A battle between rival religious power centres over Egypt’s institutions and the nature of its Muslim identity threatens economic and political stability in the Arab world’s most populous country.
While Egypt observers have fixated on the battle between secularists and Islamists as the defining fact of political life since the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi won the presidency last year, some analysts say there is an equally intense contest between competing religious groups.
This fight has already had economic consequences and political implications as rival groups battle for popular advantage on issues such as a new market for debt securities, a multibillion dollar IMF loan package and the country’s rising birth rate.
“I think what we’re seeing is a battle for who represents Islam in Egypt,” said Shadi Hamid, a scholar at the Brookings Doha Centre think-tank. “It’s up for grabs and there are a lot of competitors. Each has a different conception of the role of Islam in public life.”
Islamist groups have proliferated since the revolution more than two years ago but are broadly divided between the politically dominant Brotherhood, the Salafis and the leadership at al-Azhar, Egypt’s most revered Islamic school of learning. All three foresee Islam playing a vital role in the public life, institutions and economy of post-revolutionary Egypt but are divided by political loyalties and doctrinal differences.
Salafis, grouped into several political parties and a proselytising institution, believe in a puritanical, orthodox version of Islam and a strict interpretation of the Koran. The Brotherhood’s religious views have been shaped by its years in the trenches of politics and social service. Al-Azhar, a sprawling mosque, university and elementary school system is led by highly educated clergy sympathetic to the mystical Sufi strain of Islam and close to the liberal opposition.
“You’ve got these movements that draw their authority from different sources,” said Nathan J Brown, an Egypt expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank. “The Brotherhood draws from democratic credentials. Azhar has it on the basis of their own expertise. And the Salafists refer to the original texts. The question is who speaks authoritatively and finally in the name of Islam.”
The most potentially destabilising fallout from the power struggle could be over Egypt’s economy, analysts say. After Mr Morsi secured the passage of a law to create and regulate a market in debt-like securities called sukuk al-Azhar scholars wanted to review the legislation for compliance with Muslim jurisprudence. Some Salafis oppose a $4.8bn proposed IMF loan deal on the grounds that interest is forbidden.
The impact of the power struggle is being felt in all parts of Egyptian life. When international family planning officials met in Egypt last month before a June conference on population control, they were told no one from the Muslim Brotherhood or its political party, the country’s dominant political force, would attend. “They were clear,” a senior international official said. “They said, ‘We are not against family planning. But we don’t want to create problems with Salafis’,” their more hardline Islamist rivals. Two Brotherhood spokespersons contacted declined to comment.
Conflict has burst into the open. Salafis and the Brotherhood jumped on a chance to weaken the moderate leadership at Azhar. When students fell sick from food poisoning, Mr Morsi denounced mismanagement at the institution. Salafis, often derided by the senior Azhar clergy, piled on criticism. The institution’s president was fired and is to be replaced in a hotly contested election.
Rivalry has intensified over appointments to vacant seats on the 40-man body that oversees Azhar. The fierceness of the battle to appoint the new grand cleric or mufti – in the end, a liberal was selected – “illustrates how politically fraught senior religious appointments have become,” Professor Brown wrote.
Other battles hint at the geopolitical influences that overshadow Egyptian politics. When hundreds of Iranian tourists arrived in Upper Egypt in April the Salafis accused the government of allowing Shia proselytisers into Sunni Egypt.
“We won’t gain much out of this except funding terrorism,” said a Salafi party leader who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mohamed Soudan, a spokesman for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, said: “These are tourists.
He added of the protests: “Maybe this is because of pressure coming from Saudi Arabia.”
Saudi Arabia has sway over the Salafis and fears growing links between Egypt and Iran.
How these arguments shake out will shape Egyptian politics, economics and society for years.
“Long-term I think that there is a battle going on over who speaks for Islam and over the ways in which Egypt’s status as a Muslim society will translate into day-to-day affairs,” Prof Brown said.
Financial Times
