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Inisiatif Ikhwanul Muslimin sebagai Program Reformasi

Pada bulan Maret 3, 2004, Pak. Mahdi Akef, pemimpin dan pembimbing Ikhwanul Muslimin meluncurkan Inisiatif Ikhwanul Muslimin untuk Berpartisipasi dalam Reformasi Demokratis yang Ditunggu, menampilkan Ikhwan sebagai faksi politik yang dianggap kompeten untuk berpartisipasi. Persaudaraan muncul dengan sendirinya – tentu saja – dalam cahaya terbaik, yang mana hak semua orang. Dan pada bulan Mei 8, 2004, Dr. Essam Aryan, seorang termasyhur Persaudaraan terkenal karena penampilannya di stasiun satelit lokal Mesir, Dream TV, mengatakan inisiatif ini komprehensif, menyelesaikan program untuk segera mengubah Ikhwan menjadi partai politik. Demokrasi, dalam arti liberal, berarti dikuasai oleh rakyat, membuat undang-undang untuk diri mereka sendiri sesuai dengan kondisi mereka. Ini tidak hanya berarti pemilihan. Lebih penting, dan untuk meletakkan dasar bagi pemilihan, demokrasi adalah sistem politik plural yang menjamin warga negara’ kebebasan publik dan pribadi, terutama kebebasan berekspresi dan berpendapat. Itu juga menjamin hak asasi mereka, terutama kebebasan beragama. Ini adalah kebebasan mutlak, tanpa batasan atau pemantauan apa pun. Sistem demokrasi memungkinkan perubahan kekuasaan secara damai dalam masyarakat dan didasarkan pada pemisahan kekuasaan. Cabang yudisial, terutama, harus benar-benar mandiri. Demokrasi mengadopsi ekonomi pasar bebas yang didasarkan pada persaingan, dan yang mendorong inisiatif individu. Demokrasi didasarkan pada saluran dialgoue dan pemahaman damai di antara warga negara. Dalam menangani konflik lokal dan internasional, mereka menghindari opsi militer sebanyak mungkin. Bersama mereka yang percaya pada demokrasi, ia menghadapi mentalitas terorisme dan dogmatisme kekerasan fundamentalis. Demokrasi menentang ide-ide absolut yang mengklaim memiliki kebenaran absolut, dan mempertahankan prinsip relativistik dan pluralistik. Dengan melakukan itu, mereka memberi semua agama hak untuk aktif dengan aman, kecuali pendapat yang bertujuan untuk merampas kebebasan atau memaksakan diri kepada pihak lain secara paksa atau kekerasan. Jadi demokrasi berkepentingan dengan membebaskan agama dari monopoli satu interpretasi atau satu sekte. Singkatnya, demokrasi adalah sekelompok peraturan dan langkah-langkah hukum bagi masyarakat yang telah dicapai umat manusia setelah sejarah konflik yang panjang untuk memperbaiki otoritas di mana tokoh-tokoh agama tidak dapat memaksakan kehendak mereka.. Otoritas agama dilepaskan dari otoritas negara, untuk menjamin netralitas negara terhadap semua agama. Inilah yang memungkinkan kebebasan beragama dan berpendapat, dan kebebasan beribadah untuk semua dalam kebebasan total dan kesetaraan. Ini mencegah konflik atas nama agama, yang mengarah pada keamanan negara dan warganya.

Mutasi teroris dan ekstremis di Timur Tengah

Terorisme dan perang asimetris adalah jarang fitur baru dari saldo militer Timur Tengah, dan Islamicextremism adalah hampir satu-satunya sumber kekerasan ekstremis. Ada differencesin etnis dan sektarian yang serius di Timur Tengah, dan ini telah lama mengakibatkan kekerasan sporadis dalam negara yang diberikan, dan kadang-kadang untuk civilconflicts utama. Perang sipil di Yaman dan Pemberontakan Dhofar di Oman adalah contoh, sebagaimana sejarah panjang civilwar di Lebanon dan penindasan kekerasan Suriah dari kelompok politik Islam yang menentang rezim Hafez al-Asad. Kekuatan meningkatnya Organisasi Pembebasan Palestina (PLO) menyebabkan perang sipil di Yordania di September1970. Revolusi Iran di 1979 diikuti oleh pertempuran politik yang serius, dan upaya untuk mengekspor theocraticrevolution yang membantu memicu Perang Iran-Irak. Bahrain dan Arab Saudi memiliki keduanya telah bentrokan sipil antara elite penguasa theirSunni dan Syiah bermusuhan dan bentrokan ini mengakibatkan kekerasan yang signifikan dalam hal Saudi Arabia.There juga, Namun, telah menjadi sejarah panjang kekerasan ekstrimisme Islam di daerah, kadang-kadang mendorong byregimes yang kemudian menjadi target kelompok Islam yang sangat mereka awalnya didukung. Sadat berusaha untuk menggunakan Islamicmovements sebagai counter untuk oposisi sekuler di Mesir hanya untuk dibunuh oleh satu gerakan tersebut setelah perjanjian hispeace dengan Israel. Israel pikir itu aman untuk mensponsori gerakan Islam setelah 1967 sebagai counter untuk thePLO, hanya untuk melihat munculnya cepat kelompok keras anti-Israel. Utara dan Yaman Selatan adalah ofcoups tempat kejadian dan perang sipil sejak awal 1960-an, dan itu adalah perang sipil di Yaman Selatan yang pada akhirnya menyebabkan collapseof rezim dan merger dengan Yaman Utara di 1990.The jatuhnya Syah mengarah ke pengambilalihan Islam di Iran, dan perlawanan terhadap invasi Soviet reaksi triggeredan Islam Afghanistan yang masih mempengaruhi Timur Tengah dan seluruh dunia Islam. Arab Saudi harus menghadapi pemberontakan withan di Masjidil Haram di Mekkah pada 1979. Karakter religius pemberontakan ini bersama elementsof banyak gerakan yang muncul setelah penarikan Soviet dari Afghanistan dan Perang Teluk 1991.Algerian dalam upaya untuk menekan kemenangan partai politik Islam dalam pemilu demokratis di 1992 bya diikuti perang sipil yang telah berlangsung sejak. Mesir berjuang pertempuran panjang dan sebagian besar sukses dengan Islamicextremists sendiri pada 1990-an, namun Mesir hanya berhasil telah menekan gerakan seperti daripada eradicatedthem. Di seluruh Dunia Arab, perang sipil di Kosovo dan Bosnia membantu menciptakan ekstrimis Islam baru cadres.Saudi Saudi menderita dua serangan teroris besar sebelum 2001. Serangan-serangan ini menyerang di sebuah pusat GuardTraining Nasional dan barak USAF di Al Khobar, dan setidaknya satu tampaknya telah hasil Islamicextremists. Kulit kambing yg halus, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, dan Yaman telah melihat semua garis keras Islamistmovements menjadi threat.While nasional serius tidak langsung bagian dari wilayah, Sudan telah berjuang perang sipil 15 tahun panjang yang mungkin biaya selama masa twomillion, dan perang ini telah didukung oleh elemen-elemen Islam garis keras di utara Arab. Somalia alsobeen adegan perang sipil sejak 1991 yang telah memungkinkan sel Islamis untuk beroperasi di negara itu.

Komentar: Hollow cincin untuk demokrasi

Arnaud DE BORCHGRAVE

WASHINGTON, Juni 24 (UPI) — The White House’s crusade for democracy, as President Bush sees it, has produced “a critical mass of events taking that (Timur Tengah) region in a hopeful new direction.” And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just toured the area, making clear at every stop whenever the United States has a choice between stability and democracy, the new ideological remedy would sacrifice stability.

Veteran Mideast hands who have dealt with five regional wars and two intifadas over the past half century shuddered. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger first among them.

“For the U.S. to crusade in every part of the world to spread democracy may be beyond our capacity,” he says. Amerika Serikat. system, he explains, “is the product of unique historical experiences, difficult to duplicate or to transplant into Muslim societies where secular democracy has seldom thrived.” If ever.

If stability had been sacrificed for democracy, the former national security adviser and secretary of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford could not have negotiated major Arab-Israeli disengagement agreements: Sinai I, Golan and Sinai II. Without the undemocratic, benign dictatorial figure of Anwar Sadat at the helm in Egypt, or without the late Syrian dictator and master terror-broker Hafez Assad, yet another page of war history would have been written.

With a democratic parliament in Egypt in 1974, presumably dominated by the popular Muslim Brotherhood, Sadat could not have made his spectacular, death-defying trip to Jerusalem — and suddenly become the most popular leader in Israel. A peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and between Jordan and Israel were possible only because absolute rulers — Sadat and the late King Hussein, led both Arab countries.

Sadat knew his courageous act of statesmanship was tantamount to signing his own death warrant. It was carried out in 1981 — by Islamist extremists — on worldwide television.

Rice proudly proclaims it is no longer a war against terrorism but a struggle for democracy. She is proud the Bush administration no longer pursues stability at the expense of democracy. But already the democracy crusade is not only encountering speed bumps, but also roadblocks on a road to nowhere.

The much-vaunted Palestinian elections scheduled for July have been postponed indefinitely.

Di Lebanon, the ballot box has already been nullified by political machinations. Gen. Michael Aoun, a bright but aging prospect who came back from French exile to take on Syria’s underground machine, has already joined forces with Damascus. While denying any deal with Syria, the general’s henchmen concede he was compensated munificently for his retirement years in Paris from his post as army chief of staff and his time as premier. Aoun collected $22 juta, which included compound interest.

Di Mesir, Rice, presumably attempting to confer respectability on President Hosni Mubarak’s challengers, took time out to receive a known political charlatan who has over the years been exposed as someone who forged election results as he climbed the ladder of a number of political parties under a variety of labels.

Even Mubarak’s enemies concede Ayman Nour fabricated and forged the signatures of as many as 1,187 citizens to conform to regulations to legalize his Ghad (Tomorrow) party. His career is dotted with phony academic credentials, plagiarism, a staged assassination attempt on himself, charges of embezzlement by his Saudi media employer, and scads of document forgeries.

Rice had canceled a previous trip to Egypt to protest the indictment and jailing of Nour pending trial. And before Rice’s most recent accolade, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had also gone out of her way to praise Egypt’s master political con man. Makes you wonder what kind of political reporting is coming out of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

With this double-headed endorsement by the United States, Nour is losing what little favor he still has in Egypt. He is now seen as a U.S. stooge, to add to a long list of failings.

Ikhwanul Muslimin, which is outlawed but tolerated since it renounced terrorism, is more representative of Egyptian opinion than Nour. There is also the Kifaya (Enough) movement that groups Egypt’s leading intellectuals. But they declined to meet with Rice.

The United States is seen throughout the Arab world as synonymous with Israel. This automatically limits the Bush administration’s ability to win friends and influence people. Those making the most out of U.S. pressure to democratize are organizations listed by the United States as “terrorist.” Both Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon are now mining opportunities both above and underground. Islamic legislators in Jordan petitioned King Abdullah to allow Jordanian Hamas leaders, evicted six years ago, to come home. The king listened impassively.

It took Europe 500 years to reach the degree of political maturity witnessed by the recent collapse of the European Union’s plans for a common constitution. Winston Churchill said democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. But Churchill also said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” This still applies in the souks of the Arab world, from Marrakech to Muscat.

Masalah Ikhwanul Muslimin Mesir

Jeffrey Azarva

Samuel Tadros

On June 20, 2007, Amerika Serikat. Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research convened ameeting ofU.S. intelligence officials to weigh the prospect of formal engagement with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,1known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. The session was the result of several years of discussion aboutengaging the group considered by many to be the fountainhead of Sunni fundamentalism.Although the Bush administration established a diplomatic quarantine of the Brotherhood afterSeptember 11, 2001, members of the U.S. House of Representatives held several meetings in Egyptin the spring of 2007—almost three months before the State Department meeting—with MuhammadSaad al-Katatni, an independent member of the Egyptian parliament and the head of its Brotherhoodaffiliatedbloc. On April 5, 2007, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) broke with conventionand met with Katatni at the Egyptian parliament building and at the residence ofU.S. ambassador to Egypt Francis J. Ricciardone. Kemudian, on May 27, 2007, a four-member U.S. congressionaldelegation led by Representative David Price (D-N.C.) met with Katatni in Cairo.Following Hoyer’s visit, Amerika Serikat. Embassy in Cairo dismissed Egyptian criticism that his meetingspresaged a reversal of U.S. policy.2 In November 2007, Ricciardone also played down themeetings when he claimed that U.S. contacts with nominally independent Brotherhood members did“not imply American endorsement of the views of the individual parliamentarians or their politicalaffiliates.”3 Despite this reassurance, the meetings with Katatni are indicative of opinion leaders, bothinside and outside the U.S. pemerintah, warming inevitable. Yet while the movement, established by Hassan al-Banna in 1928, constitutes the most organizedand well-funded opposition in the country today—the byproduct of both its charitable services and da’wa (literally“call to God,” or preaching) network that operate outside state control—any examination of its rhetoricand political platforms shows U.S. outreach to be premature. Despite its professed commitment to pluralismand the rule of law, the Brotherhood continues to engage in dangerous doublespeak when it comes to the mostfundamental issues of democracy.

Mengingkari Reformasi: Mesir dan Tunisia

Jeffrey Azarva

On November 6, 2003, Presiden George W. Bush proclaimed, “Sixty years of Western nations excusingand accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe—because in the longrun, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.” This strategic shift, coupled with the invasionsof Iraq and Afghanistan, put regional governments on notice. The following spring, Tunisia’s president, ZineEl Abidine Bin Ali, and Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak—stalwart allies in the U.S.-led war on terrorismand two of North Africa’s most pro-American rulers—were among the first Arab leaders to visit Washingtonand discuss reform. But with this “Arab spring” has come the inadvertent rise of Islamist movementsthroughout the region. Sekarang, sebagai AS. policymakers ratchet down pressure, Egypt and Tunisia see a greenlight to backtrack on reform.

Apa yang Terjadi dengan Street "Arab?"

Neha Sahgal

Why do opposition movements engage in protest under some circumstances but not inothers? Why did the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt organize large scale protest during the 2005regime initiated political reforms while remaining largely off the streets during the United States’led war in Iraq in 2003? There is a common notion among Western public opinion and policymakers that United States’ policies in the Middle East have led to greater political activismamong Islamic fundamentalists. Belum, while citizens around the world protested the war in Iraq,Egypt remained largely quiet. The lack of protest and other acts of opposition were surprisinggiven the history of Arab-anti colonial struggle, the 1950s street politics in Egypt that broughtNasser to power and the flourishing civil society organizations in the region exemplified byIslamist parties, non governmental organizations and professional syndicates. Lebih penting,with the 2005 regime initiated political opening in Egypt, the country’s largest oppositionmovement, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organized high levels of protests anddemonstrations exposing undemocratic practices of the current government and seeking greaterpolitical freedom. Tahun 2005, was marked by a “wave of contention” in Egypt standing instark contrast to the lack of mobilization against the Iraq war. Clearly, Muslim Brotherhoodprotest activity is guided by factors other than the prevalence of “anti-Americanism.”Scholars of contentions politics have developed and tested various theories that explainand predict protest behavior. Strain and breakdown theories explain protest as an outcome ofeconomic conditions while resource mobilization theories have stressed the role of material andorganizational constraints in organizing protest. Yet others have argued that protests are spurredby structural changes, misalnya, divisions or breakdown in the government. In this paper, Iargue that explaining the protest behavior of one group should take into account the group’sinteraction with other opposition actors. Opposition groups operate in a dense network of allies,adversaries as well as counter movements. Therefore their strategies influence each other intangible ways. I present an analysis of how the 2005 political opening in Egypt led to changes inlegal parties such as al-Ghad and al-Wafd that were allowed to contest presidential andparliamentary elections. Lebih lanjut, the new movement Kifaya, originally formed to expressopposition to the Iraq war, also gained momentum as an anti-Mubarak, pro-democracy alliance.The changes in the parties that were allowed to contest elections and the emergence of newmovements altered the socio-political context for the “officially banned, yet tolerated,” MuslimBrotherhood. The Brotherhood tried to reassert itself as the main voice of political opposition inthe country by organizing greater protest activity and in this way established similarity with legalopposition parties. While legal opposition parties remain weak and ineffective in Egypt, andnewer opposition movements are still small in their membership, they may still influence eachothers’ strategies in tangible ways.