চারিদিকে দেখো চাহি হৃদয় প্রসারি The Muslim Brotherhood makes up the only political force whose existence was not merely tolerated but actively promoted by the former regime. Sadat and Mubarak turned over to them control over three basic institutions: education, the courts, and television. The Muslim Brotherhood have never been and can never be “moderate,” let alone “democratic.” Their leader—the murchid (Arabic word for “guide”—Führer) is self-appointed and its organization is based on the principle of disciplined execution of the leaders’ orders without any sort of discussion. Its top leadership is made up entirely of extremely wealthy men (thanks, in part, to financing by Saudi Arabia—which is to say, by Washington), its secondary leadership of men from the obscurantist layers of the middle classes, its rank and file by lower-class people recruited through the charitable services run by the Brotherhood (likewise financed by the Saudis), while its enforcement arm is made up of militias (the baltaguis) recruited among the criminal element. The Muslim Brotherhood are committed to a market-based economic system of complete external dependence. They are in reality a component of the comprador bourgeoisie. They have taken their stand against large strikes by the working class and against the struggles of poor peasants to hold on to their lands. So the Muslim Brotherhood are “moderate” only in the double sense that they refuse to present any sort of economic and social program, thus in fact accepting without question reactionary neoliberal policies, and that they are submissive de facto to the enforcement of U.S. control over the region and the world. They thus are useful allies for Washington (and does the United States have a better ally than their patron, the Saudis?) which now vouches for their “democratic credentials.” Nevertheless, the United States cannot admit that its strategic aim is to establish “Islamic” regimes in the region. It needs to maintain the pretense that “we are afraid of this.” In this way it legitimizes its “permanent war against terrorism” which in reality has quite different objectives: military control over the whole planet in order to guarantee that the United States-Europe-Japan triad retains exclusive access to its resources. Another benefit of that duplicity is that it allows it to mobilize the “Islamophobic” aspects of public opinion. Europe, as is well known, has no strategy of its own in the region and is content from day-to-day to go along with the decisions of Washington. More than ever it is necessary to point out clearly this true duplicity in U.S. strategy, which has quite effectively manipulated its deceived public’s opinions. The United States (with Europe going along) fears more than anything a really democratic Egypt that would certainly turn its back to its alignments with economic liberalism and with the aggressive strategy of NATO and the United States. They will do all they can to prevent a democratic Egypt, and to that end will give full support (hypocritically disguised) to the false Muslim Brotherhood alternative which has been shown to be only a minority within the movement of the Egyptian people for real change. The collusion between the imperialist powers and political Islam is, of course, neither new nor particular to Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood, from its foundation in 1927 up to the present, has always been a useful ally for imperialism and for the local reactionary bloc. It has always been a fierce enemy of the Egyptian democratic movements. And the multibillionaires currently leading the Brotherhood are not destined to go over to the democratic cause! Political Islam throughout the Muslim world is quite assuredly a strategic ally of the United States and its NATO minority partners. Washington armed and financed the Taliban, whom they called “Freedom Fighters,” in their war against the national/popular regime (termed “communist”) in Afghanistan before, during, and after the Soviet intervention. When the Taliban shut the girls’ schools created by the “communists” there were “democrats” and even “feminists” at hand to claim that it was necessary to “respect traditions!” In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood are now supported by the “traditionalist” Salafist tendency, who also are generously financed by the Gulf States. The Salafists (fanatical Wahhabites, intolerant of any other interpretation of Islam) make no bones about their extremism, and they are behind a systematic murder campaign against Copts. It is scarcely conceivable that such operations could be carried out without the tacit support (and sometimes even greater complicity) of the state apparatus, especially of the courts which had mainly been turned over to the Muslim Brotherhood. This strange division of labor allows the Muslim Brotherhood to appear moderate: which is what Washington pretends to believe. Nevertheless, violent clashes among the Islamist religious groups in Egypt are to be expected. That is on account of the fact that Egyptian Islam historically has been mainly Sufist, the Sufi brotherhoods even now grouping 15 million Egyptian muslims. Sufism represents an open, tolerant, Islam—insisting on the importance of individual beliefs rather than on ritual practices (they say “there are as many paths to God as there are individuals”). The state powers have always been deeply suspicious of Sufism although, using both the carrot and the stick, they have been careful not to declare open war against it. The Wahhabi Islam of the Gulf States is at the opposite pole from Sufism: it is archaic, ritualist, conformist, declares enemy any interpretation other than repetition of its own chosen texts, and is enemy of any critical spirit—which is, for it, nothing but the Devil at work. Wahhabite Islam considers itself at war with, and seeks to obliterate, Sufism, counting on support for this from the authorities in power. In response, contemporary Sufis are secularistic, even secular; they call for the separation of religion and politics (the state power and the religious authorities of Al Azhar recognized by it). The Sufis are allies of the democratic movement. The introduction of Wahhabite Islam into Egypt was begun by Rachid Reda in the 1920s and carried on by the Muslim Brotherhood after 1927. But it only gained real vigor after the Second World War, when the oil rents of the Gulf States, supported by the United States—allies in its conflict with the wave of popular national liberation struggles in the 1960s—multiplied its financial wherewithal.