Dr. Abdel Monem Abul-Futouh is a genial, energetic man who looks
to be about 60 years old. The thick, dish-like lenses of his
eye-glasses magnify his eyes and give him a vulnerable, owlish
look. To
see him at his office in the gracious old building that houses both
the Egyptian Medical Society and the Arab Medical Union, you have to
make the appointment well in advance. When you arrive a tall,
well-organized young man who glides around the building with a bundle
of files in his hand takes you to Dr. Abul-Futouh’s office. We greet
each other, and the doctor immediately lays out the terms of engagement
for the interview. “Ask anything! How long do you
need? Is thirty minutes enough?” I ask for forty, and am
granted them.
Did I mention that, in addition to being the General Secretary of the
Arab Medical Union, Dr. Abul-Futouh is also a member of the Guidance
Council
of the Muslim Brotherhood?
The most interesting part of the interview came when I pressed him to
explain his view on Israel.
“We as the Muslim Brotherhood know that the Jews in Israel are human
beings,” he said,
same as the Palestinians who are the original owners of the country
should live and should not be killed. The Palestinian problem was
made by the western regimes and surely they should solve it– but not
at the expense of the Palestinians!
He sought to illustrate his argument about why the Jewish people
of Israel should not be killed by describing an Arab custom whereby a
person who is born as a result of a rape should not face any punishment
or stigma on account of that fact. “That person’s existence may
be the result of a fault, but the fault was not his,” he said.
“What fault has he committed?”
He continued,
but whatever they do the Palestinians should win their rights.
You could have an outcome with one state there– a secular, democratic
state– or two states. But I think one state would be better,
because if you have two states, then they would fight. It would
be better to be one state– like South Africa.
I asked him, did he really say a “secular, democratic
state”? This seemed ground-breaking given the MB’s traditional
opposition to the idea of secular rule, and I wanted to confirm that he
really intended to say it that way– in Arabic, “dawla dimuqratiyya ‘ulmaniyya“.
He confirmed that he did mean that.
everything! And now, the US regime– the regime, not the people–
has joined Israel in imposing this very bad siege on the Palestinians.
Why does America attack us? I think they do this because they are
rightwing and extremist and have interests with the multinational
companies which bring so many benefits to people associated with the
regime there that they live well at our expense.
I had started the interview by asking how he saw the situation in
Egypt, whre the MB has been the subject of a governmental crackdown
that has grown increasingly harsh over the past year.
He said,
two main factors: the current discussion over the changes to the
constitution here and the upcoming elections for the Maglis al-Shura
[Senate]. But the main reason is the first of those. The
regime wants to block any move by the opposition regarding the changes.
Also, at the international level, the US retreated from what it had
previously said about democratization. You know, our regimes here
in the Arab and Islamic world are helped and supported by the
Americans, not by their own people.
But as we see it, the problem is that if the peaceful means for change
are being obstructed then this will push people towards violent
movements, and push more individuals to use violence.
Even inside the Muslim Brotherhood, I wondered?
He was adamant. “No, not
inside the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood strategically
chose nonviolence in 1984, and it was after that that we entered
Parliament and the unoions and so on.” Indeed it was at that
point that, in return for the pledge of nonviolence, the Mubarak regime
gave the movement some leeway to enter public political life. The
MB has never been legalized as a political party– a process that is
extremely tightly controlled by the ruling National Democratic
Party. But ever since the Egyptian elections of 1984, known MB
candidates have run either through a coalition deal with another party
or as independents. That year, eight MB candidates won seats in
the 444-member Parliament. The number rose steadily until in the
elections of fall 2005, 88 MB candidates won. Meanwhile, they
have also emerged as a powerful and generally permitted force within
many of the country’s professional unions– a fact which partially
explains why both Abul-Futouh and Dr. Issam el-Arian, a prominent
informal spokesman for the movement, have executive jobs here in the
physicians’ union.
“You Americans,” Abul-Futouh continued,
religious currents here are very
strong– among both the Muslims and the Copts. Much more than in
the
US! We need to have workable, peaceful franeworks to contain
these currents. You as Americans need to understand
how good our dictatorial regimes are at using all the issue about the
the Islamic ‘threat’ to get support from your government for what are
really only tiny ruling cliques here.
The main Islamic streams are not against the American people, but
against the American government and its policies.
We as the Muslim Brotherhood, in every country where we are, this
movement wants to cooperate with all the other peoples of the world–
the Americans, the Chinese, the Europeans– but to do so on the basis
of respect from both sides.
He talked a little about two or three visits he has
made to the US, and how warm and welcoming he had found the people
there. “There are many areas of agreement between us and
Americans. We ask, what is the difference between mainstream
Islam and American democracy?”
Their views on the trreatment and role of women, I suggested?
He replied,
largely marginalized in our society. But this is a cultural
phenomenon here, and not specifically Islamic. You know, we
prepared 25 women to run in the last elections, but they nearly all
dropped out of the race because of the intense family and social
pressures placed on them not to do it. At the end, only one of
them was left: Dr. Makarema ad-Deeni. She was the onbly one to
continue, but the election was stolen from her by the regime.
We treat women with more respect than the west, which treats her as a
commodity. If a woman goes out and is active in the public
sphere, we encourage that, and think she should do so as a fully human
person. But if she wants to be a woman, then she should do that
at home.
He also said that inequalities between men and women regarding
inheritance could be explained by the fact that those same “cultural
factors” imposed more financial responsibilities on men, in some cases.
So how about the Brotherhood’s stated desire to restore the Islamic
Caliphate, I asked? Shouldn’t we in the West be concerned about
that?
“If different Islamic states want to come together and make a political
union, why shouldn’t they?” he replied. “If it’s okay for the
Europeans to come together, and before that, the various north American
states came together and made a union– why shouldn’t the Islamic
states do it, too?”
But maybe you’ll want to come and extend your Caliphate over our
countries, as well, I said.
understandings make it haram
[religiously forbidden] to overcome others by force.
But anyway, why do you speak of this fear of being overcome by us when
it is you who have overcome our countries. You’re occupying our
countries and controlling so many aspects of our lives here! So
it is foolish for you to speak of a fear of being overcome by us.
We then had the short discussion on Israel, described above. At
the end of that, he spoke briefly but passionately on the vast amount
of resources that the US has wasted on wars and killing… “But
in contrast, Islam respects life so much!” He described an
Islamic story about a woman who went to hell for harming a cat.
“We say if you kill one person, you are killing the whole world.”
So how about Hamas, I asked, pointing out that even if the main
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had renounced violence in 1984 and had more
or less kept to that pledge ever since, still, its offshoot in
Palestine had founded Hamas three years later and Hamas had gone on to
undertake many acts of violence–
resistance, not violence. And what about Nelson Mandela?
His movement had a military wing, too.
We differentiate between resistance and violence.
The Israelis use so much violence. Remember how they killed
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin? An old man, a paraplegic in a wheelchair–
and they just killed him with rockets from the air.
Israel refused everything peaceful, including the Arab peace plan and
the Road Map. remember how Sharon defined 14 points of opposition
he had to the Road Map, after the Palestinians had accepted it
completely.
As the 40 minutes drew to their close we returned to the topic we had
started with: the MB’s position inside Egypt.
explosion– not controlled by us, or by anyone. This is a very
dangerous prospect that may come about if the regime doesn’t stop its
oppression and move toward more political inclusion.
We’d like to have cooperation
with the regime, and with all the forces in society. The system
here should be made more democratic. The regime should take true
steps towards democracy. We understand they can’t do it
overnight, but they should do it with a clear timetable. They
should take true steps against corruption. And work for the true
inclusion of all the peaceful political trends here– the Muslim
Brotherhood, the Communists, everyone.
It was an interesting interview. Abul-Futouh is reputed to be
from the “liberal” wing of the MB, so I was curious to find out what
kind of positions he would espouse and what arguments he would
make. I certainly had not been expecting the support he expressed
for a single, secular democratic state within all the area of Mandate
Palestine. That had, of course, been the position the PLO
espoused between 1968 and 1974 (before it moved over into supporting
the idea of two states living side-by-side there.) And back
then as I recall it, the MB opposed the idea, mainly because of its
opposition to secular rule anywhere within the historic lands of Islam.
The MB is still closely linked to Hamas. I did not have the time
to probe the current status of those links more closely during this
interview, though I was able to, a little, during the interview I conducted some ten days earlier with Abul-Futouh’s MB colleague Dr. Issam el-Arian. I should imagine, however, that the positions espoused by the MB
leaders here in Cairo on matters Palestinian have at least some effect
on the positions followed by the Hamas people in Palestine. In
that regard, it was significant that Abul-Futouh said that either a
two-state outcome or a South-Africa-style one-state outcome would
possible and– from his perspective– permissible, though he did
express a preference for the one-state version.
Anyway, that’s all I have time for now. I’m actually finishing writing this post from Jordan, where I arrived yesterday…