The erstwhile spokesman of al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim seminary that serves as Egypt's highest religious authority, sees unfortunate parallels between his institution's experience and that of the clergy during the French Revolution. In short: both took the wrong side.
"Al-Azhar is the most prestigious institution in the Muslim World. It has great credibility as a bastion of Islamic knowledge and tradition," says Mohamed Rifaah, the vast institution's former spokesman. But its image withered under the 30-year regime of now deposed President Hosni Mubarak, who kept the institution on a tight leash. Mubarak exercised the right of his office to appoint the grand sheik of al-Azhar, and the regime controlled the institution's religious message. "This is what made it lose its credibility," says Rifaah. "If you want to be credible, you have to present yourself independently." (See photos of Mubarak, the man who stayed too long.)
As al-Azhar continued to serve its political master by offering scholarly Islamic interpretations opposed to the democratic uprising, Rifaah resigned along with a number of other officials who joined the revolution in their trademark gray overcoats and red caps. Now, the former diplomat believes that Egypt's new political reality offers al-Azhar the chance to reclaim its former international and domestic stature as an Islamic authority by establishing its independence from the regime.
But like all the state institutions under the Mubarak regime's control, al-Azhar's immediate future remains uncertain. And its fate may be part of a larger debate over the place of religion in Egypt's future. That debate includes the role that the country's largest opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, will play in Egyptian democracy once it implements its recent decision to create a political party. And there's also the question of how a more democratic Egypt will deal with the Brotherhood's violent archnemesis, al-Qaeda, and related extremist groups. Even more basic, Egyptians are asking whether Article II of the constitution, which declares Islam the religion of the state and Islamic law the principal source of legislation, needs to be amended. The sheik of al-Azhar has warned that any changes to Article II would lead to conflict. Others, like prominent human-rights lawyer Ahmed Seif, say it's simply too soon to be having the debate about religion's role. Elections need to come first, he says. Many others say the conversation has started, and there is no turning back.
Mazen Mostafa, a member of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party who joined the revolution early on, believes Egyptians are on the cusp of a fundamentally different religious reality. "I think al-Azhar will lose its stature after some time as Egypt turns to more of a secular role. Both Islam and Christianity will diminish," he says. (See how democracy can work in the Middle East.)
Others are less certain. Last Friday, a crowd estimated by some to number over 1 million poured into Tahrir Square to celebrate their revolution and maintain its momentum. One of the keynote speeches was a passionate sermon by Islamic scholar sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi, newly returned from exile, who led the midday prayers. Some see al-Qaradawi's return as a sign that Egypt's revolution will open the way for a more Islamist politics. The popular scholar has a large following and a top-ranked al-Jazeera TV show, but he has been criticized by Egypt's Western allies for rationalizing Palestinian terror attacks. Al-Qaradawi supporters, however, insist he is hardly an extremist; the scholar condemned the attacks on Sept. 11, and is consistently at odds with al-Qaeda, having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its more moderate views on Islam.
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In Friday's speech, al-Qaradawi toed a moderate line in harmony with the revolution, calling for the removal of the corrupt remnants of Mubarak's regime, as well as the release of political prisoners. "I call on the Egyptian army to liberate us from the government that Mubarak formed," he said in the televised sermon. But he also urged protesters to have patience with the Egyptian military and urged striking workers to return to work in the interests of the revolution - sentiments far closer to those of the current military rulers than to many of those in the square.
Many analysts and political activists believe that Islamic extremists will lose out as a more democratic Egypt shapes its religious identity. "The new generation, including the Muslim Brothers and those of them who were in Tahrir Square, have hardly any relationship with al-Qaeda - ideologically, in terms of the outlook, and definitely not organizationally," says Walid Kazziha, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo. "I think al-Qaeda perhaps fears that these young Egyptians have stolen the revolution." (See the Facebook rebel who helped kick off the Jan. 25 revolution.)
Of course, there will be Islamists among the winners in Egypt's democratic revolution, but those are more likely to be the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood types. Denouncing the Brotherhood has long been a staple of al-Qaeda propaganda tapes, while a portion of the Egyptian group's website is titled "MB versus Qaeda" and is dedicated to bashing extremists. The Brotherhood recently announced that it will form a political party to contest elections as soon as constitutional amendments make that possible - a move that al-Qaeda would take as proof of its accusations of the Brotherhood's treachery against the Islamist cause, which al-Qaeda sees as irreconcilable with democracy.
Although members of the Brotherhood comprised a small minority of protesters in Tahrir Square, their cooperative and humble approach to working with other groups - never trying to lead, as well as their declared intention to refrain from fielding their own presidential candidate - will help them gain ground. "The Brotherhood is a part of this revolution," says Waleed Shalaby, the group's clean-shaven media consultant. "They didn't lead it or come late to it. The Brotherhood is at its heart, and it's part of its basic fabric."
The approach taken by the Brotherhood undercut efforts by the Mubarak regime to present Egypt's political choice as one between the dictatorship and the Islamists. In Tahrir, thousands of Egyptians who had previously had no contact with the Islamist group gained a positive experience. "People think the Muslim Brotherhood are terrorists, but they're not," said Hoor Ahmed Shawky, 17. "They just want fairness and justice."
The plurality that comes with democracy, if it is achieved, could also limit the Brotherhood's popularity, and marginalize the extremist fringes. Although the crowd in Tahrir Square on Friday listened in keen silence to al-Qaradawi's sermon, they represented a greater diversity across lines of age, outlook and social class, cooperating in the interests of establishing a truly democratic arena in which to express themselves. Extremist Islam would only triumph, says al-Azhar's former spokesman Rifaah, if the repression continues. "But if we have a democracy, we will not have a society dominated by one faction or by one religious organization. We will have a balanced society where all trends of thought will be adequately represented."
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