Όλες οι εγγραφές με ετικέτα με: "Μέση Ανατολή"

Το αραβικό αύριο

ΝΤΕΪΒΙΔ Β. OTTAWAY

Οκτώβριος 6, 1981, προοριζόταν να είναι μια ημέρα εορτασμού στην Αίγυπτο. Σηματοδότησε την επέτειο της μεγαλύτερης στιγμής νίκης της Αιγύπτου σε τρεις αραβο-ισραηλινές συγκρούσεις, όταν ο αουτσάιντερ στρατός της χώρας διέσχισε τη Διώρυγα του Σουέζ τις πρώτες μέρες του 1973 Ο πόλεμος του Γιομ Κιπούρ και έστειλε τα ισραηλινά στρατεύματα να υποχωρούν. Σε ένα δροσερό, χωρίς σύννεφα πρωί, το στάδιο του Καΐρου ήταν κατάμεστο από αιγυπτιακές οικογένειες που είχαν έρθει για να δουν τον στρατό να δοκιμάζει τον εξοπλισμό του. Στην εξέδρα αναθεώρησης, Πρόεδρος Anwar el-Sadat,ο αρχιτέκτονας του πολέμου, παρακολουθούσε με ικανοποίηση τους άνδρες και τις μηχανές να παρελαύνουν μπροστά του. Ήμουν κοντά, ένας νεοφερμένος ξένος ανταποκριτής.Ξαφνικά, ένα από τα φορτηγά του στρατού σταμάτησε ακριβώς μπροστά από το περίπτερο της αναθεώρησης, καθώς έξι αεροσκάφη Mirage βρυχήθηκαν από πάνω σε μια ακροβατική παράσταση, ζωγραφίζοντας τον ουρανό με μακριά ίχνη κόκκινου, κίτρινος, μωβ,και πράσινο καπνό. Ο Σαντάτ σηκώθηκε όρθιος, προφανώς ετοιμαζόταν να ανταλλάξει χαιρετισμούς με ένα ακόμη σώμα αιγυπτιακών στρατευμάτων. Έγινε τέλειος στόχος για τέσσερις ισλαμιστές δολοφόνους που πήδηξαν από το φορτηγό, εισέβαλε στην εξέδρα, και έριξε το σώμα του με σφαίρες. Καθώς οι δολοφόνοι συνέχιζαν για κάτι που φαινόταν μια αιωνιότητα να ψεκάζουν τη βάση με τη θανατηφόρα φωτιά τους, Σκέφτηκα για μια στιγμή αν να χτυπήσω το έδαφος και να κινδυνεύσω να με ποδοπατήσουν μέχρι θανάτου από πανικόβλητους θεατές ή να παραμείνω στο πόδι και να ρισκάρω να πάρω μια αδέσποτη σφαίρα. Το ένστικτο μου είπε να μείνω στα πόδια μου, και η αίσθηση του δημοσιογραφικού μου καθήκοντος με ώθησε να πάω να μάθω αν ο Σαντάτ ήταν ζωντανός ή νεκρός.

Φιλελεύθερη Δημοκρατία και Πολιτικό Ισλάμ: την Αναζήτηση κοινού εδάφους.

Mostapha Benhenda

Επανεξέταση του ισλαμισμού

MAHA Azzam

Iraq and the Future of Political Islam

James Piscatori

Η Αίγυπτος στο σημείο ανατροπής ?

Ρίζες του εθνικισμού στον μουσουλμανικό κόσμο

Shabir Ahmed

Ισλαμικός Πολιτικός Πολιτισμός, Δημοκρατία, και Ανθρωπίνων Δικαιωμάτων

Daniel E. Τιμή

Τα Ισλαμικά Κόμματα της Αντιπολίτευσης και το Δυναμικό για δέσμευση της ΕΕ

Toby Archer

Heidi Huuhtanen

ΙΣΛΑΜΙΚΕΣ ΑΠΟΦΑΣΕΙΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΟΝ ΠΟΛΕΜΟ

The United States no doubt will be involved in the Middle East for many decades. To be sure, settling the Israeli–Palestinian dispute or alleviating poverty could help to stem the tides of Islamic radicalism and anti-American sentiment. But on an ideological level, we must confront a specific interpretation of Islamic law, history,and scripture that is a danger to both the United States and its allies. To win that ideological war, we must understand the sources of both Islamic radicalism and liberalism. We need to comprehend more thoroughly the ways in which militants misinterpret and pervert Islamic scripture. Al-Qaeda has produced its own group of spokespersons who attempt to provide religious legitimacy to the nihilism they preach. Many frequently quote from the Quran and hadith (the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and deeds) in a biased manner to draw justification for their cause. Lieutenant Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein and Dr. Sherifa Zuhur delve into the Quran and hadith to articulate a means by which Islamic militancy can be countered ideologically, drawing many of their insights from these and other classical Islamic texts. In so doing, they expose contradictions and alternative approaches in the core principles that groups like al-Qaeda espouse. The authors have found that proper use of Islamic scripture actually discredits the tactics of al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations. This monograph provides a basis for encouraging our Muslim allies to challenge the theology supported by Islamic militants. Seeds of doubt planted in the minds of suicide bombers might dissuade them from carrying out their missions. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this study of Islamic rulings on warfare to the national defense community as an effort to contribute to the ongoing debate over how to defeat Islamic militancy.

THE RISE OF “MUSLIM DEMOCRACY”

Vali Nasr

A specter is haunting the Muslim world. This particular specter is notthe malign and much-discussed spirit of fundamentalist extremism, nor yet the phantom hope known as liberal Islam. Instead, the specter that I have in mind is a third force, a hopeful if still somewhat ambiguoustrend that I call—in a conscious evocation of the political tradition associated with the Christian Democratic parties of Europe—“Muslim Democracy.”The emergence and unfolding of Muslim Democracy as a “fact on the ground” over the last fifteen years has been impressive. This is so even though all its exponents have thus far eschewed that label1 and even though the lion’s share of scholarly and political attention has gone to the question of how to promote religious reform within Islam as a prelude to democratization.2 Since the early 1990s, political openings in anumber of Muslim-majority countries—all, admittedly, outside the Arabworld—have seen Islamic-oriented (but non-Islamist) parties vying successfullyfor votes in Bangladesh, Ινδονησία, Μαλαισία, Πακιστάν (beforeits 1999 military coup), and Turkey.Unlike Islamists, with their visions of rule by shari‘a (Ισλαμικός νόμος) oreven a restored caliphate, Muslim Democrats view political life with apragmatic eye. They reject or at least discount the classic Islamist claim that Islam commands the pursuit of a shari‘a state, and their main goaltends to be the more mundane one of crafting viable electoral platform sand stable governing coalitions to serve individual and collective interests—Islamic as well as secular—within a democratic arena whosebounds they respect, win or lose. Islamists view democracy not as something deeply legitimate, but at best as a tool or tactic that may be useful in gaining the power to build an Islamic state.

Hamas and political reform in the middle east

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

William Thomasson

Is Islam a religion of violence? Is the widely applied stereotype that all Muslims are violently opposed to “infidel” Western cultures accurate? Today’s world is confronted with two opposing faces of Islam; one being a peaceful, adaptive, modernized Islam, and the other strictly fundamentalist and against all things un-Islamic or that may corrupt Islamic culture. Both specimens, though seemingly opposed, mingle and inter-relate, and are the roots of the confusion over modern Islam’s true identity. Islam’s vastness makes it difficult to analyze, but one can focus on a particular Islamic region and learn much about Islam as a whole. Πράγματι, one may do this with Egypt, particularly the relationship between the Fundamentalist society known as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian government and population. The two opposing faces of Islam are presented in Egypt in a manageable portion, offering a smaller model of the general multi-national struggle of today’s Islam. In an effort to exemplify the role of Islamic Fundamentalists, and their relationship with Islamic society as a whole in the current debate over what Islam is, this essay will offer a history of the Society of Muslim Brothers, a description of how the organization originated, functioned, and was organized, and a summary of the Brother’s activities and influences on Egyptian culture. Certainly, by doing so, one may gain a deeper understanding of how Islamic Fundamentalists interpret Islam

The Political Evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Stephen Bennett

“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Since its early days in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood has created much controversy, as some argue that the organization advocates violence in the name of Islam. According to Dr. Mamoun Fandy of the James A. Baker III Institute of Public Policy, “jihadism and the activation of the views of the world of the house of Islam and the house of war are the ideas that emerged from the writings and the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood” (Livesy, 2005). The primary evidence for this argument is notable member of the Brotherhood, Sayeed Qutb, who is credited with developing the revisionist and controversial interpretation of jihad that provided religious justifications for violence committed by offshoot organizations of the Brotherhood like al-jihad, al-Takfir wa al-Hijra, Η Χαμάς, και al-Qaeda.

Yet that is still a debatable position, because despite being the ideological parent of these violent organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood itself has always maintained an official stance against violence and instead has promoted Islamic civil and social action at the grassroots level. Within the first twenty years of its existence the Muslim Brotherhood gained status as the most influential of all major groups in the Middle East through its popular activism. It also spread from Egypt into other nations throughout the region and served as the catalyst for many of the successful popular liberation movements against Western colonialism in the Middle East.

While it has retained most of its founding principles from its inception, the Muslim Brotherhood has made a dramatic transformation in some crucial aspects of its political ideology. Formerly denounced by many as a terrorist organization, as of late the Muslim Brotherhood has been labeled by most current scholars of the Middle East as politically “moderate”, “politically centrist”, and “accommodationist” to Egypt’s political and governmental structures (Abed-Kotob, 1995, p. 321-322). Sana Abed-Kotob also tells us that of the current Islamist opposition groups that exist today “the more ‘radical’ or militant of these groups insist upon revolutionary change that is to be imposed on the masses and political system, whereas… the new Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, call for gradual change that is to be undertaken from within the political system and with the enlistment of the Muslim masses”

Parting the Veil

shadi hamid

America’s post-September 11 project to promote democracy in the Middle East has proven a spectacular failure. Today,Arab autocrats are as emboldened as ever. Αίγυπτος, Ιορδανία, Τυνησία, and others are backsliding on reform. Opposition forces are being crushed. Three of the most democratic polities in the region, Λίβανος, Ιράκ, και των παλαιστινιακών εδαφών,are being torn apart by violence and sectarian conflict.Not long ago, it seemed an entirely different outcome was in the offing. Asrecently as late 2005, observers were hailing the “Arab spring,” an “autumn forautocrats,” and other seasonal formulations. They had cause for such optimism.On January 31, 2005, the world stood in collective awe as Iraqis braved terroristthreats to cast their ballots for the first time. That February, Egyptian PresidentHosni Mubarak announced multi-candidate presidential elections, another first.And that same month, after former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri wasshadi hamid is director of research at the Project on Middle East Democracyand an associate of the Truman National Security Project.Parting the Veil Now is no time to give up supporting democracy in the Muslim world.But to do so, the United States must embrace Islamist moderates.shadi hamiddemocracyjournal.org 39killed, Lebanon erupted in grief and then anger as nearly one million Lebanesetook to the streets of their war-torn capital, demanding self-determination. Notlong afterward, 50,000 Bahrainis—one-eighth of the country’s population—ralliedfor constitutional reform. The opposition was finally coming alive.But when the Arab spring really did come, the American response provide dample evidence that while Arabs were ready for democracy, the United States most certainly was not. Looking back, the failure of the Bush Administration’s efforts should not have been so surprising. Since the early 1990s, ΜΑΣ. policymakershave had two dueling and ultimately incompatible objectives in the Middle East: promoting Arab democracy on one hand, and curbing the power and appealof Islamist groups on the other. In his second inaugural address, President George W. Bush declared that in supporting Arab democracy, our “vital interests and our deepest beliefs” were now one. The reality was more complicated.When Islamist groups throughout the region began making impressive gains at the ballot box, particularly in Egypt and in the Palestinian territories, the Bush Administration stumbled. With Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza high on the agendaand a deteriorating situation in Iraq, American priorities began to shift. Friendly dictators once again became an invaluable resource for an administration that found itself increasingly embattled both at home and abroad.The reason for this divergence in policy revolves around a critical question:What should the United States do when Islamists come to power through free elections? In a region where Islamist parties represent the only viable oppositionto secular dictatorships, this is the crux of the matter. In the MiddleEastern context, the question of democracy and the question of political Islamare inseparable. Without a well-defined policy of engagement toward politicalIslam, the United States will fall victim to the same pitfalls of the past. In many ways, it already has.

How to Promote Human Rights in Egypt

Ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα πρώτης

The United States’ relationship with Egypt is central toseveral policy challenges facing the new administration inthe Middle East. As the most populous Arab state, Egyptis a major regional power. Since signing a peace treatywith Israel in 1979, it has played a key role in negotiationsfor an Israeli-Palestinian and a broader Israeli-Arab peaceagreement. Egypt helped to mediate a tense ceasefirebetween Israel and Hamas that broke down with theoutbreak of conflict in the Gaza Strip at the end ofDecember 2008, and continues to serve as anintermediary between the warring parties in the Gazaconflict. Egypt is again at the center of renewed peacemaking efforts in the region launched by the Obamaadministration with the appointment of former SenatorGeorge Mitchell as Special Envoy in January 2009.In a part of the world where so many vital U.S. interestsare at stake, Egypt is a key partner for any U.S.administration. The Egyptian government can greatlyassist the United States in legitimizing and supporting thenew government in Iraq, για παράδειγμα, και, as the owner ofthe Suez Canal and as an oil producer, Egypt is vital tothe security of energy supplies from the region.Egypt is also a testing ground for U.S. human rightspromotion in the region, and was frequently the target ofexhortations to move forward with political reform anddemocratization during the Bush administration.Successive administrations have been encouraging theEgyptian government to reform for decades, but after the9/11 attacks, with the prominent involvement of Egyptianslike Mohamed Atta and Ayman al-Zawahiri, calls forreform took on greater centrality—and a new urgency—inU.S. policy. Human rights and democracy were no longerjust desirable; they became national security concernsand the subject of a new “Freedom Agenda.

Εκδημοκρατισμός και Ισλαμική Πολιτική:

YOKOTA Takayuki�

The aim of this article is to explore the often contradictory correlation between democratizationand Islamic politics in Egypt, focusing on a new Islamic political party, the Wasat Party (Ḥizbal-Wasaṭ).Theoretically, democratization and Islamic politics are not incompatible if Islamic politicalorganizations can and do operate within a legal and democratic framework. Αφ 'ετέρου,this requires democratic tolerance by governments for Islamic politics, as long as they continueto act within a legal framework. In the Middle East, ωστόσο, Islamic political parties are oftensuspected of having undemocratic agendas, and governments have often used this suspicion as ajustification to curb democratization. This is also the case with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood(Jam‘īya al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn) under the Ḥusnī Mubārak regime. Although the Brotherhood is amainstream Islamic movement in Egypt, operating publicly and enjoying considerable popularity,successive governments have never changed its illegal status for more than half a century. Someof the Brotherhood members decided to form the Wasat Party as its legal political organ in order tobreak this stalemate.There have been some studies on the Wasat Party. Stacher [2002] analyzes the “Platformof the Egyptian Wasat Party” [Ḥizb al-Wasaṭ al-Miṣrī 1998] and explains the basic principlesof the Wasat Party as follows: Δημοκρατία, sharī‘a (Ισλαμικός νόμος), rights of women, and Muslim-Christian relations. Baker [2003] regards the Wasat Party as one of the new Islamist groups thathave appeared in contemporary Egypt, and analyzes its ideology accordingly. Wickham [2004]discusses the moderation of Islamic movements in Egypt and the attempt to form the WasatParty from the perspective of comparative politics. Norton [2005] examines the ideology andactivities of the Wasat Party in connection with the Brotherhood’s political activities. As theseearlier studies are mainly concerned with the Wasat Party during the 1990s and the early 2000s,I will examine the ideology and activities of the Wasat Party till the rise of the democratizationmovement in Egypt in around 2005. I will do so on the basis of the Wasat Party’s documents, suchas the “Platform of the New Wasat Party” [Ḥizb al-Wasaṭ al-Jadīd 2004]1), and my interviews withits members.