George W. Bush wants to see democracy in the Muslim world. He would not have relished the pro-democracy demonstration that gathered on the steps of the journalists’ syndicate in central Cairo. As the crowd chanted, demonstrators raised the symbols of their dissent: the Holy Qur’an, portraits of Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt’s first independent president), and the red flag—signifying the three strands of a growing movement that unites Islamists, nationalists and socialists.
When Bush talks of democracy, he talks of its power ‘to secure justice and liberty, and the inclusion of men and women of all races and religions in the courses that free nations chart for themselves’. But the growing democracy movement in Egypt has bigger ambitions—ambitions that may run contrary to those of the White House.
As Hany Tarek, an activist with El Karama (a Nasserite party) put it: ‘We’re saying “no” to our government because it’s with Israel and the US. We want the Palestinians to be able to return to their homes, both from the 1967 and 1948 invasions.’ Amr Fahmy, a member of Islamic Trend (the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood) at Cairo University, added: ‘No change is possible without unity against imperialism, Zionism and dictatorship.’
Democracy has emerged as the leitmotif of the US’s adventures in the Middle East. Weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s supposed dalliance with al Qaeda are exhausted as justifications. Now invasion, occupation and pressure on recalcitrants like Iran are proffered in the name of elections. As Bush says: ‘Freedom is on the march, and the world is better for it. Widespread hatred and radicalism cannot survive the advent of freedom and self-government.’
This line may play well on domestic television, but it is at odds with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s praise for Pakistan, a military dictatorship that backed the US’s invasion of Afghanistan; and White House silence on the massacres in Uzbekistan, a dictatorship that buys US acquiescence by hosting a military base in the strategic corner between Afghanistan, Russia and China. For most in the Middle East, the idea of Western intervention leading to freedom is laughable: the occupation of Iraq is salt in a very deep and old wound called Palestine.
The regime in Egypt, headed by Mubarak since 1981, and buttressed by emergency laws which ban demonstrations and political parties, is facing rising domestic pressure. Al Ahram, a liberal Egyptian paper, reported: ‘As the number of street demonstrations in Egypt