Al Qaeda chief's kin, other Salafis push for a puritanical Egypt
Extremist Islamists, once on the fringe of society, are seeing their
influence grow. 'God's teachings must be carried out,' Ayman Zawahiri's
brother, Mohammed, says.
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times
6:30 PM PDT, March 11, 2013
CAIRO - The brother of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri is an unflinching man
with a graying beard whose aim, as a Salafi, is to impose Islamic law on the
divided country that has emerged since the overthrow of secular autocrat
Hosni Mubarak two years ago.
Seated at a rooftop cafe as dusk draped the Nile, traffic screeching and
lights flickering in the ancient city below, he wagged a finger in the air
and spoke of an "epic battle" to scour Egypt of corruption and immorality.
"God's teachings must be carried out," said Mohammed Zawahiri, an engineer
who was acquitted by a military court last year after being imprisoned for
more than a decade on charges of attempting to overthrow the state. "The
secularists have stopped us from fulfilling God's law for hundreds of
years."
Once at the edges of Egypt's political spectrum, puritanical Islamists known
as Salafis have been emboldened by the nation's revolution. While the Muslim
Brotherhood, now the nation's dominant political force, is monolithic and
relatively moderate, Salafis include militants fighting for an Islamic
caliphate in the Sinai peninsula as well as the Nour Party, which has
spliced religion with shrewd political pragmatism.
The Salafis represent a volatile force in the struggle within Islam over how
deeply to impose the tenets of the Koran in the face of a backlash from
secularists, Christians and other minorities. The same dilemma is radiating
across much of the Arab world, including in Syria, Tunisia and Libya, as
radical Islamists, whether fighters in Damascus or holy men in Tunis,
maneuver to exploit national upheavals.
The Nour Party, Egypt's most popular Salafist organization, won more than
20% of the seats in the now-disbanded parliament by tempering its religious
rhetoric and cooperating, to a certain degree, with other factions. But
uncompromising Salafi leaders, such as Mohammed Zawahiri, seldom equivocate.
His Egypt would crush liberal tendencies, shrink a woman's space in public
life and counter what he sees as generations of manipulation by the West.
He professes nonviolence and blames Washington for portraying conservative
Islam as a primitive creed espoused by terrorists. But his imagery can be
confrontational: He condemned France's recent military intervention against
Islamist rebels in Mali, telling a TV station that Paris "lit the fire. It
started the war, and if this continues, the first to burn will be Western
people."
Zawahiri, who belongs to a branch known as Salafist Jihadists, is one among
an array of sheiks whose influence, while still limited, has steadily
sharpened amid Egypt's political and financial turmoil. And despite his
roots, he is less publicly aggressive than Morgan Gohary, who fought with
the Taliban in Afghanistan, and other Salafis returning home after years as
warriors in a shifting international holy war.
"I reject all political parties," Gohary said. "Having a parliament is
blasphemy. Egypt needs someone like Osama bin Laden."
Militant Islam bloomed in Egypt in the 1950s, culminating in the
assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981 after he instituted a cold
peace with Israel. That was followed by Mubarak's crackdown, which included
the torture and jailing of thousands of Islamists. Bombings and militant
attacks in cities and resorts shook the country into the early 2000s as
Islamist militants sought to weaken Western influence over Egypt's
government.
The uprisings that swept the Arab world over the last two years altered the
landscape. The relatively peaceful revolt here brought down Mubarak in 18
days, a goal Islamist militants had failed to achieve by themselves in 30
years. Yet the unsteady political climate that followed brought President
Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to power amid deepening divisions
over the goals of political Islam.
Many Salafis regard Morsi and the Brotherhood as opportunists willing to
appease secularists at the expense of an Islamist agenda, notably by
supporting a constitution not explicitly rooted in sharia, or Islamic law.
Although Salafis were allies of the Brotherhood during the initial
postrevolution election, those bonds have loosened amid increasing mistrust
and a struggling secular opposition.
"The secularists want Egypt to look like Europe and America," Gohary said.
"But only Islamic rules should apply. God is the ruler, not the people. We
battled Mubarak over this for years and this is why we killed Sadat."
Gohary pulled back his prayer cap and showed a shrapnel scar from what he
said was a U.S. rocket attack in Afghanistan. He fought for the Taliban for
years and said he killed American soldiers. He recently startled Egypt by
calling for the destruction of the pyramids. He called them idols forbidden
by Islam, much like the Buddhist statues the Taliban blew up in 2001.
"There is no successful government in the Arab world," Gohary said. "So far,
only the Taliban is applying God's law. They hold true to his foundation. We
have principles and morals we will not change. This is what we fight for and
what the West doesn't understand."
Zawahiri is more understated, if no less apologetic.
In an interview, he stroked his beard, occasionally grasping it in a loose
fist. He was perplexed over why there weren't more questions about America's
policy in the region, which he said was designed to exaggerate terrorism to
keep alive Washington's "military machine."
Zawahiri was tortured for years by interrogators seeking information on his
brother, Ayman, whom he reportedly last saw in the late 1990s. The CIA once
requested a DNA sample from him to determine whether a dead militant in
Afghanistan was his brother. Upon his release, Mohammed Zawahiri, now
working on a master's degree in architecture, reentered a much-changed
society, in which Mubarak's once looming portraits had been burned or torn
away.
The political situation "in Egypt is better than in the past when we faced
repression and injustice," he said. "But we still haven't even achieved a
part of what we want.... The secularists are supported by the West and want
to ban the will of Muslims from instilling their beliefs."
When asked to be specific about his vision of an Islamic state, Zawahiri
shook his head and suggested that the West has sought to exaggerate the
strictures of sharia by focusing on such rules as cutting off the hands of
thieves. He said Islamic law encompassed economics, politics and religion in
a singular, indivisible way of life.
These teachings, he said, draw clear lines between sexes: Women can work in
business but should never become president.
"She's weak and could not make decisions at tough times," said Zawahiri, who
would not allow a woman to interpret for him. "Her nature is more for
nurturing her children as God created her."
His vision of sharia would not limit the rights of Egypt's 8 million Coptic
Christians, he said, and unlike Muslims they would be allowed to drink
alcohol and eat pork. But he also expressed suspicion of Christians, saying,
"They are imprisoning some Muslims inside their churches because these
people converted to Islam."
Zawahiri downplayed any widening differences between more moderate and
extremist Islamists in Egypt. He said, however, that the Brotherhood faces
increased Western pressure and that its "political position is actually
weak" after its inability to pass a constitution ensuring sharia. He also
criticized the tactics of the Nour Party, which considers men such as
Zawahiri too provocative in an already charged political atmosphere between
Islamists and secularists.
"We disagree with the very political route they have taken," Zawahiri said.
But Zawahiri's fixation is on the United States. As night crept across
Cairo, and minarets glowed in neon amid a sea of satellite dishes, Zawahiri,
seated on the rooftop, spoke of the long wars fought by America in Iraq and
Afghanistan. He suggested that the U.S., more so than the Brotherhood or the
Nour Party, is his country's greatest threat.
"We don't want people pushing us toward clashes," he said.
==========================================
(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this
message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to
these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed
within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with
"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.
The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The
Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain
permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials
if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria
for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies
as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four
criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is
determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not
substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use
copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS
PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment