Following a lot of foreign and military meddling The Ikhwan ul Muslimeen's candidate Mohammed Morsi was declared the victor (by the Army) with a 51% share of the vote, officially just pipping Mubarak's man Shafiq. His aceptance speech is translated here.
I feel this to be a rigged election, and that the margin was wider. Rigging has been reported all over the place. Anyhoo. By creating this democratic 49% opposition notion, Rais Mursi can be automoderated.
In anycase there are reason to gain hope from this news and we pray for good affects. Much of the commentariat is expressing Islamist-worry, I will try not be be such a patronising w@nker for the rest of the post.
Its been a while since the fraternity of Political Islam had some good news. The Nurons of Iqbal, Bhashani, Shariati and Izetbegovic still move us, whilst Erdogan and those with him continue to blow a little breeze in our sails as we are depoliticised, diasporated, locked up, snitched on, burnt to cinders and fed to the dogs.
Oh Happy Days.
It is great that one section of humanity is mobilising around the political value of fraternity, in fact we are standing at the mihrab of a great brobilisation.
Allahumma protect our brothers from developmentia and assist them with decoloniality. Make them resistant to smugness, hearing, tawhesive and skilled so they might catalyse the best in people.
4 comments:
The usual partisan effusions from the author. He doesn't complain about rigged elections when the Islamic Brotherhood and the Salafis won 70% of the seats during the Parliamentary elections.
Between the Parliamentary and Presidential elections, the Brotherhod has shown itself to be both ineffective in government and rather willing to make deals with the military in smoke-filled rooms. I guess it's easier to make promises about an Ummahtic utopia while in opposition but another kettle of fish when the responsibility to make decisions falls on ones shoulders. It is no wonder 49% of the Egyptian people voted for the 'stability candidate', General. Shafiq, representing the former regime. Morsi and the Brotherhood won with approximately 20% of the popular vote, given largescale voter absenteeism and apathy for candidates considered extremists. This is not a strong mandate (or is that 'Mandatia')?
Egypt's problems are not political or ideological at heart. They're economics (or in the author's language 'economia'). The country has a population closing on 100 million people,mostly subsistance farmers, living in a land dominated by uninhabitable desert with small parcels of agriculturally-rich lands around the Nile delta. When one considers Egypt's population was only 10,000,000 in 1900, it is clear the demographics are unsustainable.
Naturally, the author is ideologically-driven and is spectacularly mistaken. If he believes that the Brotherhood with it's erm... 'progressive' (or should that be 'Progressia') agenda regarding tourism (most Westerners will want to drink alcohol and the ladies will insist on wearing bikinis)and economic planning (Islamist economic planning makes Marxism look positively workable)will solve Egypt's economic and consequent social problems then I would like whatever he is having, please!
Author, Islam does not instruct it's followers to leave their reasoning and objectivity to one side. Use the Akol that Allah (SWT) gave you.
Yup you're doing the patronising w@nker role for me thanks. Fascinating comment element, "Egypt's problems are not political or ideological at heart. They're economics"
This bears the bumprint of developmentia, that parcels life into technocratic problems with essentially apolitical solutions. The other tell was the remark on 'demographic unsustainability'. Malthus (and Porritt for that matter) would be proud.
When nonsecular political forces are repressed the space for practical calibration and reflexive progression doesnt exist. Now there is greater epistemic political plurality and ventilation, the potential value horizon and toolkit is wider and more soulful, and there are new possibilities.
Your tourourrism policy question is interesting and I wonder how postliberalism and the reification of haya will unfold in this space. But Craponomically and psychologically, dependance on tourism is not healthy or dignified for a society.
Politics is the art of making the impossible possible, not an essay question you sit in an exam.
You are unwittingly making my points for me. Islamism as an ideology has a pitiful record of economic planning and success. Tell me, how much ‘practical calibration’(or should that be calibratia-see I'm getting the hang of delusional vocabulary as well) and ‘reflexsive progression’ and original thinking has Iran shown over the 40 years of Shia Islamist dictatorship and economic stagnation as it stumbled from from Ali Shariarti’s Islamo-Marxist economic policies, finally settling for good old capitalism? Saudi, Pakistan, Sudan? How exactly does one define an ‘Islamic economy’ without using vague terminology and misplaced hope?
Khomeini thought ‘economics is for donkeys’. He didn’t prioritise it, preferring to concentrate on political and cultural matters. Well, we can see the consequences of such a mentality in Iran today. Curiously, similarity to your own views, no?
Egypt depends heavily on tourism, regardless of supposed ‘dignity’. It took China some three decades of planning and hard work from Deng Xiao Ping onwards to create an industrial base. You don’t simply wish up alternative wealth generating infrastructure.
A sound economic policy needs more than soundbites and waffling by dreamers. One requires the technocrats and ‘details men’. The very same people likely to emigrate to and enrich the West if Egypt adopts any radical Islamist ideas. That is if the army allows it.
Fug, you sound like a Communist. A few of those curios were still adamantly insisting they be given another chance after the collapse of the Soviet Union. How the Soviet Union hadn’t ‘properly’ implemented Communism…..
Well you have to start somewhere. Because you and I have a different political epistemystique, our points and values are not really plottable on the same axis. Im reading Timur Kuran's depressing tracts whilst observing bismilla finance institutions, and have watched Marjane Satrapis cartoon so I hear you wrt. economic planning and the value of technocrats. Egypt has the nonexample of Iran to follow.
The developmentia project picks up some of these threads, because the archive of decolonial case studies is worth one hundred IFI reports.
I dot have to remind you that post-revolutionary idiocy is not the preserve of islamic flavoured polity changes though. Stupid decision-making, technocratic alienation and irresponsible drunken triumphalism resulted in so many of the first Bangladeshis starving to death after our Independance war. Some say that more of us died during this than were killed by Pakistanis.
You misrecognise a post of appreciation and prayer for something else entirely, I welcome you.
Iran has dissapointed a lot of people for sure. Its a pity that Ali Shariati was killed before 1979, that so many of the more able revolutionary technocrats were killed ( Hafte Tir bombing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafte_Tir_bombing ), that Saddam-Sunni powers fell for the Shia menace trap, that the khomeinist element ended up eating up, not synthesising with other participants in the revolutionary constellation.
I remember hearing the news of Mubarak's fall just after Juma, in Senegal during lefty hajj. I called it Threedom, http://fugstar.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/threedom-in-north-africa.html
Political Islam does not have to take the complexions of neoliberal capitalisms and communistic variants of White Power. Marxists like Samir Amin say that it is the handmaiden of capitalism because of its historical record, but I think thats blinkered.
Its more related to the spirit of Bandung and non alignment than many realise. That is why I pray Mursi doesn't mess up and is succesfully integrative. Egypt's contribution to this political culture-making is important, and I hope it doesnt end up in bismillah neoliberalism which is a politics of commodification, consumerism and destruction with a light frosting of ritual observanace on top.
Freedom is one virtue of many. Capital and class are insufficient political values to mobilise life around. Another, better world is possible.
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