As Atrios points out, we really do not have any idea what Egypt will look like when and if her citizens kick Hosni Murbarak to the curb. It will probably look a lot like Iran, where a broad-based popular rebellion ousted another corrupt strongman with chummy ties to an English-speaking superpower. Everyone thought that their own personal nirvana was nigh, but the group that had enough organization to actually make a new government work was the Islamists. Not coincidentally, they had cred as the regime’s most consistent opponents, as relatively uncorrupted figures and as the group that was most consistently suppressed. Kind of like in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood could do a better job serving the people of Egypt than Hosni Murbarak did. Or they might not. One thing you can predict is that a new regime would be really, really bad news for Israel. For a long time that stable southern border has been guarded by a guy who basically leases his neck from the USA. In exchange, Murbarak’s big selling point was that the most likely alternatives to him hate Israel, as do much of the Egyptian people. For the noisy masses Sheikh Nasrallah is something like George Washington. Having that border under new management will feel a lot like working for NOAA with the Tea Party in charge of budget bills. It makes life a bit sweatier than it was before.
That hardly means that turnover in Egypt and elsewhere will be unadulterated bad or good. The instinct for self-determination is commendable even if history shows that happy outcomes like the American Revolution don’t actually happen that often. Even the French Revolution, which ultimately worked out rather well (assuming you can forgive their humane, efficient and universal healthcare system) needed a couple of bloody and unpleasant mulligans.
Then again, who knows? Maybe glib neocon twits like Glenn Harlan Reynolds will finally get that flying unicorn that poops freedom.
Maude
My concern now is the people out in the streets. I fear for them. The army has been called out and I don’t know what will happen. On live reporting, Mubarak hasn’t spoken yet. He was supposed to, but is overdue.
joeyess
If this turns out to be a democratic revolt and some kind of happy ending ensues, Bush gets the credit. If this turns out to be some kind of fundie uprising and mucks up the water even more in that region, Obama gets the blame?
Place your bets, kids! Place your bets!
Zifnab
I think you give the Islamic radicals in Iran a bit too much credit. It’s not like Reagen wasn’t super quick to cosy up to them the moment he stepped into office. After all, Iran-Contra wasn’t about funneling money and guns to France. Reagen was every Middle Eastern despot’s best friend.
If you take the colonial powers out of the equation, I think the revolutionaries will have a slightly better shot at a successful turn around. One thing that made the American Revolution a success was French military aid that didn’t entail the government jamming it’s thumb on the scale of the first few US elections.
me
In that context this confuses me. Is she a self hating jew now?
Poopyman
We’ll see. I doubt that the Egyptian people are thinking much about Iran right now, but sooner or later they’ll remember that last summer’s Iranian uprising didn’t work out nearly as well as the one that overthrew the Shah. Maybe they’ll opt for a different outcome.
Can I have my pony now?
Poopyman
Possible crappy unintended consequence:
MattF
I think people should note this— Egypt is the most populous Arabic-speaking country, by about a factor of three. I have no idea what’s going to happen in Egypt, but the chances are good that whatever happens, it will be a big deal.
Dave
Hopefully ElBaradi will play a prominent role in whatever happens going forward. That might mitigate a more radical element from gaining traction.
shaun
Cold shower time, gang:
Mubarak remains in power substantially because of the U.S., while Egypt is the only Arab country to have a peace treaty with Israel, which is h-u-g-e.
While Obama will go all pious about Mubarak not brutalizing street protesters, an argument can be made that U.S. interests and Mubarak’s interests coincide more than U.S. interests and the democracy movement’s interests.
dave
Somehow I suspect Israel will fare perfectly well, no matter what.
Joe Buck
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (the party that would win any truly democratic election in Egypt) is a much more moderate outfit than the Iranian mullahs, they aren’t Shiites and they aren’t Saudi-style Wahabis. I think they’d protect the Coptic Christian minority from the nuts. But yes, they certainly wouldn’t play along with the joint Israeli-Egyptian starvation of Gaza, and they’d have a much friendlier relationship to Hamas.
JGabriel
Tim F.:
In the meantime, I guess we have to hope that ElBaradei, or someone with a similarly cosmopolitan background, will out-organize the fundies. I think this is a real possibility.
Cairo, from what I’ve read and Egyptians I’ve met, is pretty modern and liberal compared to the rest of the country. Yes, anti-semitism is rampant, but also note how many Muslims turned out to protect Coptic (Christian) churches in the wake of December’s terrorist bombing. And I suspect that any change in Egypt’s leadership, if that happens, will come from Cairo’s elites.
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burnspbesq
If Mubarak allows a free and fair election, he’ll lose overwhelmingly, but it will buy him enough time to go house-hunting in some affluent, leafy suburb of Paris.
Davis X. Machina
I think there’ll be a Coptic neigborhood in every large American city in ten years. The Baha’i and Zoroastrian elements of post-Shah Iran didn’t have much for which to thank their new regime.
Joe Buck
Protesters just burned down the headquarters of Mubarek’s political party. To maintain control, he’s going to have to crack down brutally and might have to keep the Internet and the phone system shut down for a year, meaning that business will be near-impossible and tourism will shut down. It will be a non-functioning country. Politically, can the US continue to prop up such a state with billions of dollars a year? Will the current billions be enough?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@burnspbesq:
Mubarak won’t ever do that, never has so why start at age 82?
I hear Baby Doc’s mansion in France is now vacant. What timing!
Elvis Elvisberg
Yeah, what others have said about ElBaradei, who is I believe the most popular opposition figure. And it’s not at all clear to me that the Muslim Brotherhood, while surely not who I would vote for in local elections, is comparable to the revolutionaries in Iran. Plus, the Islamic Republic isn’t exactly a model to the Egyptian protesters at this stage…
But yes, if this leads to a transition, which Al Jazeera’s experts really think is almost inevitable now, it’s certainly not good news for the current Israeli government.
Svensker
Why aren’t the neocons bragging about their big accomplishment? They predicted democracy would spread in the Middle East because of the overthrow of Saddam, and lo and behold, it is. Thanks, boys!
burnspbesq
Not sure why young Conor felt the need to “respectfully” disagree with the Idiot Law Professor from the University of Dog Gack Orange. Dude, there is no one less deserving of respect.
Paul W.
I hope that any changes seriously make Israelis rethink their indifference to the Palestinian problem. The sooner they begin to resolve the atrocious predicament there, the less they have to fear from regime changes in the region (whatever the fuck Ahmedinijad says, the likelihood of an attack on Israel are quite slim).
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
I’m not an isolationist, but I just don’t see how the US getting involved will help anything here. I find Larison incredibly convincing on this issue.
Michael
Now would be an awesome time for Israeli hardliners to engage in air strikes to savage both Gaza and the infrastructure that supplies the moderate Muslim and Christian parts of Beirut. Their Talibornagain supporters here in the US could simultaneously agitate for us to go and support our bestest, greatestest and most wonderfulest allies in this whole planet…
TGP
I think you’re overstating the liklihood that, should Mubarak go down, the Muslim Brotherhood is going to step into the power vacuum.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Egypt, it is extremely secular for an arabic country. The people on the streets are by and large secular university students.
The other point is that the analogy to the Iranian mullahs is a very bad one. Shi’ism is centralised and had an entire structure outside the government in Iran. Once the government fell it has an organisation in place capable of taking on that role.
Sunni Islam is much more decentralized, and doesn’t have the C&C structure to do the same thing. Not in Egypt. They aren’t, by and large, an alternative governance structure in waiting.
My guess is that the big winner might well be secular political forces like those represented by El Baradei. What that means for Israel is unclear, and probably not good, but is probably much better than what the MB means for them.
For these reasons…. I think trying to draw comparisons between Egypt and Iran is likely to be extremely misleading. I am not sure what a good comparison would be, I don’t think the French/American revoluions are comparable either. Possibly the best analogies might be some of the eastern bloc countries that fell in the 90’s. Egypts economy is certainly similar, I don’t know how much Islam would throw a curveball into those comparisons.
morzer
@Paul W.:
I don’t know that I’d call pathological racism and rabid hatred “indifference” per se.
Turbulence
@Davis X. Machina: I think there’ll be a Coptic neigborhood in every large American city in ten years.
Speaking as a Copt living in the US, I think you’re wrong. All the Copts who are able to emigrate have long since emigrated.
Besides that, there are already plenty of Copts in the US and for the most part, they don’t really want to clump together. A lot of the Copts who are able to come to the US are middle class professionals like engineers and dentists. They settle down into boring suburbia, not ethnic neighborhoods.
matoko_chan
@Tim
The historical american foreign policy of supporting dictators/strongmen in the ME actually has extremely negative results for America. The oppressive regime becomes inexorably convolved with America, and by definition Israel, local oligarchs, and judeoxian style (western style) democracy, leaving radical islam to infill the oppositionary position of citizen rights and social justice.
The islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, get to become the liberal revolutionaries, even though they may be far more repressive when they actually take power.
The epic flaw in American “democracy promotion” theory in the ME is that when muslims are democratically empowered to vote, they vote for Islam.
Thus strongman policy, and the incredibly ignorant Bush Doctrine, just become recipes for building more islamic states.
In strongman theory, the idea is that the dictator sponsers an environment hospitable to the fostering of western culture and western democracy. But islamic culture is immune to western/judeoxian proselytization in situ, because of EGT.
So the result of both strongman policy and the Bush Doctrine is more islamic states…like Iran, like Iraq, like Turkey, and like A-stan and Yemen will be. And like Egypt. Does anyone doubt that the MB will be the power in the next government?
There is a perception problem in America. America is not a secular nation. The founders and framers would have liked it to be, but were trumped by human nature in the end. Consider racism and slavery. Modern america is not the nation of Martin Luther King, it is the nation of Martin Luther.
The new PEW survey points out that in 20 years 1 out of 4 humans will be muslim.
And only 1 out of 15 humans will be non-hispanic caucasian.
So while there maybe attractive and beneficial things in western culture, western culture proselytization, aka “democracy promotion”, can simply never succeed in +95% muslim states. Because of the consent of the governed and because when muslims are democratically empowered to vote they vote for more Islam, not less, and never for judeoxian/westernstyle democracy.
@Joe Buck: lol the MB is father of al-Qaeda. and they will be the power party after mubarak goes.
joe from Lowell
In 1979, the Ayatollah was the most prominent poster boy of the revolution, even as he declaimed any interest in running the country. There was always an explicitly Islamic character to the uprising, even as it contained a broad popular front.
That’s not happening this time. The most prominent opposition figure is form IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei.
JGabriel
@shaun:
Which is why Obama will largely remain silent on the issue until the outcome is apparent, as he did with Tunisia — a subject Larison has commented on.
Or just delve into Larison’s blog. He’s been pretty intersting on the subject in general.
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matoko_chan
@TGP: lol! whistling in the dark?
where is al-Anzar university again?
salacious crumb
actually I kinda disagree Tim. Even if Muslim Brotherhood (or some other fundamentalist group) came to power and Hosni Mubarak and his ilk kicked out forever, I dont think it would necessarily mean bad news for Israel. for one, the people rioting are doing so because of economic conditions. High unemployment among the youth, endemic corruption, inflation etc. The United States gives about 2 billion in financial assistance to Egypt and this is conditional upon its being in good terms with Israel. If that aid were to go, we would have even more chaos in Egypt. Plus the people rioting really have no desire for a fundamentalist regime in Egypt because unlike the Shah of Iran, who forcibly made burka clad women remove their veil, Mubarak has never done anything like that. the Iranians reacted vociferously to the Shahs actions, but the Egyptians never have had such kind of actions so I think they really dont want a Muslim Brotherhood in place
Turbulence
@A Writer At Balloon-Juice: I’m not an isolationist, but I just don’t see how the US getting involved will help anything here. I find Larison incredibly convincing on this issue.
The US is already involved since we’ve been funneling billions of dollars towards Mubarak for the last 30 years, bribing him to keep peace with Israel. Doing nothing just further emphasizes for the world that we don’t really care about “democracy” at all and we’re just Israel’s lapdogs.
morzer
@TGP:
I think you might be wrong about the Islamic Brotherhood. They tend to be very strongly organized for charitable and relief work, and have often been the only people trying to do anything along those lines. They also have very strong representation within the student and professional associations of Egypt. I would guess that they can get a grass-roots movement in place quite quickly, and with more discipline and unity than the secularists can manage.
Poopyman
Might be the end is nearer for Mubarak than most hoped:
Too bad — I was just getting comfortable spelling “Mubarak”. Now I’ll probably have to start practicing that -elBaradai- -elBaradei- ElBaradei. Whatever.
matoko_chan
@joe from Lowell: in your dreams! the MB will win any democratic election.
that is why Mubarak banned them.
morzer
@salacious crumb:
In principle, you may be right, but I suspect most of the 2 billion dollars goes to arms purchases and the pockets of the well-connected. I am not sure that cutting it off will change anything for the average Egyptian.
joe from Lowell
@shaun:
Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel seventeen years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Jordan_peace_treaty
morzer
@Poopyman:
You could just call him ElB. I am sure he won’t mind too much.
JGabriel
@Joe Buck:
If Mubarak gets too brutal, the police and army might desert him. There are rumors the police are already siding with protestors in some areas.
If it has gone that far, Mubarak may already be a lost cause.
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matoko_chan
@Turbulence:
we are Israel’s bitch.
our sole critieria for funding oppressive tyrants was to make nice with Israel.
and the Muslim Brotherhood majority government is going to be the result.
annnnnnd another one bites the dust, and another one bites the dust.
Egypt is is now a field lab for failed American foreign policy.
Pancake
As of this hour, this is proving to be a real boon to the US economy, e.g., the stock market is falling big time, energy prices are skyrocketing, etc. Swell times are just around the corner, I’m sure.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@JGabriel: Mubarak is now an hour and a half late for his speech and the protestors are at the gates to the foreign ministry and state TV. I’m thinking he’s now hitting Priceline for four-star hotels in Paris.
Poopyman
John Kerry has just come out with a statement on Egypt that is apparently aimed at calming the situation by putting everyone to sleep:
morzer
@JGabriel:
It would be interesting to know how well the police and army are paid, and how rising food prices are affecting the value of their salaries. I suspect that their loyalty may have been diminished by economic considerations as much as principle or patriotism.
matoko_chan
@salacious crumb:
derp!
Mubarak banned the MB as a political party. Soon they will be sitting in his chair and drinkin his milkshake.
and you should turn in to al-Jazeera live feed if you think the Egyptian people are not righteously pissed.
Its impressive.
liberal
@Davis X. Machina:
IIRC the Iranian regime regards Zoroastrians (but not Baha’i) as People of the Book. Not sure if it bought them better treatment. (The Baha’i got slaughtered.)
Alex S.
I don’t know… Egypt will not turn very religious, it’s too dependant on tourism.
joe from Lowell
@Turbulence:
Disagree. The silence and lack of support coming from the U.S. (setting aside the latest Bidenism) is deafening.
@matoko_chan:
I don’t dispute that. I dispute that they’d be able to install one-party rule like the mullahs did in Iran.
I expect we’d see a popular front government initially, and a crackup within the far-from-monolithic Muslim Brotherhood once they become a real political party taking part in elections and facing, for the first time, the responsibility of running a state. Right now, the borderline al Qaeda types and the more moderate elements can get along fine as a unified opposition – just like the Tea Partiers and the Chamber of Commerce Republicans could in 2009.
morzer
@Poopyman:
I am assuming that all of what you posted is Kerry, rather than your official stance on the matter?
ETA: Ah, you fixed, it, you wily rascal.
matoko_chan
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: agreed. his son and reputed successor fled the country yest with his family.
fasteddie9318
@Elvis Elvisberg:
The more I hear and read about El-Baradei, the less I’m inclined to think that he’s as serious player a here as we might hope. He’s been living somewhat of an émigré life and there’s a deal of both indifference and skepticism around him amongst Egyptians. That said, the government certainly helped elevate his standing by hosing and then arresting him, so who knows?
The Muslim Brotherhood would be objectively bad news from a realpolitik perspective. The Islamic Republic certainly isn’t the model for most Egyptian protesters, but then again it’s not clear that it was the model for most Iranians in 79, either. It’s a disputed point to this day whether most supporters of the Iranian Revolution expected a theocracy or whether they had envisioned Khomeini acting as more of a spiritual guide to a democratically elected government (which, on paper, was what the Revolution produced initially). On the other hand, if the Brotherhood came out on top here, it would give the US another chance to show that it actually practices what it preaches RE: self-governance around the world, a test we failed in Iran in the 50s and again after the revolution, repeatedly in Turkey over the years, in Palestine by outright rejecting the election of Hamas, and pretty much every day with our support for corrupt autocracies like Mubarak and the Gulf monarchs. I predict we fail that test if it comes to that.
JGabriel
via Poopyman:
First the library, now this? What is it with Egypt and burning it’s past?
You know, after more than two millennia of this shit, you’d think think they’d learn to preserve their history in less combustible buildings.
.
morzer
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
I wonder whether he’s frantically dialling William Shatner for help.
PeakVT
@Turbulence: You right that we’re heavily involved, which is why in the short term the US government should be vewy vewy quiet.
Poopyman
@morzer: The blockquote (which I fixt by edit) is from al Jazeera here.
matoko_chan
@joe from Lowell: wanna bet? cross my palm with seeeeeeeeeeeelvah.
its going to be more like leb, with el Baradei playing the Fouad Siniora puppet role.
morzer
@JGabriel:
Well, to be fair, they probably didn’t foresee Julius Caesar’s foray into bibliocaust tourism. Libraries burned down with depressing regularity in the ancient world. No steel for construction, and lots of wood beams and papyrus, in cities with open fires and torches and oil-lamps for lighting at night. No high-pressure hydrants and hoses either for fire-fighting. I don’t think they could have done much more.
El Cid
I don’t think it’s likely that the Muslim Brotherhood will take power, but that Islamic fundamentalist groups can exert more influence as instability increases.
Mubarak to address the nation this evening, but I haven’t spotted a time.
This is a very interesting picture. It’s not bizarre that there are mass demonstrations in and around Tahrir Square, just that they don’t protest the corrupt fake democracy of Hosni Mubarak.
liberal
@TGP:
Maybe, maybe not. Egypt’s estimated 2005 female literacy rate was 59%. Seems extremely doubtful to me that it was that low in the eastern bloc.
Poopyman
@PeakVT: Just because there’s been very little coming out publicly doesn’t mean the phone lines aren’t burning up between Washington and all ME capitals. We’ll have to wait some time to hear The Rest of The Story.
(If there is one.)
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@fasteddie9318: I wonder how much traction the Ayatollah’s regime got thanks to Saddam thinking a post-revolution Iran was ripe for the taking.
morzer
@Poopyman:
Yes, I saw your edit after being puzzled by your suddenly very official prose. It seemed unlikely to be you, but I thought it was worth checking. Basically Kerry is saying “People ought to be nice and not make a mess” at length. Not that the Egyptian on the street knows that he said it or would particularly care about the views of a Senator from Massachusetts….
matoko_chan
@liberal: you completely dont get how much muslims hate missionaries.
people of the book are not safe if they proselytize.
the ba’hai treatment dates back a thousand years.
Poopyman
@El Cid: I find this picture to be even more striking.
Or this.
El Cid
Speaking of Jordan
Also largely organized by the Muslim Brotherhood. Reportedly.
King Abdullah is actually urging parliament to implement reforms more quickly to addresses the population’s, or at least an important segment of the population’s, outrage.
JGabriel
@morzer:
I agree. I’m just sayin’, given their history, you would think they’d learned to plan for this shit by now.
*Is it wrong that this phrase cracked me up?
.
joe from Lowell
@matoko_chan:
Certainly not. Anyone who claims to confidently know exactly how this will play out is talking out of their posterior. There are more and less likely outcomes, but the situation could still go off in many different directions.
Lebanon is a very different situation than post-revolution Iran.
catclub
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: “I’m thinking he’s now hitting Priceline for four-star hotels in Paris.’
I’m thinking FIVE star hotels.
Poopyman
Some weighty analysis by Some Guy at The Guardian UK:
Who’d-a thunk the US would try to shape the structure to best suit its interests?
fasteddie9318
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Absolutely, especially when Khomeini could point to US aid (official, not the Iran-Contra kind) to Iraq and show the public that the West was against them. The war was a tremendous boost for Khomeini in terms of consolidating power, and after the war he was in strong enough position to really propagate the idea that the vilayet-i faqih was actually the explicit political authority in the country rather than a guide and check on the elected government.
PeakVT
@Poopyman: I certainly hope that the State Department is working overtime. But anything but the most anodine public statements runs a serious risk of blowing up in an unpredictable way.
El Cid
@Poopyman: Agreed. Though there is a tendency to being to only focus on the frontline battles, etc., and it does help to note that huge numbers are not at that point or in those activities.
By the way, anyone remember how outraged we were when Saddam won all these sham elections with ridiculously high vote percentages?
morzer
@JGabriel:
Sorry, it was a little sick, but unintentionally. I seem to remember that scholars of early China coined the term “bibliocaust” to refer to Qin Shihuangdi’s alleged burning of books in 213 BC, but I may be mistaken.
Svensker
@morzer:
This is why I forgive your stupid Dolphin love.
morzer
@El Cid:
Sadly, no-one called Florida 2000 “Bush’s Anbar province”. We missed something there.
fasteddie9318
@liberal:
Zoroastrians are considered People of the Book, and have one guaranteed seat in the Iranian Majlis according to the 1906 Constitution, but they haven’t had a great time of it since 79. Lots of emigration in that community.
Pamela F
@TGP:
In listening to the Diane Rehm “International Hour” on NPR, it was posited that the Islamic Brotherhood” was behind the curve in this uprising and are playing catch-up. It was posited that if things get out of control violent, then the Islamist organizations could make their inroads. OTOH, Egypt has a lot of highly educated population-women included. Maybe, the return of el-Baradei will serve as a rallying point. I hope so.
One thing for sure, I’ve canceled my plans for a trip to Egypt: I had always wanted to go, cruise the Nile, spend time in Alexandria, etc. and felt it was safe even though my surname is Jewish.
JGabriel
@matoko_chan:
That would be kind of hard, matoko_chan, given that the Ba’hai faith only dates back to about the mid 19th Century, say 155 years, give or take a decade.
.
morzer
@Svensker:
Well, coming from a Patsies fan, that’s mighty gracious of you.
*sticks tongue out and wiggles ears in your general direction*
morzer
@JGabriel:
It’s the cold mathematical brutality of your annihilation of Mad Princess Tokie that wins my heart every time.
Svensker
@liberal:
The Bahais were part of the Shah’s very repressive security regime, so they were a bit unpopular after the Shah was booted out.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@MattF: I’m always confused by the term “Middle East.” Sometimes it includes Arabic-speaking countries in North Africa like Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria. Sometimes it doesn’t (like on that wikipedia list).
Svensker
@matoko_chan:
Since Bahoula (sp?) was born in the 19th century, that’s a very interesting religion the Bahais have — predating their founder by 800 years!
morzer
@Svensker:
Wily rascals those time-travelling Bahais. Bet they fucked up Jeebus and the dinosaurs for shits and giggles too.
fasteddie9318
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): People who spend their whole lives studying the “Middle East” don’t really know what it is/was. Is it the Arab-speaking countries? All Muslim countries? The region between the Nile and the Oxus/Amu Darya? North Africa? Was southern Iberia part of the “Middle East” when it was ruled by Muslims? What about parts of sub-Saharan Africa that were in the Arab North African commercial and political periphery, or the Balkans and Greece when they were Ottoman territories? Afghanistan? Central Asia? India? Is Turkey part of the Middle East or Europe, or both? It’s a nightmare to define, to say nothing of the ethnocentrism it encapsulates. Thank the Brits and Germans for that.
fasteddie9318
@Svensker:
If the Baha’i were around for 800 years prior to their own founding, I think I might have to stop being an atheist.
TGP
it may be whistling in the dark. But there is a very substantial difference between Shia and Sunni that makes Iranian comparisons invalid. Egypt has the most widely respected Sunni school…. But that’s not the same as having an ayatollah.
To use a Christian analogy… It’s a difference between a revolution in Rome, where the pope and the heirarchical catholic structure creates a plug-and-play alternative govt…. And a revolution in a country that has the most respected school for Presbyterian ministers. The is no plug-and-play alternative govt. In the second.
I’d also add that the Iranian theocracies Powerbase is largely rural, and this overwhelmed the urban secular powerbase in Iran by sheer numbers. In Egypt there is not the same poorly educated rural base. Egypt is largely it’s urban centers, and due to it’s idiosyncratic geography even what countryside there is is very cosmopolitan and “close” to the urban population.
I don’t claim to have any relevent knowledge of the MB and their chances vs the secularists per se …. I’m just saying Iranian comparisons are likely to be misleading… And egypts urban rather than rural majorities make a theocratic/Islamist solution inherently less likely than you may automatically suppose.
fasteddie9318
@TGP:
According to the World Bank Egypt’s population is around 56-44 rural-urban. Iran’s is 32-68 rural-urban.
Poopyman
@TGP:
Oh! A veritable Arizona!
Oh. Never mind.
matoko_chan
@Svensker: it is the treatment of proselytizers, not of the ba’hai, that im referring to. sry if that was unclear.
matoko_chan
@TGP:
wallah……..why on earth would you think a christain analogy is relevent when Iran is not?
you are WRONG.
stow that xian triumphalism, it aint relevent to this discussion.
fasteddie9318
Then it dates back considerably longer than 1000 years, considering that Islam stopped tolerating proselytizers (to the extent the central authority could control such things) at least by 750 if not before. Of course Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist preachers were welcome in Iran when it was being ruled by the Mongols, so maybe you mean the post-Mongolian treatment of proselytizers, in which case it’s more like 650 years.
TGP
Ok look, I wasn’t saying there aren’t any poorly educated rural people…. Just that there are a lot less rural people than Iran…. And those that exist are both better educated and more “plugged in” to the cities.
Egypt is pretty much just it’s cities and one long string of fertile land 10 Miles wide and tum-te-Tum hundred miles long in which cities and large towns sit like pearls on a string. As such it is hard to locate huge regions of largely cutoff rural dwellers as you find all over Iran and which are the mullahs primary powerbase. Those rural/urban stats don’t fully reflect the different rural makeup of Egypt created by the fact that it doesn’t really HAVE a rural countryside as Iran does so much as the towns/cities and the Nile.
fasteddie9318
@TGP:
Egypt’s population is around 56% rural and Iran’s is around 32% rural. I have no Earthly idea how you measure being “plugged in” to the cities, but the idea that there are fewer rural people in Egypt than in Iran is objectively and demonstrably wrong.
TGP
Oh ffs. Christian triumphalism ? I’m an atheist fwiw. The point was simply that Shias have a centralized structure headed by one supreme leader…. And egypts Sunnis have a decentralized structure of 10,000 notionally equal mullahs. It’s this major difference that makes an Iran-Egypt comparison likely to be highly misleading. Using the catholic-presbyterian analogy was just an attempt to providepeople who know sweet FA about Islam an equivalent they might understand slightly better. Christian triumphalism my arse.
A Writer At Balloon-Juice
@Turbulence:
Interesting point.
matoko_chan
@fasteddie9318: whatever. :)
i just mean that the ba’hai werent killed for being ba’hai, but because they had the proselytizer tag hooked onto them.
being the shahs guard could be strictly interpreted as proselytizing.
consider KSM. it is illegal to hold a christian church service anywhere but in a handful of approved facilities….because that is PROSELYTIZING.
ditto building a church or street preaching.
i dont think westerners get how much muslims hate missionaries.
it is a profound and deeply ingrained hatred.
matoko_chan
@TGP: ok, i see your point, but Egypt is still nominally 90% muslim, and the university of al-Azhar is in Egypt.
IMHO Tims isomorphics with Iran are far stronger than yours, sry.
matoko_chan
@Tim. i think we can agree from the force and scope of the protests and the weakness of the reactions that Mubarak is toast. the military wont support a tienammen square.
At this point there are only 3 possible outcomes, really.
interim gov with el Baradei as the Fouad Siniora type figurehead.
military junta.
the Muslim Brotherhood.
matoko_chan
@joe from Lowell: At this point there are only 3 possible outcomes, really.
interim gov with el Baradei as the Fouad Siniora type figurehead.
military junta.
the Muslim Brotherhood.
pick one. ;)
fasteddie9318
@matoko_chan:
The Baha’i were attacked from the founding of their faith as apostates and heretics. The fear of proselytizing activity is part of that baggage but not all. Baha’i are targets of persecution throughout the Muslim world, not just in Iran.
I don’t know how being the “guard” (and the stories were that they were advisors, not guards) of a Muslim monarch gets you tagged as “proselytizing” for a non-Muslim faith, but being seen to act in concert with a highly unpopular, corrupt ruler who is seen as a western puppet is going to get anybody in trouble when the revolution comes, regardless of how much evangelizing you may or may not be doing. If anything, though, the stories about the shah consulting with Baha’i were passed around to discredit the shah, not the Baha’i. They were already outcasts as apostates and possible western agents.
matoko_chan
@fasteddie9318: wallah, the islamic clergy can say anyone is a proselytizer or a heretic. this dates back to the famous ismaeli argument of al-Ghazali with ibn Taymiya and Ghazalis hermaneutics of reconciliation in the Ihya ‘Ulum al-Din.
again, my position is that being a person of the book is no protection.
Ija
I guess this says something about Israel’s position:
Turbulence
@fasteddie9318: Egypt’s population is around 56% rural and Iran’s is around 32% rural. I have no Earthly idea how you measure being “plugged in” to the cities, but the idea that there are fewer rural people in Egypt than in Iran is objectively and demonstrably wrong.
I don’t think TGP’s idea is as crazy as you’re suggesting. His point is that you won’t find as severe a cultural split between urban and rural populations in Egypt as you would in places like Iran. People in Egypt, whether urban or rural dweller, are packed much closer together and have more interaction with each other.
fasteddie9318
@matoko_chan:
What do the ahl al-kitab, Ghazali, or Ibn Taymiyyah have to do with this? You’re arguing that the Baha’i were persecuted over some contention, real or fabricated, that they were proselytizing. They were and are considered apostates, which is a graver offense than simple proselytism (it incorporates the threat of proselytism as part of the offense) and has been a universally recognized grievous sin in the monotheistic tradition going all the way back to early Judaism. That’s why they’ve been persecuted.
matoko_chan
@fasteddie9318: many muslims will kill missionaries, or anyone deemed to be a missionary.
look what the taliban did to the toothbrush doctors.
a western puppet IS a proselytizer in the islamic view.
do you have a problem with that statement?
proselytizing is illegal in islamic countries.
and the clergy can define many things as proselytization.
i am saying, being a person of the book does not protect the individual.
Svensker
@matoko_chan:
No, they were hated because they made up the Shah’s secret police.
matoko_chan
@fasteddie9318: im saying the ahl a-kitab does not protect.
the Ihya ‘Ulum al-Din states heretics and apostates are proselytizers….that was Ghazalis argument in the case of the Ismaelis.
are you a ba’hai? im sry if i have offended.
fasteddie9318
@Turbulence:
On what evidence or metric do we base that argument? Population density, maybe, I guess, although Iran is a much larger country geographically with huge swaths of effectively unlivable land due to climate and terrain, which brings their population density down considerably. That raw number says nothing about the degree to which rural populations are “plugged in” to the cities and, again, a significantly higher percentage of Iran’s population is actually living in the cities.
matoko_chan
@Svensker: but labelling them as proselytizers or apostates or whatever made it possible to legally kill them under islamic law.
that is my point.
being a person of the book is not protection.
fasteddie9318
@matoko_chan:
The Baha’i never were ahl al-kitab, so again I don’t get what difference that makes. Ghazali’s argument that apostates are a threat to act as proselytizers didn’t arise sui generis out of the Muslim tradition; it’s predated by a couple of millenia of monotheistic tradition.
And no, I’m not.
fasteddie9318
@Svensker:
Outside of revolutionary propaganda, there’s actually very little evidence in support of this and somewhat more evidence that the Baha’i community was a target of the SAVAK. The average low-information revolutionary may have bought into this conspiracy theory, but again it was propagated more to discredit the shah than to weaken the Baha’i. The Baha’i have been targets for persecution from their founding.
Svensker
@fasteddie9318:
You know, that is really interesting. I learned about the Bahai’s collaboration with SAVAK from a Middle Easterner and had always assumed it was true. Since I personally know a fair number of Bahais, this always struck me as very odd since the Bahai faith has a very non-violent teaching, but my Middle Eastern source has always been so reliable on other stuff…
Just spent some time on the google and now I see that he was fed propaganda, which I then believed. Interesting. My apologies for spreading this untruth. And thank you for the education.
fasteddie9318
I don’t think it’s entirely untrue, because some of the post-revolution persecution of the Baha’i may have been fueled by unproven assertions of their collusion with the shah, but I also don’t think those stories were needed to drum up a rationale to persecute a community that has been persecuted basically from day 1.
fuzed
Note the old government used lots a free food to buy consent from populace, and was of late, running out of money. Don’t see any of the economic equations changing for the better.
Maybe Bill Gates can buy a pyramid!
Mike Furlan
Happy outcome for whom?
Both the red and black populations caught hell as a result of the “Revolution.”
The Empire had been restricting the ethnic cleansing of the Native American land, and that check was largely gone after the Patriots won.
And it was fear of British abolitionism that drove the Southern colonies to join the revolt of the North. Slavery was strengthened.
Many thousands white folks lost out too, the Loyalists who lost land, their lives or were forced into exile.
Hard, at least in my mind to justify a war that hurt so many, and prevented what? That we would have ended up like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand?
TGP
Ok, on the rural/urban thing I am still not explaining myself well. Perhaps I should use Cosmopolitan/Isolated instead.
The issues is that both iran and egypt look like “Big Square” countries on the map. Iran is that type of country, Egypt isn’t.
Iran is like Texas, big and broad ….Egypt is a country shaped like “NY State + the NY-Boston rail corridor and nothing else” with miles-and-miles of nothing either side of the nile, where no one lives, making up the rest of the big square.
Something like 90% of that “rural population” in Egypts case live either in the Nile Delta (meaning they are never more than 50 miles from the capital, and 50 miles from the countries 2nd largest city (alexandria) and major mediterranean post)… or on the Nile (meaning they are never more than a 5 minute drive from the countries largest highway, railway, river route… all of which lead directly to the capital). They may be “rural” in those stats but they live in places where day trips to the continents largest city are possible, where they have family members who not only live in the big smoke… but who they an visit, or who can visit them, on days off etc.
Thats what I meant by “plugged in to the cities”. They may officially be rural, but the cities are easily travelled to.
Iran is not like that. Plenty of the people listed as “urban” in those stats live in provincial towns 100’s of miles away from anywhere that could be considered cosmopolitan. Even though they’re officially urban…. if you live in a town 200 miles from any big city, where there are no universities or cosmopolitan culture… you’re still “in the sticks” as far as I am concerned and more succeptible to Islamism/Ayatollah-ism than a rural person living an hours drive from the continents premier university city.
You wouldn’t neccessarily pick this up from the map… but anyone whose been to egypt for any length of time could inform you that the geography is roughly how I describe it.
TGP
Egypt at Night – Sattelitte Image
That link above illustrates perfectly what I am saying.
Pretty much the whole of the land you can see is Egypt…. but you can ALSO see that the population is concentrated almost exclusively in the Nile Delta (sandwiched between Alex. and Cairo) or on the Nile, and so within a 5 minute drive of the main highway/rail route to/from the capital.
The only real exceptions are a few dots of light to the left (Siwa and a few other small desert oases) and the coastal regions.
There simply isn’t freshwater anywhere else in egypt.
Darkrose
Of all the times for the pie filter to stop working.
fasteddie9318
I have been to Egypt, and when you redefine what you’re talking about in this way then it makes somewhat more sense.
Whick
Look at that, Tim F.! All your commenters are spelling “Murbarak” wrong! (joke)
matoko_chan
@fasteddie9318: again i was responding to the original comment, about the bahai and the zororastrians.
are you disputing that proselytizing is punishable by death in islamic countries?
i dont get your argument.
anyone that collaborated with the shah would be viewed as a proselytizer.
many many muslims were killed for supporting the shah too in the aftermath of the revolution.
there were death fields and mass graves.
fasteddie9318
@matoko_chan:
The Baha’i were persecuted, sometimes brutally, for almost a century and a half before the Islamic Revolution, so I’m saying that connecting their persecution to the shah makes no sense.
Proselytizing is punishable by death in Islamic countries, but so is apostasy. Why would you assume that the persecution of the Baha’i has to be about the former when it’s just as (if not more) clearly about the latter?
maus
@Turbulence:
Uh, doing anything would prove that. We are incapable of not fucking things up as long as we’re a “centrist” to center-right leadership.
Bruce Webb
Buh wuh? The fact that France is currently officially on its ‘Fifth Republic’ having had not just one but two Emperors AFTER that Revolution hardly spells ‘worked out rather well’ to me. Particularly given the post war breakdown that brought the French DeGaulism, in practical terms a third Emperor (even if he didn’t have much of an Empire). For most of the hundred fifty year plus period after the Revolution France was a political and military train wreck nor was its economic record particularly stellar. That is a lot of ‘ultimately’ to sweep under the rug.
matoko_chan
@fasteddie9318: because of the timing. the Islamic revolution.
post revolution and into the islamic reconstruction a lot of minority sects were persecuted, the Sufis for example.
but in the immediate aftermath, anyone that supported the shah was killed for proselytizing, bahais and shi’as alike. Khomenei was trying to burn out the western collaborators, the missionaries of western culture, so that the shah could never come back.
that is why the embassy hostages.
because america gave the shah asylum, and the Iranians feared a coup to reinstall him.
fasteddie9318
@matoko_chan:
Yes, the Baha’i were repressed and persecuted in Iran from the 1850s on in advance of a crackdown on religious minorities after the 1979 revolution. Sufis, who have been persecuted in Iran since the late 17th century, were persecuted for 300 years just because Iranian clerics and rulers could see into the future that the Ayatollah Khomeini wouldn’t like them. Timing indeed.
Anyone who supported the shah and was killed was killed because they’d supported the fucking shah, regardless of whatever trumped up charges were thrown at them. Baha’i, who, again, were regularly persecuted starting a half-century before Khomeini was born and who didn’t in fact support the shah, were killed because that’s what Islamic regimes do, they kill members of apostate religious minorities.
matoko_chan
@fasteddie9318:
no they dont. they persecute them, they oppress them, they take their land and possessions, they enslave them. like America did to the native americans, like Australia did to the aborigines. Newly installed revolutionary Islamic regimes dont put minority sects to all to death at once. like you said, the bahai were around for a long time. Praps the perception of support for the western proselytizers wasnt true, but it still was the excuse used to wipe them out.
the sufi have NOTHING to do with this analogy. Sufis have been the grand imams of the great islamic university at al-Azhar.
you want to paint Khomeneis regime as unjust– you want to paint Islam as unjust. In truth jews and christians could be citizens of the Caliphate– they just could not proselytize on pain of death….that persists to this day. IMHO Khomeneis regime was a rational regime. They eliminated any proselytizers– supporters of western culture that might try to bring back the shah.
matoko_chan
you want to make out Islam as irrational.
it is not irrational.
Defense against proselytization is the most successful CSS (culturally stable strategy) on the planet right now.