by Bruce Feiler
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
He took a deep breath. “I’m worried about the future,” he said. “I believe the revolution had a religious dimension, but some people appear to think it had an exclusively religious dimension. The man behind the assassination of Sadat was just on television spewing hatred. He was trying to sound moderate, but I don’t trust him. The Muslim Brotherhood in this country are very cunning. Their intentions have yet to be revealed. If they come to power, they will kill the Sufis. They will close shrines. They will make life miserable for a lot of people.”
“There seems to be a debate for the hearts and minds of young Muslims,” I said. “On the one side are the extremists—Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Wahhabis. On the other side are the futurists—the Twitterers, the Facebookers, the YouTubers, the digerati. Which side will young people go with?”
“If the economy continues to be bad, they will probably go with the extremists,” he said. “I will tell you the fundamentalists’ technique. Let’s say you’re a young man approaching thirty years old. You have no job and no chance to get a wife. They come to you and say, ‘Do you want to work? Do you want to get married? We’ll do that for you.’ They get you a job in a shop; they get you a young woman who believes as they do; and they indoctrinate you.”
“So let’s say I am that young man, and I come to you for advice. What would you tell me to do?”
For the first time all night, he squirmed in his chair. He paused for a long time. “I would tell you, ‘There is only one way forward. Egypt for all Egyptians. Opportunity for all. If you try to make everyone believe the same thing, you risk becoming the pharaoh all over again.’ ”
“And if I went to back to the extremists and told them what you said, what would they say?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “You’ll have to ask them.”
The headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood is located in a surprisingly posh area of Cairo. The residential street is crowded, pleasantly leafy, and lined with white, concrete, mid-last-century buildings eight to ten stories tall. After identifying the proper address, I stepped into a tiny elevator and nearly leapt out of my shirt as a loud Arabic chant—like the electronic call to prayer, only peppier and more jarring—blared from a speaker. The tune continued all the way to the third floor, then abruptly stopped as the doors opened.
“It’s the prayer for transportation,” explained the attendant who greeted me. “It thanks God for all means of transporting from one place to another, like an airplane, a bus, or a train.”
“Or a revolution?” I added, gamely trying to lighten the mood.
He tilted his head, unsure how to respond. “That’s transportation of another kind,” he said, then showed me into a room. I noticed immediately there were no women around.
The conference room of this eighty-five-year-old organization looked like the conference room of any eighty-five-year-old organization. It had a large wooden table, green leather chairs (Aha! Muslim influence), a dead houseplant, and a TV showing Al Jazeera. A large Arabic banner hung on the wall: DIALOGUE FOR EGYPT #5. I don’t know what I was expecting. A cave, maybe? But it certainly wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find a terrorist crawling out from under a rock. If anything, the most notable thing about the room was the thirteen chairs and the nine boxes of Kleenex.
The Muslim Brotherhood may be the Middle East’s most pivotal organization in the second decade of the twenty-first century. How it chooses to act in the coming years—with violence or nonviolence; Islamic exclusivity or partnership with other faiths (and those of no faith)—may go a long way in determining the future of freedom in the Muslim world.
The Society for Muslim Brothers was founded in 1928 by scholar and teacher Hassan al-Banna. From the outset, its goals were clear: to use any means necessary to instill the Qur’an as the “sole reference point” for individuals, families, and the state. Its original motto: “God is our objective; the Qur’an is our constitution; the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of God is the highest of our aspirations.” The organization built its popularity by deftly deploying social services, such as constructing hospitals, pharmacies, and schools, along with forming strategic alliances. Through a partnership with Nazi Germany, for example, the Brotherhood distributed copies of Mein Kampf and Protocols of the Elders of Zion. By 1948, it had more than two million members.
In 1954, the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser, fearing the Brotherhood’s growing clout, banned the organization and for the next decade and a half systematically tortured Brotherhood leaders. This period was captured in a prominent book, Return of the Pharaoh. In the 1970s, the group suddenly shifted course, renounced violence, and vowed to seek change through existing institutions. In recent years, the Mubarak regime arrested tens of thousands of members, yet the Brotherhood still managed to capture 20 percent of the parliament in the 2005 election. Its younger members, meanwhile, took to the blogosphere and social networks, and partnered with the April 6 Movement and other revolutionary groups.
After Mubarak’s fall, the Brotherhood quickly rushed into the void, pushing its slogan: “Islam is the answer.” But the organization emphasized that it did not seek to control the country outright. On its website, in books, and in op-ed pieces in English in the New York Times and elsewhere, the Brotherhood claimed to be moderate, committed to a civil state, even pluralist in its vision. The question hanging over the world: Is their promise believable?
Muhammad Biltagy strolled into the conference room looking every bit the politician he is, with a drab brown suit, a green tie, deep-set, sleep-deprived eyes, and a cell phone affixed to his ear. The only sign of his religiosity was the dark brown calloused prayer bump just above his eyes, which Muslims call the zabiba, or raisin, from touching the forehead to the ground so assiduously during the five daily prayers. I told a friend in Cairo that I would be meeting Dr. Biltagy, a medical doctor by training and a former member of parliament who now runs the political arm of the Brotherhood, and my friend visibly shivered. “Ooh, he’s one of the mean ones.”
I asked Biltagy about his upbringing and why he had joined the Brotherhood. Almost exactly my age, forty-seven, he was born outside Alexandria as the sixth of seven siblings, and is the only Brotherhood member among them today. He joined when he was seventeen. “I was searching, and still am searching, for a national movement that works on the development of the country and the ummah,” he said, using the Arabic word for the pan-Islamic nation. “As a force, I found the Muslim Brotherhood effective.” He had been detained a number of times by the government, he told me, but was luckier than his colleagues, many of whom had served lengthy prison terms.
“I notice you still have your fingernails,” I said, referring to the well-known torture technique of removing the fingernails of political prisoners.
He nodded knowingly. “That wasn’t really happening so much in recent years, though much worse happened in the 1960s. It was more that we were deprived of our political rights; our careers were affected because we were in prison so much; our families suffered. I was unable to get a job for five years, until I got a court order.”
He was clearly nervous speaking with me, and was watching his words carefully. He listened closely to the translator and thought before answering each question. But he was also noticeably unflappable. He had sat across from more menacing interlocutors.
“You seem very calm,” I said. “I’m curious: If I had met you before the revolution, were you angry?”
He chuckled. “We were always looking for peaceful methods of change,” he said. “We rejected the violent techniques put forward by other groups. We channeled our anger into activities that would push Egypt toward peaceful change.”
And finally their luck changed. Muhammad Biltagy had been the public face of the Muslim Brotherhood during the revolution, and one of the protests’ most visible organizers. But he and his colleagues were careful to try to conceal their role. “We wer
e keen to participate in the revolution but not at the forefront,” he told me, “because we knew the government would use our presence to scare people away. The first statement made by the Ministry of Interior spoke about the Brotherhood as being the hands behind the movement.”
But everyone I spoke to emphasized that when the uprising turned ugly in its second week, the Brotherhood played a central role. They were well organized, disciplined, and experienced in handling crackdowns. After January 28, a kind of euphoria settled over Cairo. The emboldened protesters felt increasingly confident in their demands, which escalated from their original calls for the resignation of the interior minister to a full-throttled call for the president’s resignation. On Saturday, January 29, President Mubarak sacked his cabinet but remained out of sight; on Sunday, opposition figurehead Mohamed ElBaradei addressed the protesters in the square, saying, “What we started can never be pushed back.”
But the following Tuesday the pushback began. Mubarak gave a speech saying he would not run for reelection, but refused to step down. “I will die on Egypt’s soil,” he said. The next day, Wednesday, February 2, he sent in a rented army of thugs on camelback and horseback, wielding machetes and pistols. The sight of camels, who despite their romantic Hollywood image are actually ornery beasts, galloping menacingly into the heart of downtown Cairo like some Lawrence of Arabia fantasy gone mad, enraged the protesters. (As Gigi Ibrahim, one of the leaders of the youth movement, told me, “My first thought was, ‘Oh, crap, we’re stuck with the stereotype of the camels. Damn, Mubarak for making that stereotype stick—even in the midst of our revolution!”)
Dr. Biltagy and his comrades joined demonstrators who gathered near the Egyptian Museum, throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at the mercenary madmen as they slashed their way through the throngs. Dozens were bloodied, injured, or killed. The revolution seemed to be stalling.
“In moments like that,” I asked Dr. Biltagy, “did you rely on your faith?”
“I believe that one of the main pillars of Islam, as much as prayer, is freedom,” he said. “There are many verses that say that. But we decided not to use Qur’anic verses during those moments, because they would be divisive. We relied on them only for our internal feelings.”
“And when so many died around you, was it worth the price?”
“I expected the price to be much higher,” he said. “In 2006, an Egyptian ferry sank in the Red Sea; fourteen hundred people died. That was just one day under the regime of Hosni Mubarak. To lose eight hundred martyrs to achieve the dream of all Egypt, that was worth it.”
We turned to the future—and to the controversies surrounding the Brotherhood.
“If ‘Islam is the answer,’ ” I said, “what is the question?”
“That’s not what’s on the table right now,” he said. “What’s on the table is how to work with all the other political movements to achieve the demands of the revolution, which are democracy, freedom, and social justice.”
“But one of the questions,” I said, “is what will the role of Shariah law be in the future of the country.” Shariah law, from the Arabic word for path, is the widespread Islamic code of conduct adapted from the Qur’an and other sayings from Muhammad. For decades it was identified as a principle of the Egyptian constitution, but in 1980 it was changed to the principle. A big debate had broken out about what role it would play in the future.
“When the constitution was changed from a to the in 1980,” Dr. Biltagy said, “it didn’t change much in the practical lives of Egyptians over the last thirty years. That clause seems to reflect more of the cultural identity of the country than anything practical.”
“But there are certain aspect of Shariah law, if I might push a little,” I said, “like honor killing, violence against anyone who converts to Christianity, certain rules about homosexuality, that can become law in this country if Shariah is the foundation of the constitution.”
“But Shariah has been the main source of legislation for three decades and none of what you fear has happened.”
I asked him what he thought happened on 9/11.
“It’s not my job to investigate what happened, but the fact that Islamists took part helped to join Islam with terrorism for the past ten years. I think it was a despicable act.”
“Some of those violent Islamists live in Egypt,” I said, “including the ones involved in the assassination of Sadat. Many were released from prison after the revolution. Do you believe they will join the Brotherhood?”
“That is not possible. We have always been critical of those people. We condemn violence and call for peaceful change. They have to figure out their own future, but we believe that they harmed Egypt and harmed Islam, both internally and externally. We don’t agree with their ideology at all.”
Now it was my time to lean forward. “Part of the challenge the Muslim Brotherhood faces, it seems to me, is that you have Islam and terrorism clearly united together in groups like Al Qaeda and the leadership of Iran. But there aren’t a lot of examples of Islam and democracy living side by side.”
“I think there is the example of Turkey,” Dr. Biltagy said. “The ruling party is from an Islamic background, yet they have managed to have real democracy in Turkey. They are accepting of other religions. They are reaching out to the world in ways they haven’t before. That would be an example that Egypt could follow.”
Our time was coming to a close, so I decided to do a sort of lightning round where I asked him about a number of long-term issues in the new Middle East. Was he in favor of closer ties with Iran? “I believe in the closeness of human groups, regardless of differences. I don’t believe in the conflict of civilizations.” Could he imagine an Islamic caliphate from Iran to Morocco? “The European Union is a good example of similar countries cooperating on different levels, whether African, Arab, Euro-Mediterranean, or Islamic. And it doesn’t have to be in historical relationship with the caliphate.” What about peace with Israel. Does he support Camp David? “We have a comprehensive peace between the people, but not necessarily with the head of state. In principle we support all international peace treaties that Egypt has signed to date, but we also have the right like any people to renegotiate. Unless the issue of Jerusalem is resolved, a continuous, comprehensive peace in the region will be difficult to achieve.”
Altogether, I was impressed that Dr. Biltagy, like other, more junior members of the Brotherhood I met (and unlike a number of the more ragtag members of the opposition I met), was focused, comprehensive, and, as the political consultants in America like to say, “on message.” But was he being truthful, or just offering spin? There were plenty of signs in postrevolutionary Egypt that the Brotherhood and other Islamists were expanding their ambitions. They have heightened calls for Egypt to be declared an Islamic state and rallied supporters to defend the constitutional foundation of Shariah law; some have even called for the government to employ “morality police,” as Saudi Arabia and Iran do. But other signs suggest they are following through on their more moderate platform. The Brotherhood said it would field candidates for only 50 percent of parliament, would not run a candidate for president, and repeatedly distanced itself from more flamethrowing Islamists on the right.
Still, I never felt I was seeing the man behind the carefully constructed mask Muhammad Biltagy presented me. That is, until I asked him again about his personal feelings during the revolution, and what story from the Qur’an most resonated with his experience. Suddenly his mood softened, his eyes moistened, and he told me a story.
“In 2006, it had been fifteen years since students in universities in Egypt held open elections for the Student Union,” he said. “I was the head of the Student Union in the 1980s, and I was invited to give a talk to the students before their vote. I told them the story of the dialogue Moses has with the pharaoh in the Qur’an. When Moses comes to the pharaoh and asks him to follow the true path of God, the pharaoh reminds Moses of the endless kindness, the food, and the security his adopte
d family had shown him. And Moses says, ‘That all means nothing if there is no freedom for the Israelites.’ ”
“Why did you tell them that story?” I asked.
“To tell the students that freedom is more precious than anything. They should not compromise their dreams. Instead, they should use whatever means possible to achieve them.”
Sure enough, here was more proof that Egypt never escapes its past. It never outruns the shadows of its great combatants, Moses and the pharaoh. It doesn’t matter that the Israelites had nothing to do with the pyramids; they were constructed 1,500 years before the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would have lived anywhere near the Nile. It doesn’t matter that in all likelihood God did not turn the Nile into blood or kill the firstborn sons of Egypt.
What matters is that the stories changed the world. And they still do. The stories that came from this land have animated people—from the banks of the Nile to the decks of the Mayflower to the streets of Selma, Alabama, and now back again to the Nile. For almost three millennia, they have inspired people in pain to stand in the face of their foes and say, “Let my people go!” Freedom is the theme of those stories, and now we know there’s no distinction in who craves it.
I said good-bye to Dr. Biltagy, and we shook hands. Then I stepped back into the elevator and made my way down, with prayers for safe passage echoing firmly in my head.
Chapter IV
Freedom to Believe
Abraham and the Road to Reconciliation
The smell of a burned-out church is a haunting, memorable stench. I have experienced it several times in my life. In east Tennessee in the mid-1990s after a string of attacks on predominantly black churches. In Lower Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks, at the Chapel of St. Paul’s at Trinity Church, which wasn’t destroyed when the towers fell but was covered in a layer of soot and debris. And I smelled it again not long after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, at the Church of the Two Martyrs (St. Mina and St. George), 130 miles southeast of Cairo, in the small city of Soul, in Helwan Governorate.