it had the firm backing of a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, which could veto sanctions (thus the U.S. holds Israel harmless, and Russia protected India after its 1974 test). Iran was too much of a maverick to hope for such a superpower patron. But just getting close enough to being able to make a bomb to deter an invasion or attempts at regime change was unlikely to provoke the same degree of isolation.

In addition, Iran was in danger of using so much of its own petroleum at home as to lose the income from exporting it. Unlike in the U.S., electricity in Iran is often generated by petroleum. As Iran industrializes, urbanizes and people begin driving more, all of Iran’s oil could end up being consumed domestically (as had already happened to Indonesia, formerly an exporter). Constructing nuclear plants to generate electricity, the route France, Japan and South Korea took, would ensure Iran’s energy independence and thus its political independence.

The nuclear program thus had two benefits, of fending off an invasion and of keeping Iran flush with oil profits. Given that Israel had promptly bombed Iraq’s French-built Osirak nuclear power plant in 1981 before it could go live, the Iranians involved in early enrichment activities before 2003 kept their program secret, which was technically a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran (unlike Israel, India or Pakistan) had signed. Regime opponents allied with Israel, probably the Mojahedin-e Khalq (The People’s Jihadis or MEK), infiltrated the nuclear program and blew the whistle on it late in 2002. Then-President Mohammad Khatami promptly acknowledged that Iran had some gas centrifuges for enriching uranium and had been experimenting with them toward making reactor fuel (uranium enriched to 5 percent or so). He also welcomed U.N. inspectors, who have been regularly scrutinizing the complex at Natanz ever since.

The apparent hopes of Iran’s pro-nuclear officials that they could get away with enrichment as long as they did not actually move toward a weapons program were misplaced. The Israeli leadership and its allies in the U.S. were determined to use the political support they had in Congress and in Western European governments to impose the harshest possible sanctions on Iran in hopes of getting it to drop the enrichment program (as Brazil, Argentina and South Africa had mothballed theirs). They were determined that Israel remain the only nuclear power in the Near East, and thus hegemonic in the region. Behind the scenes, and from a different angle, Saudi Arabia also pressured the Bush administration to stop the Iranian nuclear program, afraid that its success would make Tehran the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, which Riyadh calls the Arab Gulf. One State Department cable released by WikiLeaks even maintained that the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., urged a military strike on Natanz.

In response to ever-increasing sanctions, the quirky government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (president 2005-2013) upped the ante by enriching to 19.25 percent. This level was required for the small medical reactor given to Iran by the U.S. in 1969, which produced isotopes for treating cancer. But Ahmadinejad produced larger stockpiles of the 19.25 percent LEU (low enriched uranium, i.e., below 20 percent) than were required by the medical reactor, apparently as a bargaining chip. Those fearful of Iran’s weapons capacity were dismayed, since they reasoned that using gas centrifuges to get 19.25 percent enriched uranium to the 95 percent ideal for a bomb was easier than getting the 5 percent enriched stock to the same level. This reasoning may not be correct (nuclear enrichment is a complex subject that few politicians or journalists have really mastered), but the expressed anxiety level in Tel Aviv and Washington certainly increased.

Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and idiosyncratic pronouncements made him easy to vilify on the world stage. Journalists frequently used a mistranslation of his quote from Khomeini that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,” incorrectly rendering it as “Israel must be wiped off the face of the map.” The latter makes it sound as though Ahmadinejad were on the cusp of rolling tanks against Tel Aviv, whereas he was predicting that the Zionist regime would go the way of the Soviet Union and collapse internally. Thereafter, Ahmadinejad’s repeated assurances that Iran has a no-first-strike policy, rejects aggressive warfare and does not want to kill any Jews (it has several thousand of its own, who have a representative in parliament) fell on deaf ears in the West.

By 2011, the U.S. Congress and the Department of the Treasury had imposed what amounted to a financial blockade on Iran. The U.S. strong-armed other countries not to buy Iranian petroleum, cutting exports by a million barrels a day. It severed Iranian banks from the international banking system, making it difficult for Iran to get paid for its oil by countries like India or South Korea. The financial sanctions caused the Iranian rial to collapse against the hard currencies, inflicting real pain on the Iranian middle classes. European concerns, such as the French automaker Renault, had to pull out of their Iran partnerships, suffering large losses. Blockades are acts of war and often lead to war, and the U.S.-led financial blockade on Iran was a standing provocation that, if maintained, could easily eventually lead to hostilities (which would suit hawks on both sides).

Many Iranian politicians were contemptuous of Ahmadinejad’s buffoonish pronouncements and populist exuberance, and blamed him for the sanctions regime. He was limited to two terms, however, and this past summer he was succeeded by Rouhani, a cleric who had conducted nuclear negotiations with Europe in the early 2000s. Rouhani had been a hard-liner but moved somewhat to the left over the years, seeking slightly more personal freedoms and wanting to break out of Iran’s pariah status.

Rouhani and his team are convinced that their original plan for nuclear latency and nuclear power can succeed and sanctions can be lifted, if only Europe and the Obama administration can be assured that Iran really does not want a nuclear warhead and is not an aggressive power in the region. They are confident, in short, that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric and lack of transparency were the problems, not the program. Rouhani thus moved aggressively on coming to power to reach out to Obama and the UNSC. In the end, the negotiations succeeded not because Iran was crushed by sanctions and suddenly was willing to change policy. Rather, unlike the prickly Ahmadinejad, Rouhani understood that the sanctions regime was unpopular in Europe and could be undermined by simply being completely transparent about Iran’s real intentions, which were never to construct a weapon.

Israel and the senators funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which groups thousands of Israel lobbies, will be satisfied with nothing less than a complete jettisoning of Iran’s enrichment program. Short of an invasion and occupation of Iran, however, that goal is impossible to achieve, since no Iranian government would survive if it gave up that much. Even the saber rattling of the far-right-wing Likud government and its American counterparts, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., proves the point for Iranian politicians committed to nuclear latency, since no similar calls are voiced to invade North Korea, which already has atomic bombs.

Even the tepid success of the negotiations so far has probably doomed the severe international sanctions regime. A hundred French companiesare lined up to get into Iran, a country of 76 million with a gross domestic product similar to Poland’s. An attempt to undermine the negotiations by slapping more sanctions on Iran in the U.S. Senate may well have faltered, and the breakthrough Monday may anyway reduce its salience. The Arab Gulf consensus is also collapsing, with Dubai welcoming the end of sanctions on Iran, which will mean billions for its finance companies.

In the end, the negotiations were about how much lead time Iran will have to construct a weapon if its leaders abruptly decide the nation is existentially threatened. Remember that from the time George W. Bush announced at the U.N. in September 2002 that he was gunning for Iraq until the actual invasion was almost nine months. Iran can afford to have a relatively long lead time and still have the deterrence that comes with the Japan option. Rouhani knows this and is willing to see the lead time increased. By ceasing its enrichment to 19.25 percent and casting its stockpiles of uranium enriched to that level in a form that cannot be further enriched, Rouhani has sufficiently reassured the P5 + 1, including the Obama administration, such that they are willing slightly to reduce sanctions. The economic gains for Rouhani are minor, but the boosts in prestige and political momentum are huge. By his pragmatism, Rouhani is demonstrating to the hard-liners that he can achieve what they cannot—nuclear-generated electricity for the Iranian grid, a credible breakout capacity and an end to rigid international isolation. President Obama’s own pragmatic streak is also on display in these negotiations, and his goal of avoiding yet another Middle Eastern war is a step closer this week.

16-5

By Abdulla Tarabishy

A police vehicle drives past the Montreux Palace hotel where the Geneva II conference will take place in Montreux January 21, 2014. Syria peace talks were in disarray on Tuesday before they began, buffeted by a botched U.N. invitation to Iran, an explosion in Beirut and new evidence that appears to show Bashar al-Assad’s government has tortured and killed thousands. REUTERS/ Jamal Saidi

Iran’s refusal to agree to terms that would grant it acceptance into the Geneva II summit is just the latest in a series of episodes that will determine Iran’s place in the international community.

Since its Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has been an international outsider.  Its pursuit of nuclear weapons is just the recent manifestation of that isolation.  Yet it is perhaps that very status as an outsider that led the nation to pursue nuclear armament in the first place.

Iran is surrounded by war-torn Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan in the east, and hostile Sunni Gulf kingdoms in the west.  In the Middle East, Israel and Iran have a mutually antagonistic relationship and thus the fact that Israel has a nuclear capability does not sit well with the leadership in Iran. 

Nuclear weapons are, however, far more than a deterrent against Israel.  They are a way for Iran to stay relevant around the world, and part of its wider goal of influencing world events outside its borders

Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium and evade inspectors in the pursuit of WMD are well-documented, but mentioned less often are Iran’s efforts to exercise influence in Lebanon with Hezbollah, or in the Occupied Territories with Hamas. 

In a Middle East that is predominantly Sunni-Arab, Iran needs to find ways to remain relevant, and one way is by depicting its drive to obtain nuclear weapons as a way to match Israel.  In reality, there are ways for Iran to obtain influence and power without turning to nuclear weapons.

In many ways, Iran resembles North Korea, another nation isolated by its pursuit of nuclear weapons.  However, North Korea is a very poor nation, experiencing widespread food shortages and sacrificing its people’s standard of living in favor of its vast military,  only managing to stay relevant by firing off the occasional missile and hosting idiosyncratic American celebrities. 

North Korea should not be the model that Iran wants to emulate.  Iran must decide whether it wants to continue on its stubborn path to nuclear armament, or whether it wants to obtain power and influence through other means.  Iran should look to nations like Qatar or Turkey as a model. 

Turkey’s power and influence come largely through its economic power in the region.  Like Iran, Turkey is seen as an outsider in the Arab world, but by developing its economic and political strength, the NATO member has gained traction in the region.

Qatar’s ownership of Al Jazeera has brought it vastly disproportionate influence (compared with its size) across the Middle East, and by continuously brokering negotiations, Qatar has projected its power across every corner of the region. 

Iran should not lose the opportunity to participate in the Syrian negotiations.  It should accept the idea of a political transition, and should stop aiding the Assad regime.  Not just for the sake of peace in Syria, but for Iran itself. 

In the post-Cold War world, obtaining global power requires a nation to maintain at least cordial relations with the west.  That requires turning away from North Korea’s path of nuclear armament, and following a less belligerent course.  And that starts with Iran agreeing to the preconditions of Geneva II, and attending the peace summit.

16-5

BEIJING (Reuters) – Ethnic traditions in Xinjiang must be respected, the top official in the restive far western region of China said, despite criticism that government policies there unfairly target the Muslim Uighur ethnic community.

The government must implement “ethnic unity education and propaganda” among all communities, especially among the region’s youth, the ruling Communist Party’s Xinjiang chief Zhang Chunxian said in comments carried in state media on Wednesday.

“ must treat issues of local tradition with respect and resolve issues of violence with rule of law and severe measures,” the official Xinjiang Daily cited Zhang as saying.

China has intensified a sweeping security crackdown in Xinjiang, further repressing Uighur culture, religious tradition and language, rights groups say, despite strong government assertions that it offers Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms.

In November, officials demanded that lawyers in Turpan, an oasis city southeast of the regional capital, Urumqi, commit to guaranteeing that relatives do not wear burqas, veils or participate in illegal religious activities, and that young men do not grow long beards.

Many Uighurs resent local policies imposed by the government and an inflow of Han Chinese migrants, and some Uighur groups are campaigning for an independent homeland for their people.

Experts say China’s repression of religious practices has pushed some Uighurs to more strongly embrace Islamic traditions.

Zhang’s pledge follows state media reports in early January that President Xi Jinping was shifting the region’s focus to maintaining stability over development, after a series of attacks last year fuelled by what the government said was religious extremism.

“ must acknowledge the long-term, acute and complex nature of the anti-separatism and violent terrorism fight,” Zhang said, adding that there was no contradiction between stability and development.

At least 91 people, including several policemen, have been killed in violence in Xinjiang since April, state media reports.

Many rights groups and exiles say China exaggerates the militant threat to justify its firm grip on energy-rich Xinjiang, which abuts Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

16-5

By Nick Long

People in the Central African Republic say they had never seen anything like the violence between Muslims and Christians that has shaken the country in the past year.  Analysts are looking into how this religious divide emerged and what can be done to overcome it.

“Kilometre Cinq” is one of the neighborhoods in Bangui where Muslims have congregated since violence between Muslims, Christians and animists exploded in early December and at least 750 people in the capital were killed. Last week the violence flared again and a mob demolished the mosque in this district.

Local resident Eloge Alokaya says he saw them doing it.

He says they were from this neighborhood, they were angry and they started by looting the imam’s house and finished by destroying the mosque.

Asked if Muslims and Christians could live together again in this neighborhood, Alokaya said they could if the government wanted it. Another neighbor wanted to make the Muslims’ return conditional on them giving up their weapons.

A Catholic priest, Abbe Albert Tungumale-Baba, agrees that disarmament will be necessary.

He tells VOA the army needs to go into the neighborhoods where arms are hidden and find them. He says it could do this with the population’s help as people know where the weapons are.

Mixed neighborhoods

Until recently, Christians and Muslims lived in mixed neighborhoods in Bangui, and they still do in the daytime, which could be an advantage for security forces trying to disarm sectarian gangs.

Since December 5, however, Christians and Muslims have preferred to live separately at night. Hundreds of thousands of Christians sleep at a camp at the airport or in the yards around churches.

Christians fear the largely Muslim Seleka militia, which they say has been killing and looting since it took control of the capital in March, while Muslims fear the anti-Balaka militia which killed many people in December.

So how did this country, which was never known for sectarian violence, suddenly divide along religious lines?

Sudden divide

University lecturer Mondesir Oualou Panouala has this to say about the history of Islam in the Central African Republic.

He says that Islam first arrived in the country in the 16th century, whereas Christianity did not arrive until the 19th century, but the Muslims remained a minority, mainly in the north but also in part of the west. People who suggest the country should be divided into a Muslim north and a Christian south are forgetting about the Muslims in the west, he says.

And he adds CAR’s Muslims have never been known for radical Islamism.

“What’s different about Muslims and Christians in the CAR is that they resemble each other in every way,” he said. “They eat all the same things, drink all the same things, study in the same conditions, here and abroad and even physically it’s difficult to tell them apart.”

It seems clear that although there have been interfaith conversions, people’s religion here largely depends on which ethnic community they belong to.
So how did the communities turn on each other?

Brice Kevin Kakpayen, a member of the transitional parliament, spoke to VOA outside a church in Bangui.

Kapeyen says there had long been conflicts between ethnic communities in CAR that till the land and others that herd cattle, and in the north the cattle herders have tended to be Muslim. These conflicts have often been settled hastily, he says, without tackling the roots of the problem.

But, he says, the communities could generally settle those problems in a traditional way. He dates the increasing hostility between Christians and Muslims to an army mutiny in 1996 which gave Muslims more political power but also made them unpopular, particularly as many of the mutineers were of Chadian origin.

The Seleka rebellion

Many CAR citizens see a similarity in the Seleka rebellion which took power in Bangui in March last year.  The Seleka are mainly Muslims, and many are from Chad or Sudan.

According to Human Rights Watch, after taking power the Seleka continued to pillage the country and commit atrocities.  But Human Rights Watch also stresses that the Seleka were taking revenge for atrocities committed in their areas.

The CAR’s senior Muslim cleric, Imam Omar Kobine Layama, says that for reconciliation to happen people must look back at a long history of injustice and violence.

“Since independence, Central Africans have suffered injustice and the fight against injustice should be a mechanism for putting the country back on track,” he said.

16-5

By Eric Margolis

How did al-Qaeda, a tiny anti-Communist group in Afghanistan that had no more than 200 active members in 2001 become a supposed worldwide threat?

How can al-Qaeda be all over the Mideast, North Africa, and now much of black Africa? This after the US spent over $1 trillion trying to stamp out al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

The answer is simple. As an organization and threat, al-Qaeda barely exists. But as a name, al-Qaeda and “terrorism” have become the west’s handy universal term for armed groups fighting western influence, corruption or repression in Asia and Africa. Al-Qaeda is nowhere – but everywhere.

If you’re a rebel group seeking publicity, the fastest way is by pledging allegiance to the shadowy, nowhere al-Qaeda.

Take Iraq, where fighting currently rages between the Shia government and Sunni militias in Anbar Province. Interestingly, the Sunni uprising is centered on Fallujah, which was almost flattened by US Marines and blasted apart by depleted uranium shells and illegal white phosphorus as a dire warning to Iraqis who resisted.

After the US invaded Iraq in 2003, over a dozen Iraqi resistance groups rose to fight the Americans and their new-found Shia allies. Chief among them were Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party and Iraqi military veterans. As I kept saying at the time on major US TV networks, there was no al-Qaeda and no nuclear weapons in Iraq. Thank George W. Bush for Iraq’s so-called al-Qaeda.

Thanks to the magic of mass media manipulation, Washington was able to divert attention from all of the Sunni resistance groups – or “terrorists” as they were branded – to a single group of cutthroats led by a mysterious, renegade Jordanian, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The rest of the resistance groups simply vanished from our view.

A few have now resurfaced in western Iraq, notably the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Syria), or ISIS. It is always branded “al-Qaeda linked” by western media, though no evidence is offered. Iraq’s increasingly brutal regime has also claimed it is fighting al-Qaeda in Anbar Province.
Mention of the al-Qaeda buzz-word has sent America’s conservative Republicans and neoconservatives into a frenzy. They are demanding that the Obama administration do something. Maybe re-invade Iraq? There are some 10,000 US combat troops just down the road in Kuwait.
US special forces, drone and manned aircraft, and CIA mercenaries are already in action around Fallujah and Ramadi. As in past years, CIA is paying millions to Sunni tribesmen to fight anti-government forces.

Crazy as it sounds, the US is considering buying attack helicopters from Russia to give to the Baghdad regime, as it is now doing in Afghanistan with the Kabul regime.

Speaking of Afghanistan, former Pentagon chief Leon Panetta admitted that there were no more than 25 to 50 al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan. But now, al-Qaeda has popped up in Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, across North Africa, Nigeria, Mali, Central African Republic, and so on. Somalia’s anti-western resistance group, Shebab, is also branded “al-Qaeda linked.”

Back in the Cold War, almost all groups opposing western domination were called communists. Today, al-Qaeda has replaced communism as a hot button name. The widespread – but probably mistaken – belief that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks has made anything “linked” to al-Qaeda fair game for liquidation.

Branding your foes “terrorists” is a fine way of de-legitimizing them and denying them any political or humanitarian rights. Israel did this very effectively with the hapless Palestinians, who foolishly cooperated by bombing civilians.

However, the obvious problem here is that doing so creates an endless supply of “terrorists” and pressure to take action against them. That and oil are the reason US special forces are now beating the bush all over black Africa. It’s the never-ending “long war” that America’s militarist and neocon circles want, and against which President Dwight Eisenhower so presciently warned back in the 1950’s.

Egypt offers another grim example of propaganda becoming fact. The majority of its people who voted for a democratic government in a fair election and its leaders are now condemned as “terrorists” by the thuggish generals who overthrew the legitimate government in Cairo. Anyone daring to oppose the US and Saudi-backed military junta is a “terrorist.” They must drive terrorist cars, eat terrorist food, and have terrorist babies.
Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation – Pakistan, Hurriyet, – Turkey, Sun Times Malaysia and other news sites in Asia.

16-5

For Liberals and Islamists, Theory Matters

By Mohammad Fadel

The promise of democracy lies in its potential to cultivate political virtue over time. But Egypt’s liberals, unnerved by the policies of the legitimate Muslim Brotherhood government, refused to wait.   

– Ellis Goldberg

Supporters of Egypt’s deposed president Mohamed Morsi outside Rabaa al Adawiya mosque in Cairo, on the eve of Eid al Fitr, August 7, 2013. Photograph: Jonathan Rashad

On February 11, 2011, after eighteen days of protests, Hosni Mubarak resigned as President of Egypt. Now, three years later, the Egyptian security state appears to have re-established political control of the country.

Why did the democratic transition fail? Answers range widely. Some blame the poorly designed transition process, which made trust among different political groups unachievable. Others point to a lack of leadership within Egypt’s political organizations, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. Still others focus on a devastating economic crisis that post-Mubarak governments could never address given the political divisions within the country.

These explanations are plausible and not mutually exclusive. But they all miss something important. The January 25 Revolution was also a striking failure of political theory. More precisely, it was a failure of the theories embraced by the most idealistic revolutionaries. Their demands were too pure; they refused to accord any legitimacy to a flawed transition—and what transition is not flawed?—that could only yield a flawed democracy. They made strategic mistakes because they did not pay enough attention to Egypt’s institutional, economic, political, and social circumstances. These idealists generally were politically liberal. But the problem does not lie in liberalism itself. The problem lies in a faulty understanding of the implications of political liberalism in the Egyptian context—an insufficient appreciation of factors that limited what could reasonably be achieved in the short term. A more sophisticated liberalism would have accounted for these realities.

The Balance of Forces

Although the masses in Tahrir Square appeared unified on the day Mubarak fell, three broad groups were vying for power.

The first, associated with the military, took a minimalist view: the Revolution was simply about removing Mubarak and his cronies from power, and ensuring that his son, Gamal Mubarak, did not succeed him to the presidency. Given this group’s desire to preserve as much as possible of Mubarak’s order (without Mubarak), it was able to reconcile with old-regime elements. This first group originally lacked a distinctive ideology, but it eventually adopted a nationalist, sometimes even xenophobic, posture that distinguished it from the cosmopolitanism of Islamist, liberal, and socialist revolutionaries.

According to a second group, the Revolution aimed at broad reforms of the Egyptian state without uprooting it entirely. For this reformistgroup, the crisis stemmed from corruption. Mubarak, they argued, had undermined the state’s integrity by usurping its institutions to fulfill his and his allies’ personal and political ends. The Revolution needed to reform the state’s institutions so that they would meet the formal requirements of a legal order, accountable to the public will. Formal democracy was a crucial demand of this group because it was seen as the only way to ensure that the state would not again be hijacked to further the interests of a narrow group of Egyptian elites. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies belonged to this second group.

The third group, composed largely of young Egyptians, understood the Revolution as an attempt to fundamentally restructure state and society. The Revolution provided an opportunity to create a virtuous state. Doing so would, however, require a complete rupture with the ancien regime. This radical group had an ambivalent relationship with formal democracy. Although elections were desirable, the most important goal was the substantive transformation of the state and society. “Revolutionary legitimacy” trumped whatever legitimacy formal representative democracy could provide.

The support enjoyed by each of these three groups remains uncertain. No one disputes that the youth, the third group, served as the revolutionary vanguard, having planned and executed the anti-regime demonstrations on January 25. The Muslim Brotherhood joined later, and the military, for obvious reasons, was the last to take up the banner.

Egypt’s most idealistic revolutionaries didn’t understand the implications of political liberalism.

Still, one should not exclude the military from the revolutionary coalition. The protestors at Tahrir welcomed the military, which they believed to be more sympathetic to their cause than the detested police. Demonstrators treated the military as a legitimate authority. For example, when protesters caught agents provocateurs working for the regime, they were turned over to the military.

Other actions also underscored the willingness of Tahrir revolutionaries to recognize the continued legitimacy of at least parts of the old order. For example, prominent liberal lawyers within the revolutionary camp continued to abide by the constitution that Mubarak had put in place in the waning years of his presidency. This constitution included a series of amendments, adopted in spite of gross procedural irregularities, which were intended to ensure his son’s succession. During the Revolution one liberal lawyer even published an appeal to Mubarak in the Washington Post demanding that he perform the formal steps required of a legal transition.

The more restrained interpretations of the Revolution continue to have strong support among Egyptians even when Mubarak resigned. Subsequent elections confirmed this. In the March 19th referendum, voters favored a quick transition and rejected radicals’ appeals to complete a draft constitution before selecting a new government. In the subsequent parliamentary elections, Islamist-affiliated parties won almost 70 percent of the seats, while post-revolutionary liberal parties took only 10 percent. And in the presidential elections of 2012, with Mohamed ElBaradei withdrawn from the race, the liberals could not even field a candidate. The top two vote-getters in the first round, Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister, and Mohammad Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, were affiliated, respectively, with the minimalist and reformist camps.

Whatever else can be said about the political preferences of Egyptians as revealed by their post-revolutionary voting patterns, elections demonstrated that a successful and peaceful democratic transition would require a coalition of minimalists, reformists, and radicals. Each group would have to accommodate the other two.

The Challenge of Pluralism

Accommodations are hardly unusual in societies emerging from a long period of authoritarian rule. Consider Chile, where General Pinochet was granted immunity in the aftermath of his bloody regime. All over Latin America, citizens accepted a substantial continuing role for free market economics, even though it had been a tool of dictators. Successful democratic transition inevitably requires some degree of compromise with old ways.

The challenge Egyptians faced throughout the transition was to build an inclusive polity in the face of their deep divisions. They could resolve these divisions either by suppressing disagreements through a forceful exercise of state power or by competing at the ballot box. The former strategy requires massive state violence in the short term and almost always leads to suspension of formal democracy, without any guarantee of a return to democracy in the medium or long term. The latter strategy involves less force, establishes at least the formal elements of democratic rule, and preserves the possibility of additional democratic gains in the future, even if it requires concessions to undemocratic or illiberal political groups in the present and is marked occasionally by episodes of political violence.

Both liberal and Islamic political theories endorse the second option. Traditional Islamic political theory prioritizes social peace in circumstances where achieving a more ideal polity would require widespread violence. Preserving social peace is also a crucial moral value of such political thinkers as Thomas Hobbes and John Rawls. These theories applied in Egypt: a formally democratic regime that allowed for fair and nonviolent competition over political office was the only means of including all three of Egypt’s political forces and thus the most likely to preserve social peace. Any attempt to suppress one of the three groups, on the other hand, would contradict this fundamental moral precept and would launch the country into civil war or else result in the imposition of emergency law. Both outcomes would foreclose meaningful politics.

From a Rawlsian perspective, Egypt’s divisions meant that social peace could only be achieved through a constitution establishing a temporary agreement among the parties. Such a constitution could do no more than guarantee formally democratic procedures of governance. It could not satisfy the requirements of justice, since it would be grounded in a particular balance of social power rather than an overlapping consensus on a conception of justice. Nevertheless, such a constitution, in Rawls’s view, is usually a necessary step toward the establishment of a just, well-ordered society.

The 14th century Arab Muslim political thinker Ibn Khaldūn’s tripartite typology of regimes—natural, rational, and Islamic—is consistent, in broad terms, with Rawls’s analysis. Natural states are based on relations of domination between the ruler and the ruled, restrained only by the limitations of the ruler’s actual power. Rational and Islamic states, by contrast, impose moral restraints on the exercise of political power. According to Ibn Khaldūn, rational and Islamic regimes transcend the relations of domination characteristic of natural regimes and establish overlapping conceptions of the common secular good. Ibn Khaldūn’s rational and Islamic regimes both can foster the convergence in political morality that—like Rawls’s overlapping consensus—characterizes a just constitution. Critically, this convergence or consensus must occur organically. Ibn Khaldūn argued that coerced adherence to Islamic law fails to produce virtuous subjects. Likewise, coerced imposition of even a just constitution cannot produce an effective system of justice if large numbers of citizens are incapable of freely adhering to its terms.

Although procedural democracy by itself did not promise the radicals the substantive changes they hoped for in the short term, it did offer the possibility of social peace and an opportunity to generate, over time, a broader consensus on the fundamental questions of how to establish a just and effective state worthy of citizens’ freely given allegiance. It also offered the foundation of a more liberal political order.

Morsi’s Constitutional Declaration

The most powerful post-revolutionary political actors in Egypt accepted a pragmatic option: they rejected radicalism and endorsed procedural democracy. When Morsi moved in November 2012 to insulate his decisions and the content of the 2012 constitution from judicial review, he was following the pragmatic course. Proponents of a liberal constitution objected, but their aims were not achievable without strife.

Most commentary points to Morsi’s November 2012 declaration as the final blow to the Muslim Brotherhood’s relationship with the liberal and radical revolutionaries, effectively setting in motion the events that led to the July 2013 coup.

Morsi was hardly the first Egyptian politician to issue such a decree. The military had used constitutional declarations regularly throughout the transition process in order to ensure that a formal legal order would remain in place. Morsi’s goal was not outlandish either. He intended to prevent the judiciary from interfering with the constitutional drafting process so that a text could be completed in accordance with the provisions of the transitional road map, which had been approved by the March 2011 referendum. The radicals interpreted Morsi’s decree as an intolerable assault on democracy, which confirmed their suspicions that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were attempting to create a new kind of authoritarian state.

The very conditions that produce democracy—liberty and equality—also produce factionalism, instability, and violence.

The real issue, however, was the make-up of the Constituent Assembly and the substance of the constitution it would draft. The parties arrived at a deal, including the semi-presidential structure of the state—with executive power shared by a prime minister and popularly elected president—but the role of religion was a sticking point. Because Parliament had selected the members of the Constituent Assembly, and because Islamists had won Parliament, Islamists dominated the Constituent Assembly. Liberals argued, not unreasonably, that those parliamentary elections exaggerated Islamists’ long-term political strength. Liberals also thought that the draft sacrificed or limited too many personal rights and freedoms in the name of religion, morality, and family values. They argued that the constitution would not be legitimate unless it was a consensual document capable of gaining acceptance by all significant social groups in Egypt.

The individual-rights provisions of the constitution were clearly deficient from the perspective of international human rights law. In particular, the attempt to limit personal rights in the name of respect for traditional religious values does not comport with wider commitments to liberty. Liberal dissidents, however, never faced up to the reality that Egypt is divided on these personal rights. Should the state underwrite freedom of expression even if that enables blasphemy and apostasy? Should gender equality override religious rules, Christian or Muslim, particularly in the context of family law?

Given that so many Egyptians disagree with the liberal position on these matters, it is hard to understand what the demand for a consensual constitution recognizing personal rights could have meant in practical terms.

The argument that the Constituent Assembly unreasonably exaggerated the strength of Islamist parties was plausible, but even granting this point, any democratic process would have placed a significant block of Islamists in the Constituent Assembly. So there was no democratic path for liberals to establish a constitution that secured the personal rights and freedoms they sought.

By the time Morsi issued his November 2012 declaration, constitutional deliberations had effectively ground to a halt. From Morsi’s perspective, the declaration was the only means available to prevent the Supreme Constitutional Court from dissolving the Constituent Assembly. He had reasonable grounds to worry that the Court was prepared to intervene. A case demanding dissolution was pending, and the Court had already issued two rulings that interfered in the democratic transition: one disbanding Egypt’s first freely elected Parliament since 1952, the second overturning a law that attempted to bar old-regime elements, such as Shafiq, from running for the presidency. The dissidents’ boycott of the Constituent Assembly’s deliberations was a not-so-subtle sign to the Court that, as far as they were concerned, its intervention would be welcome. In light of the Court’s opposition and the fast-approaching deadline for completion of the draft constitution, Morsi felt he had no choice but to cut the Court out.

There is little doubt that Morsi, as the democratically elected president, was the more legitimate arbiter of this dispute. The Court is not democratically accountable, and the draft constitution could not come into effect unless it won approval in a popular referendum. While one might disagree with Morsi’s methods, it is reasonable to conclude that he acted in accordance with his responsibilities as the only democratically accountable official in the country.

To describe his actions as a naked power grab, as ElBaradei suggested at the time, requires a presumption of bad faith inconsistent with democratic commitments. The radicals’ violent opposition to the November declaration would only have been justified if the constitution Morsi acted to protect failed to promote a pluralistic and inclusive political system. This was not the case. The 2012 constitution provided a more open political system than had prevailed prior to the Revolution. It increased formal political rights, reduced the power of the president, and increased the power of the prime minister and the Parliament.

These changes were meaningful. For the first time, anyone could form a political party or publish in print without the prospect of government censorship. By contrast, during the Mubarak-era, the formation of political parties required the state’s approval, thereby ensuring that no party capable of challenging the ruling National Democratic Party could develop. Under the new constitution, the president would be limited to serving two terms, would face stricter rules on declaring states of emergency, and would no longer be able to dismiss the prime minister. Parliament was newly empowered to withdraw confidence from the government. And the president would be required to select the prime minister from the largest party in Parliament.

The new constitution also boosted the capacity of the political branches by leaving open the content of many rights. Limitations on personal rights could only become operational upon the passage of positive law. The same was true of the provision contemplating military trials for civilians: Egypt’s future governments had the power to reduce the jurisdiction of military courts or to eliminate it through legislation. And though the constitution did not recognize a universal right to religious exercise—protection is limited to followers of the three Abrahamic religions—it did not prevent the state from doing so in the future by statute.

This structure reduced the influence of the courts—in particular the Supreme Constitutional Court—by vesting the power to define rights in the political branches. This was a reasonable constitutional strategy in a society characterized by sharp division on fundamental personal rights. Indeed, from a Rawlsian perspective, we would expect such a society to adopt a constitution that guarantees only those political rights necessary for democratic participation in lawmaking. The 2012 constitution appeared to accomplish that, leaving the more contentious issues of individual rights to future deliberation. Unlike constitutions of nearby states, such as Morocco, the 2012 constitution did not entrench any provisions, including those on the role of Islam, as supra-constitutional norms impervious to amendment. Nor did it place any substantive, ideological limitations on the formation of secular political parties, provided that they were not organized on a discriminatory basis. It did not impose religious piety or a theological test as condition for public office. This ensured that the constitution would not privilege the Muslim Brotherhood, other Islamist parties, or even the role of Islam itself above other provisions of the Constitution.

Democratic Faith

Even in a well-ordered, just society, Rawls argued, a polity may in some cases legitimately restrict the liberty of conscience of the intolerant, but only when there is a “reasonable expectation that not doing so will damage the public order which the government should maintain.” While Egypt is not a well-ordered society in Rawls’s sense, his principle casts light on how liberals should have reacted to the prospect of a military-led coup against an illiberal elected president and his illiberal political party. Extrapolating from Rawls’s treatment of restrictions on liberty of conscience, we might say that preservation of the constitutional order is the only justification for such an intervention, and this claim is only legitimate when it is based on objective evidence, widely accessible, demonstrating that the threat to the lawful public order is not “merely possible or in certain cases even probable, but reasonably certain or imminent.”

Liberals underestimated the people’s desire for security and their willingness to submit to power in order to achieve it.

It is hard to judge that Morsi’s conduct as president, however disappointing, crossed this threshold. Many radical revolutionaries justified their support for Morsi’s removal not on the grounds that his actions represented an imminent threat to the political order, but rather on the grounds that Morsi did not confront the military and the police with sufficient vigor. In their eyes he thus betrayed the revolution.

It is not clear, however, that Morsi had the power to transform these instruments of oppression in the year he was in office. The security forces were largely immune to Morsi’s influence. They refused to protect the offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political party, the Freedom and Justice Party. Even businesses affiliated, or thought to be affiliated, with the Muslim Brotherhood could not rely on police or military protection. When the presidential palace was attacked during demonstrations in the wake of Morsi’s constitutional decree, the security services were nowhere to be found. For Morsi’s opponents, however, his failure to reform the security services was taken not as a sign of his weakness but as evidence that he and the Muslim Brotherhood were conspiring with the military and police to destroy the liberal and radical opposition.

Even less plausible than fears of a secret alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the security services was Egyptian liberals’ belief that, in acting against Morsi, the military would promote democracy rather than restore the security state. Even if liberals were right about Morsi’s and the Muslim Brotherhood’s intentions, the only rational democratic strategy would have been to insist on parliamentary elections. There were at least three routes. If the opposition were able to win a two-thirds majority in upcoming parliamentary elections—which should have been easy if its claims about the universal unpopularity of the Muslim Brotherhood were true—it could have impeached Morsi. If found guilty at trial, he would have been removed from office. Even if unsuccessful in removing Morsi, such a strategy would have strengthened the cause of Egyptian democracy. A less dramatic step would have been to use Parliament’s powers to withdraw confidence and appoint a new government. The other lawful option would have been to defeat Morsi or another Muslim Brotherhood candidate in the 2016 presidential elections.

Instead the opposition, including radical revolutionaries, demanded early presidential elections. But there were no legal grounds for hastening the election schedule. Morsi could only be ousted by military intervention, a strategy that discredited political parties as the representatives of the Egyptian people in favor of the military, police, and other state institutions. Thus did Egypt’s most ardent democrats, under the banner of “the Revolution continues,” forego constitutional options in favor of methods that would only advance authoritarianism.

The idealists who halted the democratic experiment failed to understand what democratic theorists have long recognized: that the very conditions that produce democracy—liberty and equality—also produce factionalism, instability, and violence. If clashes are not mediated through some acceptable institutional arrangement, they are likely to be resolved through despotism. This risk was especially palpable in Egypt given the dominant role that the military and security services have played since 1952.

Citizens in a democracy must accept compromise with political adversaries, which means that ideologues of every stripe will be disappointed. (Indeed, strident Islamists criticized Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood for making too many compromises with secular democrats.) The failure to achieve all of one’s political goals is the price of democratic politics. The refusal to accept this price may lead to the kind of political disaster we are now witnessing in Egypt. Democracy, though grounded in the values of equality and liberty, is never born in societies perfectly reflecting these values. If they are realized, it is through the patient practice of democratic politics, even when its substantive outcomes conflict with one’s political ideals. A successful democracy emerges gradually, inspired by the fierce, even fanatical, belief in the ability of democracy to improve the people’s political virtue over time. Ironically Egypt’s most radical democrats did not have this faith.

Liberal and radical critics of the Muslim Brotherhood failed to realize that the real choice in Egypt was not between an Islamic state and a civil state, but between a state based on some conception of the public good—religious or non-religious—and one based on pure domination. In line with Ibn Khaldūn’s argument about the relationship between the religious conception of the state and the rational one, there should have been plenty of scope for agreement between religious and secular democratic forces. Tragically, liberals underestimated the people’s desire for security and their willingness to submit even to arbitrary and predatory power in order to achieve it. Their extra-legal strategies—protests, boycotts, and, finally, military intervention—gravely undermined the prospects that the emerging government would provide this crucial public good, opening the door for the return of the security state.

Egypt remains burdened by years of mismanagement and ill-considered policies that have been destructive of the common good, promoted corruption, and enfeebled the state’s non-security functions. Egypt cannot have a stable democracy if it does not overcome this legacy. Only a government with democratic legitimacy can undertake the inevitably painful reforms. Repression of the Muslim Brotherhood—the country’s most organized political group and one that, at least in principle, supports democratic practices—only puts off the day when Egypt can begin these needed reforms. By advocating military intervention in politics and, in too many cases, backing a coup against the legitimate government, the liberal and radical opposition have for the time being ruined the conditions for democracy. If the military-installed regime fails to establish political stability, which is a real possibility, Egypt faces the prospect of political chaos and even state failure.

This is the price of dogmatism in politics.

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