IRD Exclusive interview with Reza Aslan
IRD: How do you see the current unrest in Egypt and what it means for the region?
RA: What’s happening in Egypt is the result of a demographic trend that people have been pointing to for more than a decade, but which hasn’t really come to the surface until quite recently. Three quarters of the population of the Middle East is under the age of 35. The median age in Egypt is 24. The median age in Tunisia is 23. The median age in Yemen is 18, and increasingly this population, perhaps not so much in Yemen, but certainly in Egypt is politically active, socially conscious, they’re globalized, they’re on-line, they no longer rely on the old narratives of Arab nationalism versus religious nationalism or Islamism; and what they want is the same economic and political opportunities that they see other people around them enjoying. And this youth “bulge” has been simmering on the surface of the Middle East, and it was only a matter of time before it burst onto the surface and that’s what we’re seeing now. So yes, this is democratizing trend, but make no mistake, this is a youth movement. We are seeing a youth revolution, not a democracy revolution.
IRD: You’ve spent some time in Cairo, and in fact the last time I spoke with you while demonstrations were going on, you were getting ready to go there, but your trip was cancelled at the last minute.
RA: I was literally en route to Cairo, in order to give a number of talks and meet, precisely, with young democracy activists. And the week before, I was in regular communication with the US embassy, which was my main host for my series of lectures. And repeatedly, I kept saying to them, “are we okay? Are we still on? Because it doesn’t seem okay from where I am,” and they kept saying, “this is nothing, don’t worry about it; it’s just a few disgruntled people, they’ll go home any minute now.” And I asked one of them (US embassy staffer) something about the closing of the airport and he said, “we are so far from that ever happening.” And then, en route to the airport, I get a frantic phone call from the US embassy telling me, “don’t come here, all hell is breaking loose, the airports are closed!” I tell this story because it’s an indication of how much this took the US government, even the US embassy on the ground in Cairo, by surprise. You know, there are all these analogies between what’s happening in Cairo and what happened in Iran over thirty years ago, and a lot of those analogies don’t work but the one that does work is how clueless the US was to the reality on the ground.
IRD: And that has seem to have been repeated in Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, and Lebanon in a different way, of course. I wanted to ask you—and I think this is important to Americans as well as Iranians; the Americans are worried about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over, or as Hillary Clinton said, groups “hijacking” the revolution, and we’ve seem images of tens of thousands of people praying in front of tanks on the street, the piousness of the protestors being undeniable—now you’ve spent time in the country, you’ve written about Islam, what is your sense of the religious fervor that is or isn’t present among the youth?
RA: Well first of all by no means can this be understood as an “Islamic” revolution. On the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood came into this revolution very late, and they have at no point taken a leadership role in what’s going on in Egypt. That said, there is no question that the Muslim Brotherhood is going to play a role in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that’s a good thing. 95% of Egyptians, according to the 2010 Pew Research poll, say that they want Islam to play a role in their democratic society. So there is no question that religion is going to play a role, but we can’t overestimate the power of the Muslim Brotherhood. They represent perhaps 20 to 25% of the population; there are numerous oppositional forces, from Ayman Nour’s El Ghad Party to the so-called January 25th Movement which really began this whole thing, to the leadership of Mohammad El Baradei. And of course when Mubarak leaves power, Egyptians are going to be allowed to form their own unions, so you’re going to see labor unions take an active role in this. The voice of the Muslim Brothers will be a strong voice, but it will be by no means the majority voice in the future government. But having the Muslim Brotherhood play a role in the Egyptian government is the best thing that could happen for the United States, for a whole host of reasons. One of which—first of all we have to realize the Brotherhood is actually a moderating voice—is that they are the chief enemies of Al Qaeda. In fact Ayman Zawahiri, Al Qaeda’s number two, wrote a 700 page tome attacking the Muslim Brotherhood! If for no other reason than that, we should be supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al Qaeda has grown to prominence over the last two decades, by essentially giving the people of the region a stark choice: between secular, oppressive, Western-backed dictatorship on the one hand; and an Islamic State on the other. For the first time, in a very long time, a third alternative is starting to form, in Tunisia, in Egypt, and hopefully in Algeria and beyond, and that alternative is a democratic society that is nevertheless founded upon an Islamic moral ideal that is shared by the vast majority of the population that want to live in that democratic society. Our very hope for a stable and secure future for that region and for the world relies on making that option a reality.
IRD: That leads me to the last question, or two questions. How the Obama administration has handled this unrest in the Arab world.
RA: Well, firstly, the Obama administration was caught in a very difficult situation. They could not be seen as backing a dictator, which even the Bush administration loathed and tried to push into reform. At the same time, their two greatest allies in the Middle East—Israel and Saudi Arabia—want nothing to do with democracy in Egypt. On the contrary, they want to see a dictator like Mubarak in place forever because that dictator can be easily plied with money to behave himself. And no matter what anyone says, let’s be honest, the relationship that Egypt is going to, both with Israel and with Saudi Arabia, be different when Egypt is a democracy. And of course those pressures forced Obama to really hedge as much as possible. But it is now crystal clear that the game is over for Mubarak; that two-and-a-half weeks after these protests started, today we saw the largest number of people n the streets of Cairo. This is not going away until this man steps away from power. The lunacy that he is not going to run for election again in September, as though he was ever elected to begin with, is too absurd to be taken seriously! But at this point there’s no more room left for hedging bets, there’s no more room left for safety. Yes, the Obama administration has said they want a peaceful transition, but it seems they have swallowed the notion that that transition is going to have to come in September. That’s impossible. Mubarak has not spent thirty years creating one of the most repressive police states in the Middle East to walk away from it this easily. He wants to wait until September, because he knows by September he can regain control over the situation. The protestors will not allow that to happen and it’s time that the Obama administration recognizes that reality, throws it weight behind the protestors, and calls for Mubarak to step down immediately. Now, that being said, I know for a fact that that’s happening right now. I know that our military and Egypt’s military are already in negotiations about how to figure out how to make this happen. So that’s happening already….
IRD: Does that mean that the U.S. will continue to back Omar Soleiman?
RA: The US will continue to back the Egyptian military. This is thing that we always have to remember: Egypt is a military dictatorship. It’s in the army’s control today, and after there is a free and fair democratic election and a new constitution and a new parliament, the military will still be in charge of Egypt. That’s not going to change. And certainly when it comes to foreign policy, the military dictates foreign policy. It’s not going to be El Baradei who decides what’s going to happen between Israel and Egypt; it’s going to be the generals. So the relationship that the US has built with Egypt is not with the government, it’s with the military, and that’s gong to stay the same.
IRD: Thank you very much, Dr. Aslan.