Middle East Focus: Is the Arab Spring Turning into an Islamist Winter?.........

Arabia Deserta

Is the Arab Spring Turning into an Islamist Winter?.........

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF

“Islamists across the region are working in Riyadh's favor. As with the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Saudis gained newfound influence with the Muslim Brotherhood and its even more hard-line Salfi allies, who reportedly take funds from the Saudis. The Muslim Brotherhood has vaulted to prominence in the post-Mubarak era. It draws hundreds of thousands to rallies. It looks set to sweep forthcoming elections. After all, it is telling that Muslim Brotherhood members took refuge in Saudi Arabia during the decades of persecution under former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Today, the party makes a good partner for Riyadh, as it never utters even a whisper of criticism of what more radical Islamist outfits denounce as the Saudi royal family's treacherous ties with the West. If Saudi Arabia desperately backed Mubarak to his last days, in post-revolutionary Egypt the kingdom is now closely connected to the country's new political power brokers……………..”

When the Arab uprisings spread from Tunisia eastwards, Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei opined that these were Islamic revolutions. He and other Iranian officials and clerics insinuated that they were inspired by the Iranian experience. I commented at the time that they were wrong, perhaps indulging in some wishful thinking. They were wrong, of course: the Iranian Revolution is a spent force in the Middle East, as it might be inside Iran as well. The Arab uprisings started as secular movements, and they achieved some success as such in Tunisia and Egypt. I also posted at a later date that as a result of the uprisings the Arab world will turn more Islamic, more Islamist. For a while.

The main unfortunate legacy of all these Arab dictators and absolute monarchs is that, when they finally fall, the only organized groups ready to take advantage are the fundamentalist groups. Iran was almost an exception in 1979, but the mullahs also managed to outmaneuver their secular partners. Now we come to Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain. Tunisia probably has the best chance to resist the fundamentalist tide, but the Islamists, probably bolstered with Gulf (mainly Saudi) money, are making themselves heard. The thousands of Salafis attacking the home of a television manager (the Persepolis incident) were just the beginning. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (M

is going back to its Saudi-financed days. In recent years, until the January uprising, Saudi media and its Egyptian surrogates were blasting the Egyptian MB on a daily basis, mainly because it was against their ally Mubarak and sided with Hamas in Gaza (there were hints by Mamoun Fandy and others that it was allied with Iran). Now all that seems to have changed with the new militancy of the demagogue Yusuf al-Qardawi and the Qatari-Saudi alliance.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood found refuge and support with the Al-Saud when they lost out to the secularist followers of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. In the process, as political pariahs, they became Wahhabi-ized to some degree, which makes it natural and easy for them to rekindle that old flame with the Saudis. The Salafis of Egypt had been rising in the forty years of Sadat and Mubarak and these Wahhabis have been the natural favorites of the Saudis in the past. Even the ruling military junta of Marshal Tantawi (SCAF) got into the fundamentalist act when it massacred scores of protesting Christian Copts. That was the second recent massacre committed by Egyptian military/security forces that was instigated by Islamic fundamentalists against the Copts: the first one was Mr. Mubarak's War on Pigs in 2009, which aimed to eliminate all four-legged swine from the country.

In Libya and Syria and Yemen the 'opposition' have strong Islamist strains, whether Salafi or Muslim Brothers. For 'Salafi' in Yemen, read 'al-Qaeda'. In Bahrain the al-Khalifa regime has cultivated the Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood to the extent that they now dominate the phoney largely unelected parliament. With a 'permanent' Saudi military base on Bahrain now, the fundamentalist influence has grown within the regime even as the people keep up their protests.

The Arab countries that have revolted are in fact turning more fundamentalist. Yet elements of a public relations political process are also being introduced in these countries, which makes it even more dangerous. The favorite Arab practice of Potemkin democracy, of holding phoney elections while maintaining the existing regimes will continue under an Islamic guise. Even the Saudis may get into the act with their toothless impotent municipal councils.

When and if this dust settles, we will have the same Arab League, with a more Islamist coloring. It is likely that most Arab states will have some form of "politics" but only up to a point; it is possible that the Arab peoples will have some more freedoms, but only up to a point. A combination of absolute tribal dynasties and Islamists and the military will continue to dominate.
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com