“Arab liberalism” in Syria and Egypt
How did renewed autocracy in Egypt and civil war in Syria impact liberals differently? What lessons can be learned about the nature of liberalism in the greater Arab context from this comparative survey? This chapter seeks to answer these questions, first by following the reaction of liberals to the so-called Arab Spring, comparing a handful of intellectuals and academics in Egypt as well as Syria. The chapter goes on to focus on two of the most prominent liberals in each context, namely Gaber Asfour and Burhan Ghalioun. In each case, the role played by the armed forces vis-à-vis the public was critical to their rapid accession to power, and equally rapid fall.
What affect did the recent Arab uprisings have on the region’s liberals – especially those from Egypt and Syria? How did their intellectual activity before the so-called “Arab Spring” shape their behavior? What effect did military action have on this behavior? And finally can such a comparative analysis provide any lessons about the nature and prospects of liberalism in Egypt, and its context in the Arab world more broadly? Answering these questions draws attention to two democratically minded, politically active intellectuals from the Egyptian and Syrian context in particular. On the one hand, Gaber Asfour served as Egyptian minister of culture under Ahmad Shafiq in 2011 and maintains good relations with Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi’s government. On the other, Burhan Ghalioun became the Syrian opposition’s spearhead against President Bashar Al-Assad and the first president of the Syrian National Council (SNC) in 2011. Examining their political activity requires some discussion on the origins and history of “Arab liberalism” between its Egyptian and Syrian foci.
STATE ADVOCACY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF ARAB LIBERALISM
Liberalism is as old as the Egyptian state. The values of freedom (huriyyah; ahrar) and equality (musawah) came to occupy the very crux of al-libiraliyyah in the context of modern Arab political parties, also beginning in Egypt.1 The origins of liberal discourse can be traced to the unprecedented as well as rapid period of nation building under Muhammad Ali Pasha (d. 1850), who fostered the rise of a new class of Arabic-speaking intellectuals and entrepreneurs.2 Inspired by a combination of British learning and French culture, Egyptian intellectuals and Syro-Lebanese entrepreneurs established the very rudiments of liberalism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between the new khedival palaces of Alexandria and the ancient institutions of Cairo. New printing presses, newspapers, an overhaul of the legal and educational systems, and the beginnings of Arab nationalism coincided with rationalist Islamic reform in al-Azhar University. The pioneers of the modern Arab Renaissance or the Nahda hailed from both Egypt as well as greater Syria. Their ranks included Christians as well as Muslims. Foremost among them were Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi (d. 1873), Butrus al-Bustani (d. 1883), Beshara and Saleem Takla (d. 1892), Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (d. 1902), Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), Huda Sha‘rawi (d. 1947), Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (d. 1963), Taha Husayn (d. 1973) and more. The “Nahda liberals” or “classical liberals” were, and are still today, by and large members of society’s elite, both educated in foreign schools and coming from wealthy, upper-class families advocating the burgeoning “Arab state” – especially Egypt – with whom it had close ties.
ACTIVISM AND STATE OPPOSITION: THE LATER DEVELOPMENT OF ARAB LIBERALISM
Once modern Arab states became independent during the mid-twentieth century, they faced innumerable challenges from within and without. The great external threat was the founding of an Israeli state. Internally, Arab states, including Egypt, underwent political, social, and economic upheaval. Foretelling events six decades later, the Free Officers, including future president Gamal Abdel Nasser (d. 1970), came to power through a military coup in 1952. Nasser would lay the foundations for the modern police state in Egypt, and throughout the region. His populism, nationalism, and socialist reforms, hailed by millions of his countrymen, weakened Egypt’s wealthy landowners and mitigated their foreign predilections. Then came the devastating “setback” or naksah. Nasser and his allies from Syria and Jordan were defeated by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Following the military empowerment of the Arab state and its subsequent military failure, a new branch of Arab liberalism came into existence, based on opposing the power of the state and mobilizing progressive, democratic reform. Arab liberal activism was born.
Liberal activists include members of the middle and professional classes, former elites, an increasing number of women, and quite often exiles living abroad. Prominent women in their ranks include the medical doctor Nawal al-Saadawi in Egypt and the historian Madawi al-Rashid, whose tribe once ruled Arabia until its overthrow by the Saud family. There is, however, no firm line between liberal activism on the one hand and liberal advocacy on the other. The two camps exist in parallel under a broader umbrella called Arab liberalism, under which they share “liberal values,” including secular governance and expanding women’s rights for example. At any rate, the efflorescence during the Nahda and the protest after the naksah not only impacted Arab liberalism. It (re)shaped the defeated Arab states, including Egypt and Syria.
Since the brief stint of the United Arab Republic (UAR; 1958–61) stretching back to time immemorial, Egypt and Syria have been consistently united politically, and shared a unique set of political as well as cultural relationships.3 These relationships began to diverge with the failure of the UAR in 1961 and the defeat of the Arab armies by Israel in the Six Day War in 1967. By 1970, the subsequent decline of Nasserism and pan-Arab nationalism ruptured the long-standing relationships between Egypt and Syria, and each nation forged its own political fate thenceforward.
In 1978–9, under President Anwar Sadat (d. 1981), Egypt made peace with the Arab enemy – Israel – and befriended its chief supporter – the US – from whom it began accepting $1.3 billion annually. By doing so, Egypt abandoned the dream of Arab union, opened up to foreign investment, boosted its tourist industry, and enjoyed a westward orientation.
Syria, on the other hand, doubled down on its passé Arab nationalist orientation. Following a coup in 1963, which was orchestrated by forces within Syria as well as Iraq,4 the Baath Party came to rule along the regimented lines of a Soviet and later Russian model. That being said, President Hafez Al-Assad (r. 1971–2000) built Syria from the ground up. But he also closed off his country to foreign investment, completely eliminated any political opposition, especially the armed opposition of the Syrian Muslim Brothers, whom he crushed in 1982 along with thousands of civilians in the city of Hama. Denying Israel’s existence and having no diplomatic ties with it became a staple of Syrian foreign policy. These historical developments had major consequences on the development of the region’s liberalism.
Although Egypt and Syria came under the influence of opposing sides in the Cold War, there have been both continuities as well as disruptions with respect to how liberal advocates as well as activists have approached several political goals – especially preventing the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, ending autocracy and promoting democracy. In this vein, some are quick to point out the spread of political Islam in the region after the Iranian revolution (1978–9) yet forget the concomitant mobilization among both liberal camps especially in the 1990s and early 2000s, both in Egypt as well as Syria. In other words, prior to the Arab uprisings of 2011, a number of critical developments took place that would give shape to, and change the voice of, liberalism across the Arab world thereafter.
Given the increased Islamist activity, classical liberals in the form of public university professors challenged existing Islamic institutions, promoted secularism, and called for reform from deep within the Islamic literary tradition. This discourse pitted them squarely against Islamists, giving liberal advocates and the illiberal state a common enemy. This act of “reconciliation,” which played out in the 1990s and early 2000s would repeat itself after 2011. Similarly, liberal activists took to the streets long before 2011. Their agenda of human rights and democracy, while not quite in line with illiberal Islamist politics, was a direct challenge to the secular but equally illiberal politics of the Mubarak or Assad governments. It was these liberals that joined the masses throughout the winter and spring of 2011, irrevocably coming into “conflict” with the state.
SILENCING LIBERAL ACTIVISM IN EGYPT, CA. 1979–2013
The tradition of classical Arab liberalism was maintained by academics and intellectuals. They remained statist and eventually came to oppose political Islam, rather than the state. In Egypt, the animosity between the two came to a head in the early 1990s. During a wave of Islamist activity and government crackdowns in Egypt, academics like Farag Foda (d. 1992) and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (d. 2010) published works promoting secularism and critical of established Islamic religious tradition and institutions. In response, extremists among their interlocutors assassinated the former in 1992 and divorced the latter from his wife in absentia in 1995 on charges of heresy.5 It is imperative to recognize that neither Foda nor Abu Zayd was directly tied to the Mubarak government; they merely did not oppose it. While both academics were advocates of the modern nation-state, they were no fans of the Egyptian state itself. To complicate matters further, in the case of Abu Zayd it was the Egyptian state, through the appellate court of Cairo, that facilitated two injustices: (1) divorce by compulsion of the state; and (2) manipulation of in absentia judgment for a case with no crime.6 For the Egyptian state, its relations with liberal advocates has typically been one of “convenience.”
Toward liberal activists, however, the Egyptian state was more directly and decisively opposed. Activists including Nawal al-Saadawi and Saad Eddin Ibrahim challenged the cultural and political status quo, for which they were dragged through the courts and imprisoned. In the case of Saadawi, her feminism – especially her opposition to violence against women and female genital mutilation – would reap the anger of the Egyptian state. Her criticism of Islamic institutions in oppressing women would similarly anger Egyptian Islamists, who threatened her life. The year of President Sadat’s assassination in 1981, she was found “in contempt of religion” and imprisoned for several months.7 Similarly, in the case of Ibrahim, his opposition of Hosni Mubarak’s government on grounds of human rights and his call for democracy was met with stiff opposition from the state. He was charged with “espionage” in 2000 (of which he was later acquitted), and with “defamation” in 2008, after which he went into exile. Despite his staunch opposition to Hosni Mubarak’s government and his calls for democratization, Ibrahim safely returned to Egypt in 2010.8 Ibrahim’s and Saadawi’s exile took them to the United States where they occupied important academic and research positions until returning to Egypt. The combination of (especially) Egyptian state repression as well as Islamist threats succeeded in keeping liberalism at bay for much of the 1980s until the early 2000s.
It would be safe to say that pent-up social and political unrest lead to an uptake in liberal activism in the early 2000s. For the first time in the history of an independent Egypt, a liberal activist challenged the police state and sought to supplant Mubarak’s presidency through the democratic process. Ayman Nour, who founded the liberal al-Ghad Party in 2004, was the only politician ever to compete against Mubarak in presidential elections in 2005. After coming in second he was charged with “fraud” and imprisoned from 2005 to 2009. Were it not for his disqualification from the Presidential Election Commission – in part populated by pro-Mubarak cronies – he would have run for president in 2011–12. The al-Ghad Party, however, did spin off a much larger coalition of political parties under the leadership of Wael Nawara called the Network of Arab Liberals. The coalition rapidly grew into the Arab Alliance for Freedom and Democracy (AAFD), made up of more than a dozen parties from Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia.9 But neither Nawara nor the AAFD capitalized on a post-Mubarak Egypt. The problem with this liberal activism is that, no matter its ambition within Egypt or other Arab societies, it was thoroughly incapable of mobilizing the masses. The members of progressive political parties were ostensibly too few, and occasionally divided, to have any lasting impact on society. Hamdeen Sabbahi, who frequented prison so often for his opposition to both Sadat and Mubarak, fared somewhat better. He founded the Dignity Party (hizb al-karamah) and came in third behind Mohammad Morsi and Ahmad Shafiq in the 2012 presidential elections. After the popularly supported military coup in 2013 and the overthrow of Egypt’s first ever democratically elected president, Mohammad Morsi, Sabbahi made another bid for the presidency against Sisi in 2014, which he promptly withdrew. Since then, Sabbahi has tiptoed lightly through a political arena marked by renewed autocracy – a precarious existence for a liberal opposition figure in Sisi’s Egypt. His intermittent silence and sporadic criticism of current policies must contend with the popular charisma of yet another president from the military. In the eyes of Sisi supporters – many of whom were relieved by the toppling of Morsi and the Muslim Brothers and who see the country’s recent democratic experiment as a complete disaster – Sabbahi’s unsuccessful presidential bid in 2012, campaign withdrawal in 2013, and sporadic criticism after 2014 are an unwelcome and dangerous political distraction. By 2014, the thorough silencing of liberal activism in Egypt would be encapsulated in the words of Sisi supporters to Sabbahi: “Sabbahi has no right to speak in the name of the Egyptian people!”10
ACTIVISTS IN CONFLICT AND ARTISTS IN RECONCILIATION, EGYPT, CA. 2013–
The narrative of the silenced liberal activist existed long before the fall of Mubarak in 2011 and continues until today. The relationship between liberal activism and the state is fundamentally one of “conflict.” This is contrasted by the relationship between classical liberals and the state, which is characterized by support or at the very least “reconciliation” with the illiberal if not fully autocratic values of the state. They include intellectuals, authors, artists, actors, and other literary and creative personalities who enrich society through state institutions. By 2013, many of these personalities joined in the national campaign against all symbols of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and commended Sisi and the military for saving their country.
There are reasons for this liberal support of the military against the Muslim Brothers beyond basic notions of classical liberalism defined above. Under the Muslim Brothers, a number of political and popular offenses took place that particularly threatened the arts. Their blunders in this respect include the executive restructuring of this arena by the then minister of the arts Alaa Abdel Aziz. The sacking of the director of the Cairo Opera House – an icon of Egyptian arts and a testament to the country’s classical liberal and modernist foundation – Ines Abdel-Dayem on May 30, 2013, and the refusal of her replacement Reda El-Wakil to fill her position, were the last straw.11 In this context, it is little surprise that many prominent figures from within the Egyptian arts community took their antagonism of the Muslim Brotherhood to the extreme. Their ranks include the well-known novelist Alaa al-Aswany.12 But they include equally famous artists such as the poet Ahmed Abdel Mu‘ti Higazi, author Gamal El-Ghitani, actors Ahmed Bedier and Ilham Shahin, and of course the renowned academic and literary critic Gaber Asfour (about which see more below).
TEMPORARY RECONCILIATION WITH ASSAD, SYRIAN INTELLECTUALS, CA. 1982–2012
Between activists and advocates of the state, the story of liberalism in Egypt may be judged one of conflict and reconciliation respectively. In Syria, a number of politically active academics and intellectuals in the tradition of classical or Nahda liberalism contributed prolifically to an Arab liberal discourse, broadly speaking. Sadiq J. Al-‘Azm provided a critique of Islamist politics and ideology in light of the violence that raged between the government of Hafez Al-Assad (d. 2000) and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. Following Assad’s decimation of the Syrian Muslim Brothers along with the city of Hama in 1982, ‘Azm published his landmark Critique of Religious Thought.13 During the 1980s and 90s, Tayyib al-Tizini and Muhammad Shahrur wrote equally important works on the role of government, society, and religion in the Arab world.14
The works of ‘Azm, Tizini, and Shahrur criticize the failure of Arabism especially in light of the 1967 defeat, and the subsequent rise of opposing Islamist (mainly Salafist) identities. However, these academics and intellectuals criticized autocracy in the Arab world only in theory and without recourse to overthrowing the Assad regime specifically. The key is that no political challenge to the Assad government could be tolerated.15 One may claim, therefore, that, like their Egyptian counterparts, Syrian intellectuals reconciled their liberal politics with an illiberal autocratic state.
While the term reconciliation may serve as a basic or operative term to describe the relationship between intellectuals and the state – in Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Arab world – it does not tell the whole story. Nor does it encapsulate the nuances of the Syrian intellectual predicament as a result of the Arab uprisings in 2011. Contrary to the Egyptian example, Syrian intellectuals were much more divided on whether to support the Assad government or join the growing opposition. After 2011, Shahrur continued to offer criticism of Islamism but not Assad. Tizini called for Assad to step down while claiming, quite diplomatically, that his departure from power would be considered a “victory.”16 This and similarly artful and mixed signals were the limit of his later political activity. ‘Azm, however, came out in vehement opposition to the Assad government, and on November 11, 2012 he joined ranks, in no uncertain terms, with the opposition body known as the Syrian National Council (SNC) in Doha Qatar.
As a brilliant intellect from Syria, and as a member of Damascus’ most elite house (Bayt al-‘azm), his opposition was an astonishing break with the status quo. It is, furthermore, proof that the relationship between liberals and the state in the Arab world is a complex continuum, and that given the necessary circumstances this relationship can transform drastically. It is ‘Azm himself who most articulately explains the reasons for, and limits of, liberal intellectual reconciliation with autocratic states in Syria and Egypt, stating:
I don’t think anyone ever did a survey of Arab intellectuals to determine their views and positions. Such studies are rare in our part of the world. We rely on speculation, impressions and the spontaneous interpretation of events. If we think for example of an Egyptian intellectual living in a totalitarian system, he would have been forced to come to terms with that system. I do not believe that he served that system. I know from the experiences of many intellectuals that they had to make a number of compromises in order to continue working as university professors or writers – compromises that were however, in my opinion, not all that compromising.17
CONFLICT, EXILE AND CIVIL WAR: LIBERAL ACTIVISM IN SYRIA, CA. 2000–12
Given the absence of a real public sphere and the freedoms necessary to foster grassroots mobility, with respect to liberal activism in Syria there is deafening silence. There are no political parties of which to speak, and Assad’s brutal secret police and intelligence network cut Syria off from the rest of the world, transforming it into the famed “kingdom of silence.”18 What scarce leftist and progressive activism survives within the country borders remains politically nationalist and frequently Marxist-socialist in orientation. The dearth of activism in Syria is complemented by a plethora of Syrian liberal activism in Paris, London, New York, and most anywhere else these activists have immigrated to willingly or as some form of exile.
The voices of democratization and critics of the Assad government have long since been exiled outside the national borders, thriving not within Syria but among the Syrian diaspora in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. The final hope of liberalization, reform, and legitimate reconciliation with the government came between 2000 and 2005 after Hafez Al-Assad died, leaving the presidency to his son Bashar Al-Assad – a seemingly more cosmopolitan, progressive leader many thought. However, the “Damascus Spring” came and went, leaving the exiled Syrian liberal opposition more embittered than ever. Their liberal political reform agenda, as well as their plans for economic liberalism became irreconcilable with the Assad government and, increasingly, with Syrian society more broadly. Liberalism swelled irrevocably into conflict. Like a volcano waiting to erupt, the battle on the horizon was between Syrian liberal activists living in Europe and the US on the one hand, and Assad loyalists living within Syria on the other. And it was Burhan Ghalioun at the helm of the liberal vanguard.
BURHAN GHALIOUN AND GABER ASFOUR, CA. 1990–2010
The professional careers and personal biographies of both Ghalioun and Asfour are comparable both in terms of length as well as their impact on liberalism in the region. Ghalioun was born in 1945, and Asfour one year earlier in 1944. Both are academics by trade, publishing in Arabic for an Arab audience. And most importantly, both academics served as political leaders in 2011. Ghalioun’s interest in democracy and human rights took him to France, and more specifically to the University of Paris/La Sorbonne where he received a dual doctorate in the social sciences and humanities, and where he has worked since the 1970s. During this time, Asfour had obtained his doctorate in Arabic literature from Cairo University, joined its faculty, and remained in his home country of Egypt. Asfour remains a classic example of the Nahda liberal, whose nationalism and statism define his academic as well as political activity, whereas Ghalioun has always been a liberal activist first and an academic second. Before elaborating on the differences between the two, and how these differences conditioned their starkly opposite reactions to the Arab uprisings, it is imperative to share a few words concerning their common political goals between 1990 and 2010, i.e. two decades prior to the Arab uprisings.
As liberals in a single Arab context, both Asfour and Ghalioun strive toward creating a democratic society, eradicating Islamic fundamentalism, and fostering progressive, intellectual and humanistic values. Asfour, however, argues for these values from within the Arabic and Islamic literary corpus. He had written a number of works in this vein, critical of Islamic fundamentalism and promoting an “Arab enlightenment,” including The Enlightenment Crisis (Mihnat al-tanwir; 1993), Combating Terrorism: A Selection from Contemporary Literature (2003), and In Defense of Women (2007).19 As a social scientist, however, Ghalioun argues for these same values principally through a political and social critique drawn from the European Enlightenment, rather than through the Islamic tradition proper. Prominent works from his oeuvre include Assassination of the Intellect: The Crisis (mihnah) of Arab Culture between Salafism and Subjugation (1993) and The Arab Crisis (mihnah): The State versus the Nation (2004). He was the one, furthermore, to write A Manifesto for the Sake of Democracy (1986, reprinted 1990, 2006) and the “textbook” so to speak on Arab Human Rights (1999).20 However, for the purposes of deciphering the agenda shared by both Asfour and Ghalioun on the eve of the Arab uprisings, broadly speaking, some critical insights may be drawn from the titles selected above.
From the early nineties (1990 and 1993 to be specific) until 2003, both Asfour and Ghalioun emphasize that Arab societies are in a state of “crisis” (mihnah), namely a predicament of thought, culture, and identity. Both authors agree that the result of this crisis is Islamic fundamentalist discourse. However, Ghalioun adds the state’s heavy hand – i.e. autocracy – as the other, graver, destructive outcome. This is a critical difference between the two and foreshadows their different trajectories in the wake of the Arab uprisings.
For Asfour and numerous other Egyptian liberals of his persuasion, there is only one existential threat – political Islam.21 It is little surprise that Egyptian liberals were incensed by Islamic political actors in the country. These were namely the Muslim Brothers – the region’s de facto popular as well as Muslim representative body – al-Azhar University, and (after 2011) the Salafists. The “editorial warfare” on the pages of Al-Ahram, for example, serves as ample evidence and expert witness to the rumblings of the invectives exchanged and legal actions taken between liberal-minded intellectuals and artists on the one hand and political Islamists on the other – long before Tahrir and Rabaa. One typical example features two editorials from 2007, one by Asfour and another by the poet Ahmed Abdel Mu‘ti Higazi, which attack a bombastic Islamic cleric by the name of Yusuf al-Badri, calling him an “extremist” among other colorful epithets. Badri filed suit, based on Egypt’s hisbah ordinances against both22 and was successful, ultimately requiring his defendants to pay substantial fines in reparation.23 Such caustic battles between Egypt’s left and the right were neither new nor particularly special. Over time, however, they did come to quintessentially define what “liberalism” in Egypt was, who the liberals were, and place them both in contradistinction with political Islam more broadly. During this time (1990–2010), one is hard pressed to find in the pages of Al-Ahram or otherwise any serious criticism of Mubarak’s autocracy or corruption by Asfour or his liberal camp. The two were actually reasonably close and made up an important part of the political, cultural, and commercial elite that ruled the country. Asfour’s liberalism ultimately defined itself so thoroughly in opposition to the illiberalism of Islamist currents that it came to lend its support – either implicitly or, as we shall see following the events of 2013, explicitly – to the equally illiberal Egyptian autocratic state. Under Mubarak, Asfour worked for several Egyptian state institutions, occupying prestigious offices in education, literature, publishing, and culture. His alliance lay quite naturally with the state with which he had a deeply positive and mutual relationship.
The situation was wholly different in the Syrian context. For Ghalioun and the liberal Syrian diaspora on the other hand, all Arab societies are “between a rock and a hard place.” In the case of Syria, these poles are subservience to the Assad family on the one hand and the Salafists (specifically) on the other. Ghalioun’s Manifesto thus systematically and directly criticizes the tenets of nationalist, Marxist, and Islamist political models.24 Furthermore, his criticism came following the period known as the “Damascus Spring” between 2000 and 2001 when several Syrian liberals and opposition figures returned home to try their luck at activism under a new president, namely Bashar Al-Assad. It did not last. Ghalioun delivered a talk in September 2001 hosted by fellow activist Riyad al-Sayf. Hundreds attended. Syrian intelligence was alerted and immediately began its crackdown. Ten of the attendees, including Seif, received harsh prison sentences, and it was back to the police state.25 This was followed in 2005 by a significant development, the “Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change,” a document with the outlines of a democratic constitution, criticizing the Assad government, and mapping out a gradual transition toward democracy, while respecting Islam as well as the diversity of the Syrian people.26 Ghalioun backed the Declaration, which he saw as a Syrian grassroots political movement. It was also backed by Michel Kilo, the Christian human rights activist also living in France, as well as by Kurdish Syrian groups and – most significantly – the Syrian Muslim Brothers, an unlikely hodgepodge of Syrian opposition members.27 Ghalioun’s willingness to cooperate with an Islamic political group as notorious as the Syrian Muslim Brothers represents a major ideological compromise on his part. After all, Ghalioun believed in a civil path towards democratization, one informed not by Islamic tradition nearly as much as by European Enlightenment philosophy. The Syrian Muslim Brothers, by contrast, had taken to a full-blown Islamic insurrection by 1982. And as we shall see shortly, this unholy alliance only fanned the flames of the Syrian civil war beginning in 2011.
2011 proved to be the fateful year in which pent-up social injustice, endemic government corruption and Islamic fundamentalism shattered the very fabric of many Arab societies. Nowhere is this truer than in Syria wherein the region’s bloodiest civil war has raged for approximately five years.28 Despite escaping this destructive fate, Egypt has returned to a stronger, more repressive form of autocracy under Sisi than under Mubarak. The objective here, however, is not to outline the historical development of the so-called Arab Spring, but rather to demonstrate the critical roles played by Egyptian and Syrian liberals, especially Asfour and Ghalioun, in shaping its outcomes. In both contexts there has been a single decisive actor, perhaps even a single decisive moment, upon which their activism or advocacy – and the fate of Arab liberalism itself – has been predicated: military action.
In order to appreciate the relationship of Egyptian liberals vis-à-vis military action, it is useful to start by examining this relationship in the Syrian context, and to continue following the course of Burhan Ghalioun, before turning again to Gaber Asfour in Egypt.
The Syrian public was inspired by the peaceful protests at the heart of the popular revolutions in both Tunis (December 18, 2010) and Tahrir Square (January 25, 2011). Between February 4 and March 20, sporadic street protests turned violent and the full-scale government crackdown began in the city of Daraa. Details concerning whether protesters or the Syrian police “fired the first shot” remain controversial and are not central to the matter at hand. What is central is that by April/May the Syrian military began besieging cities throughout the country. They attacked the snowballing armed opposition often located in civilian areas like mosques and private homes, killing hundreds and imprisoning thousands. On June 29, the brutality of the military crackdown and the rising civilian death toll led to army defections and the creation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). By the end of the year, the Syrian civil war was in full swing, with jihadist groups on the rise.
It would be safe to say that the unexpected nature of the Syrian uprising and the rapid pace at which events unfolded caught all exiled Syrian activists, from the left and the right, completely off guard. Their country had gone from hopeful popular demonstration to armed rebellion in just five months. They needed to act, quickly and in unison. As a result, on August 23, the Syrian National Council (SNC) was founded in the city of Istanbul, with Ghalioun to be elected as its first chairman. As a broad political coalition, its national consensus charter lists “human rights, judicial independence, press freedom, democracy and political pluralism among its guiding principles” – precisely in line with the liberal project Ghalioun had been articulating for decades.29 The SNC was expanded on November 11, 2012 in Doha, Qatar, into the larger National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (still abbreviated SNC).
Before proceeding with this discussion of the SNC, it is worth offering a caveat about its origins. Although it is common knowledge that this coalition came in response to the Syrian uprising, its deeper roots, established prior to the conflict, are often neglected. The SNC in 2011 formed directly out of the Damascus Declaration in 2005 and the Damascus Spring of 2000–1.30 It was this Declaration that first galvanized and organized Syrian activists living abroad. Furthermore, a number of prominent signatories from 2005 resurfaced in 2011 and 2012, including Riyad al-Sayf. All this is to suggest a continuity between liberal currents inaugurated earlier during the short-lived Damascus Spring and in the Syrian uprising of 2011, a trajectory that is largely ignored. Having said that, by 2011, Syrian liberalism had become an opposition government in exile.
However, there were problems. By necessity, the SNC, like the Declaration before it, included the Syrian Muslim Brothers, whose historical track record was not only illiberal, but also included organized violence against the state.31 Throughout 2011, the SNC hobbled along, cooperating with the FSA beginning in December of that year. This act was significant: however committed the SNC may have been as an (admittedly deeply problematic) incarnation of modern Syrian liberalism, it could only fully actualize that liberal project through strength of arms. In other words, Ghalioun’s ability to convert his long-standing theoretical project of democratic liberalism into tangible outcomes in Syria was wholly contingent upon his and his coalition’s ability to militarily defeat the Assad government. The SNC and its military wing, the FSA, were at the mercy of foreign funding, which all but dried up by 2012. And it was completely unwilling to undertake direct negotiation with Assad, stipulating that his resignation was a precondition to negotiations.32 The SNC was simply no match for Assad’s military as well as political resilience. In the coming years, Assad would garner the aid of Iran and Russia. And the meager FSA would be totally overwhelmed by the rise of well-funded, heavily armed, and better-organized jihadist groups. In the western half of Syria, these included a jihadist alliance fighting with the FSA, namely Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda in Syria), Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, and smaller groups. In opposition to the FSA and its allies, as well as the Assad government was the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS) to the east.
Ultimately, the SNC’s downfall was its weakness, before the rising tide of jihadism and political Islam on the one hand, and before the world community which it desperately needed on the other. The SNC was making strong demands from a rather feeble position. Their insistence on foreign (i.e. US) military intervention and their intransigence with respect to negotiating Syria’s future with Assad (and Russia), while understandable in principle, lacked both credibility as well as strategy. The White House, fearing the rise of jihadist groups and the weakness of the SNC, was reluctant to recognize the SNC as the leadership of the Syrian opposition.33 It also wavered incoherently with respect to arming Syrian rebels.34 The SNC became internally fractious, incoherent, and ineffective. On May 17, 2012, Ghalioun stepped down as chairman. Liberalism was dead.
ASFOUR, THE MINISTRY AND EGYPT’S RETURN TO MILITARY RULE, 2011–14
In contrast to Syria, the development of liberalism in Egypt immediately after January 25, 2011 was a world apart. Activism flourished amid the police state. Millions of Egyptians took part in the twenty-two days of demonstrations and sit-ins taking place in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. At the core of the youth demonstrating was a call for populist-style liberalism, “bread, freedom and human dignity (or social justice).”35 Mubarak’s brutal crackdown was overseen by his new interim prime minister, Ahmad Shafiq, but led directly by the minister of interior, Habib Al-Adli, and his security apparatus, i.e. police, intelligence, and armed gangs. The minister of media, Anas al-Fiqqi, was equally complicit in inciting violence against demonstrators through state-run TV. A total of 846 people died in Egyptian cities.36 However, the critical mass of Egypt’s students, activists, peasantry, labor unions, and (towards the end) the Muslim Brotherhood was irresistible, and by February 11 Mubarak was gone. He was deposed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which fancied itself the protector of the people. The military would be their caretaker for the coming year and, as militaries are wont to do, it overstepped its bounds a number of times. But for now, it was celebrated as the savior of the revolution. “The army and the people are one hand,” so they said.37
During the nascent weeks of the revolution, all of Egypt was in flux, its liberals included. Like their Syrian counterparts, the revolution was an opportunity to finally reject the status quo and establish a democratic society. On February 1, Shafiq offered Asfour the post of minister of culture for a new “salvation government,” a completely unexpected if controversial opportunity. Asfour immediately accepted. He resigned ten days later, citing health concerns, which everyone understood to be a “save face” tactic. The truth as he claims was that he was shocked to find Mubarak’s cronies, especially Fiqqi, desperately trying to cling to power, and he could not stomach being involved in such a government.38 Asfour received harsh criticism from intellectuals, including Sadiq J. Al-‘Azm, across the Arab world for involving himself with the final death throes of the Mubarak era – and justifiably so. ‘Azm states:
I do not want to take the intellectuals to task too strongly [about supporting their governments], unless the situation is crystal clear, as in the case of Jaber Asfour, former director of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Culture and the last minister of culture under Mubarak. There was a time when he kept a certain distance between himself and the regime. But then that distance disappeared. It is impossible to respect such people.39
All criticism aside, however, Asfour was the perfect man for the job. After all he was a prolific author, as well as director of the High Council on Culture (1993–2007), an independent organization dedicated to promoting the arts and humanities, but also working closely with the ministry. The point is that this was the way Asfour could effect political change after the revolution. He served as minister of culture once again from June 17, 2014 till March 5, 2015. The question “why” Asfour would agree to serve as minister of culture under Mubarak and later Sisi is, like the contradictions of liberalism, a complex one to which we may never have a definitive answer. On the one hand, he was poised after a long and celebrated career to take on the challenge of reforming Egypt’s cultural landscape from a position of authority. On the other hand, his raw ambition may have clouded his liberal values and severely tarnished his reputation as a liberal. I suspect the answer is a bit of both.
Other academics as well as activists without immediate ties to the government were equally active. Nawal al-Saadawi, the journalist Mona Eltahawy, and Khaled Fahmy, professor of history at the American University in Cairo (AUC), personally marched in Tahrir Square. Others took to the airwaves. On March 2, a televised debate hosted a discussion between Shafiq, the billionaire tycoon Naguib Sawiris, and the author Alaa al-Aswany on the current political state of affairs. Aswany was applauded by many (as well as criticized by some) for his relentless condemnation of Shafiq, under whom dozens of unarmed protesters were massacred.40 Later that year, with a growing anxiety about Islamists, especially the Muslim Brothers, having carte blanche after decades of repression, academics like Sayyid Al-Qimany and Salafist clerics like Mahmoud Sha‘ban would debate the concept of “civilian rule.” On April 3, Sawiris, insofar as he can be considered a liberal, established the Free Egyptians Party, which actively opposed the Muslim Brothers. Unlike the Syrian context, any coalition between Egyptian liberal parties and the Muslim Brotherhood is simply unthinkable.41 In this vein, the alliance between one-time presidential hopeful Mohamed El Baradei and the Muslim Brotherhood was ill-conceived and short-lived. Furthermore, once Morsi was elected president and enacted controversial executive powers, the alliance was all but over.42 At any rate, it seemed for some time that, after seven thousand years of dictatorship, all sectors of Egyptian society were finally participating in the democratic process of political debate as well as trial and error. And liberals were playing an integral part.
The following years proved to be more problematic for liberalism in Egypt. The first ever elected president of Egypt was a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Morsi, and his own autocratic practices, overall mismanagement, and – more significantly – the simple fact that the Muslim Brothers and Islamist parties were thriving put liberals, artists, the elite, and large segments of the public in a state of panic. Through the Tamarod campaign, they all converged on Morsi and the Muslim Brothers. On July 3, 2013, army general Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi removed President Morsi from office and banned the Muslim Brotherhood soon after. At the time, only a handful of liberals openly protested taking such extreme measures at the risk of losing democracy. Among them was Amr Hamzawy, professor of political science at AUC and one of Egypt’s strongest and ablest supporters of democracy, who unlike Asfour declined Shafiq’s offer to serve as minister of youth in 2011. Instead, he opted to run for parliament. He won and served as an MP in 2012-2013, and was criticized by many for his condemnation of the popularly supported military coup on June 30, 2013. The same was the case for Mohamed El Baradei, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and one-time presidential hopeful, who abandoned Egypt altogether following the military coup and the subsequent Rabaa massacre on August 14, 2013. The military killed over eight hundred demonstrators (some armed) and members of the Muslim Brotherhood calling for the return of Morsi to the presidency.43
If military protection of demonstrators in Tahrir allowed liberalism in Egypt to evolve, then its massacre of demonstrators in Rabaa completely reversed this evolution. The overwhelming majority of the country’s liberals vilified the Muslim Brothers (see discussion earlier) and many went on to support Sisi’s intervention, and later his presidency. Asfour, Aswany, Qimany, Higazi, and several others came down in support of Sisi. Their newfound enthusiasm for the youth (lukewarm in some cases) was overtaken by their decades-old mistrust of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the words of Asfour in an interview dated June 23, 2015, “Egypt was in dire need of Sisi!”44
Military autocracy was back with a vengeance, and the Muslim Brothers were driven underground once again. The critical mass of Egypt’s liberals had yet again reconciled themselves with the status quo. They had “turned.” Or did they? In light of Asfour’s career and renewed armed opposition in Syria led by Ghalioun, this was very much a “return” to business as usual.
The choices made by Gaber Asfour and Burhan Ghalioun following the Arab uprisings were experiments in testing the limits of Arab liberalism, the seeds of which were sown by their literati ancestors two centuries ago. These limits were first set by the political events of the later twentieth and early 21st centuries, and duplicated in the wake of the Arab uprisings, especially the popular revolution of 2011 and popularly supported coup of 2013. The definition of these limits are reflected in the actions – however disappointing they may be – of Egypt and Syria’s foremost secular theorists and political activists. Asfour and Ghalioun are both leaders as well as archetypes in this regard. At the risk of overgeneralizing and succumbing to realism, many liberals in the Arab world have tread one of two political paths in the wake of the Arab uprisings: (1) working under military autocracy (Egypt); or (2) overseas mobilization (Syria mainly). It is little surprise given these hindrances that critics have bemoaned the “silence,” “failure,” or “destructive legacy Arab liberals.”45 In the case of Egypt especially, liberal support of the military state has made key figures complicit (through silence or explicit statements) in the Rabaa massacre of 2013, Israel–Gaza conflict of 2014, and Egypt’s judiciary mass death sentences of Muslim Brotherhood members (and non-members!) in 2015.46
This begs the question, however implausible, had many of Egypt’s liberals stood with the Muslim Brotherhood on democratic principles and actively resisted the heavy-handed military, would their legacy be any less problematic? It is unlikely. Given the unsuccessful El Baradei–MB alliance and the feebleness of the SNC in the Syrian context, a liberal coalition including an Islamist group as popular and forceful as the Muslim Brotherhood would sooner or later collapse, giving way to renewed military and jihadist interventions. Or depending on the scope of their collective resistance, especially if it were armed, either had them killed, exiled, or locked up in Egypt’s crowded prisons, or even started a civil war – as in the case of Syria, Libya, and Yemen. For the “armchair academic,” there may be a utopian democracy waiting at the end of popular revolution. But for the political opposition, feminist, secularist, religious skeptic, artist, and activist striving for human, civil, and LGBT rights on the ground, they are fighting a losing battle against a police state on the one hand and a religiously and culturally conservative society on the other. There is virtually no middle ground. Mubarak’s chokehold on al-Azhar and the religious establishment, coupled with the influx of Wahhabi-trained scholars coming from Saudi Arabia, has all but dried up the “moderate Islam” (al-islam al-wasati) touted by al-Azhar.47 Under Sisi and under the guidance of former Egyptian Mufti Ali Guma (among other state-supported clerics in the Arab world), al-Azhar became further entrenched in the politics of the state.48 In this context, given their small numbers and the sheer absence of rule of law, liberals have been victim to martial law as well as takfiri fatwas. The resulting “brain drain” of Arab professionals has been staggering, and the dissolving of the Arab middle class has left the region’s liberals starving and stranded.49
Since its inception, liberalism in Egypt has typically not been “by the people” nor “for the people,” but rather in service of the state.50 And since the state has been mired in a struggle for national identity (against Israel, the British, and the Ottomans), the military and security apparatus have dominated public life. Egypt boasts a truly proud and rich institutional history, making it the first modern state in the entire Middle East. However, its economy, universities, hospitals, opera houses, newspapers, and religious endowments are quintessentially appendages of the state.51 Liberal academics (as well as religious clerics) are by default part of the state structure. They are an integral part of the elite, who are highly cosmopolitan, but also rather old fashioned and out of touch with the increasingly young, economically and culturally impoverished public. In this vein, one need not look further than the disparaging comments of admittedly older liberals against the demonstrations and sit-ins by the youth. Murad Wahbah, professor of philosophy at Ain Shams University, criticized the disruption of business and traffic in Tahrir, and claimed “these are a mindless people and revolution.”52 The Syrian poet Adunis similarly “found no satisfaction in what people had done,” referring to the demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt as a “youth rebellion.”53 The teachings and tenets of liberalism, furthermore, are often perceived as foreign, hostile, or even confrontational to the public. On the streets of Cairo and Damascus, philosophy (falsafah) is often casually used to refer to nonsense, and secularism (al-‘ilmaniyyah) is just as often associated with a reified school of religious heresy.
The Egyptian people have been excluded from the affairs of their own country by design. The popular revolution on January 25, 2011 and popularly supported coup on July 3, 2013 were the people’s most vociferous cries to seize back control of their country. History teaches that the ebb and flow of revolution and counterrevolution while destructive is an integral part of creating political structures accountable to its people. The aftermath of the French Revolution in 1798–9 was a century of imperialist and republican autocracies. The Persian Constitutional Revolution between 1905 and 1907 led to the retrenchment of the Qajar dynasty. In this context, the long and bloody processes of political liberalization and Islamic reform started five years ago but have years or decades in which to come to fruition. Egypt walks a precarious middle way between the fragile democratic transition in Tunisia and civil war in Syria. Only once its liberals serve the people can Egypt, and the region as a whole, truly reap the benefits of an Arab Spring.
1 Tawfiq al-Madani, “Jadaliyyat al-intiqal min al-libiraliyyah ila al-dimuqratiyyah,” Bawwabat al-sharq, June 18, 2015.
2 Cf. in relation Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2002).
3 Egypt and Syria have been united politically under most of pre-modern history, from the time of the Pharaohs and Hittites until the Mamelukes and Ottomans. About political and cultural relationships, see Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 61.
4 It is sobering, in light of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS), to recall the cross-border political activism that gave rise to the Baath Party in both Syria and Iraq fifty years earlier. These channels of activism were established by the free officers of the Iraqi Baath Party in Baghdad, who rose to power in a coup in February 8, 1963, and immediately staged a follow-up coup in neighboring Syria in March 8, bringing a heavily militarized Baath Party into Damascus and the rest of Syria. Syrian Nasserists – the final link between modern Egypt and Syria – were driven out. For more on the rise of the Baath and fall of the Nasserists in Syria, see Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 75–83.
5 Important Azhari clerics including Muhammad al-Ghazali and Muslim Brotherhood personalities including Muhammad ‘Amarah played a role in their persecution. For more on the clash between liberal academics and Islamist actors in Egypt during the 1990s, see Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Al-Tafkir fi zaman al-takfir: did al-jahl wa al-zayf wa al-khurafah (Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli Al-Saghir, 1995). It is also worth noting that the case against Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd was prosecuted under the auspices of hisbah legislation, a tool from medieval Islamic jurisprudence that I will explicate in more detail elsewhere.
6 On the problematic nature of divorce from an apostate in modern states, see Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures: Family, Law and Politics, Vol. 2, ed. Suad Joseph and Afsana Najmabadi (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2005), 8. Trial in absentia was established 1950–3 by Article 6, “Right to a fair trial,” in the European Convention on Human Rights. It stipulates “everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.” See the European Court of Human Rights, European Convention on Human Rights (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1998), 9, http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf
7 For more on Saadawi’s activism and imprisonment, see Nawal El Saadawi, Muzakkarati fi sijn al-nisa’, trans. Marilyn Booth, Memoirs from the Women’s Prison (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).
8 For more on Ibrahim’s activism before and after the Arab uprisings, see Matt Bradley, “Military regime draws support from Egypt’s liberals,” The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2014.
9 For recent activity by the AAFD against fundamentalism, see Rimun Naji, “‘Al-tahaluf al-‘rabi lilhuriyyah’ yu’ayyid hamlat almisriyyin al-ahrar ‘watan did al-tatarruf’,” Bawabat Veto, May 26, 2015.
10 Muhammad Munisi, “Ansar al-sisi li-sabbahi: lissah lik ‘ayn titkallim?!,” Al-Masri al-Yawm, October 1, 2014.
11 Richard Spencer, “Cairo Opera on strike in protest at Muslim Brotherhood sacking of director,” Telegraph, May 30, 2013.
12 Cf. Patrick Kingsley, “Alaa al-Aswany on why he had to support Egypt’s military crackdown,” Guardian, October 29, 2013; Negar Azimi, “The Egyptian army’s unlikely allies,” New Yorker, January 8, 2014.
13 Cf. Sadiq J. Al-‘Azm, Naqd al-fikr al-dini (Beirut: Dar al-Tali‘ah, 1982), trans. Critique of Religious Thought (Berlin: Gerlach, 2014).
14 Tayyib al-Tizini, Fusul fi al-fikr al-siyasi al-‘arabi (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1989); Muhammad Shahrur, al-Dawlah wa al-mujtama‘ (Damascus: al-Ahaly lil-Tiba‘ah, 1995).
15 Sadiq J. Al-‘Azm would officially represent the Syrian Writers Union at the SNC meeting convened in Doha, Qatar on November 11, 2012.
16 Rita Faraj, “Tizini li al-ray, tanahi al-asad intisar lah,” Al-Rai Medi Group, January 14, 2012.
17 Mona Naggar, “Interview with Sadiq Jalal al-Azm: A new spirit of revolution,” Qantara.de, April 1, 2011.
18 Wael Sawah and Salam Kawakibi, “Activism in Syria: Between nonviolence and armed resistance,” in Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism, ed. Lina Khatib and Ellen Lust (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
19 Gaber Asfour, Mihnat al-tanwir (Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-Misiryyah al-‘Ammah lil-Kitab, 1993); Muwajahat al-irhab: qira’ah fi al-adab almu‘asir (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 2003); Difa‘an ‘an al-mar’ah (Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-Misiryyah al-‘Ammah lil-Kitab, 2007).
20 Burhan Ghalioun, Bayan min ajl al-dimuqratiyyah (Beirut: Mu’asasat al-Abhath al-‘Arabiyyah, 1986); al-Mihnah al-‘arabiyyah: al-dawlah didd al-ummah (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wihdah al-‘Arabiyyah, 1993); Huquq al-insan al-‘arabi (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wihdah al-‘Arabiyyah, 1999); Ightiyal al-‘aql: mihnat al-thaqafah al-‘arabiyyah bayn al-salafiyyah wa al-tab’iyyah (al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-‘Arabi, 2004).
21 See generally Asfour, Muwajahat al-irhab, 1–20.
22 The origins of Egyptian hisbah laws and the muhtasib, a public and commercial investigator of sorts, are drawn from the Islamic legal principle of “promoting virtue and preventing vice” – the very same principle that in a different manifestation comes to inform the morality police forces (mutawaeen) of Saudi Arabia. For a more nuanced understanding of hisbah in a modern Egyptian context, drawing especially on the case of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (discussed earlier), see Hussein Ali Agrama, Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 42–68.
23 “Taghrim ‘asfur khamsin alf junayh li tadamunih ma‘ hijazi,” Middle East Online, December 13, 2008.
24 Ghalioun, Bayan, 161–71.
25 Amal Hanano, “Portraits of a people,” Jadaliyya, October 11, 2011.
26 Joshua Landis, “Damascus Declaration in English,” SyriaComment, November 1, 2005.
27 For more, see Joshua Landis, “Michel Kilo the patriot,” SyriaComment, May 15, 2006; Robin Wright, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 232–4.
28 With a death toll of near 400,000 the Syrian civil war (2011–) has surpassed the death tolls for the North Yemen civil war (1962–70), Lebanese civil war (1975–91), Algerian civil war (1991–2004), and ongoing Iraqi civil conflict (2003–). See “320,000 people killed since the beginning of the Syrian Revolution,” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, June 9, 2015.
29 “Q&A: Syrian opposition alliance,” BBC News, November 16, 2011.
30 AFB, “Riyad al-sayf, ramz rabi‘ dimashq,” Jaridat al-Madinah, November 7, 2012.
31 It was Nasser, under the UAR, who first banned the Syrian Muslim Brothers, a policy that would radicalize the group and bring it into direct conflict with the Alawite minority of Syria, of whom the Assad family was a member. The seeds of the Nusra Front and ISIL/ISIS were sown by the Syrian Muslim Brothers three decades earlier, in their “long campaign of terror” from 1976 to 1982, in part aided by the Baath Party in Iraq. See Patrick Seale, Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East (London: University of California Press, 1989), 336–7.
32 “Syria opposition groups hold crucial Qatar meeting,” BBC News, November 4, 2012.
33 Scott Stearns, “Clinton: SNC no longer leads Syrian opposition,” Voice of America, October 31, 2012.
34 After the Obama administration’s decision in 2011 to arm the Libyan rebels backfired, and the availability of heavy munitions caused a civil war in that country (ultimately killing US ambassador J. C. Stevens on September 12, 2012), the idea of providing heavy munitions to the Syrian rebels was debated intensely in Washington. Cf. Alissa Rubin, “Two senators say U.S. should arm Syrian rebels,” New York Times, February 12, 2012; David Sanger, “Rebel arms flow is said to benefit jihadists in Syria,” New York Times, October 14, 2012. In this context, the White House’s policy to arm the “moderate Syrian opposition,” beginning in 2013 and even after large-scale Russian intervention in Syria in 2015, is a (disastrous) compromise between Washington’s hawks and naysayers. See Jim Acosta and Eugene Scott, “Obama: U.S. will keep backing Syrian opposition despite Russian intervention,” CNN, October 3, 2015.
35 Wael Nawara, “Egyptian people tell Mubarak OUT,” The Huffington Post, January 26, 2011.
36 “Egypt unrest: 846 killed in protests – official toll,” BBC News, April 19, 2011.
37 See Robert Naiman, “Hand in hand, the army and the people are one,” The Huffington Post, January 30, 2011, but also Max Strasser, “The army and the people were never one hand,” Foreign Policy, January 24, 2012.
38 Ibrahim Sa‘id, “Jabir ‘asfur: anas al-fiqqi kan ra’is al-junhuroyyah fi wujud ahmad shafiq,” Bawabat Veto, June 19, 2014.
39 Naggar, “Interview with Sadiq Jalal al-Azm.”
40 Robert Worth, “The Arab intellectuals who didn’t roar,” New York Times, October 29, 2011.
41 As the principal representative of political Islam, the Muslim Brothers have been particularly despised by the ruling elite since the Free Officers Movement in 1952, the UAR (1958–61), and the following decades where, as this chapter demonstrates, they were at loggerheads with a number of liberals, including Asfour, Higazi, Qimany, Abu Zayd, and others.
42 Cf. Margaret Coker and Summer Said, “Muslim group backs secular struggle,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2011; Erich Follath, “ElBaradei speaks out against Morsi: ‘Not even the Pharaohs had so much authority,’” Der Spiegel, November 26, 2012.
43 Kareem Fahim and Mayy El-Sheikh, “Memory of a mass killing becomes another casualty of Egyptian protests,” New York Times, November 13, 2013.
44 Cf. eg. Fahmi al-Shishtawi, “Jabir ‘asfur: misr kanit fi ashadd al-ihtiyaaj ila al-sisi,” Al-Fajr, June 23, 2015.
45 Worth, “The Arab intellectuals who didn’t roar”; Sohrab Ahmari, “The failure of Arab liberals,” Commentary Magazine, May 1, 2012; Joseph Massad, “The destructive legacy of Arab liberals,” Electronic Intifada, March 30, 2015.
46 See in part Joseph Masad, “The destructive legacy of Arab liberals.” Ibid.
47 Hani Nasira, “Salafists challenge al-Azhar for ideological supremacy in Egypt,” The Jamestown Foundation, September 16, 2010.
48 Mohamad Elmasry, “Ali Gumah: Sisi’s most loyal Islamic scholar,” Middle East Eye, June 27, 2015.
49 Cf. in relation James Reinl, “Arab ‘brain drain’ accelerates after Arab Spring: UN,” Middle East Eye, May 8, 2015.
50 Cf. Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, Liberalism Without Democracy: Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922–1936 (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 66–76.
51 Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 93–124, 250–2.
52 “Murad wahbah: misr satantahi iza ata ra’is min al-ikhwan,” Al-Arabiya, April 22, 2012.
53 Sinan Antoon, “Adunis, the revolutionary poet,” Al Jazeera, July 11, 2011.