Egypt, Democracy, Islam, Revolt

Bismillahi Rahmani Rahim

Salaam Alaikum wa Rahmatullah

A religious Muslim, when presented with world events, runs everything through the Muslim filter. This filter often, mostly, okay, pretty much always runs counter to the popular notion of what is good, or is in accord with it somewhat but not completely. This is the case as well with the situation in Egypt.

I’ve been sick and busy recently, but I’m also reluctant to comment on the uprising in Egypt, even though most who know me know I’m not exactly shy when it comes to discussing current events. So much has been happening so fast and it takes time to look at the situation in all its complicated parts, to tease apart the threads of revolt, Islam, democracy, Christianity, torture, secularism, politics, all the buzzwords and undercurrents. But as a Muslim, I have to do this in order to sort out the right from the wrong and to consider for myself whether this revolution is blessed or cursed.

For myself, I come down on the side of those who say it IS permissible to rally in the streets, to seek the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, and to struggle against the status quo in Egypt, even though this struggle is not per se a religious issue. There are a lot of questions. Are we allowed to fight against our leaders? Are we allowed to cooperate with Christian Copts and with those who have no religion at all, with those who, if they were in power, would have contempt for Islam and seek to marginalize it even more than it already is in Egypt? I look at it this way. People in Egypt are fighting for their very survival. Sometimes, in order to survive, you have to band together with people that you don’t have a lot in in common with.

Imagine that you are a religious Muslim in Egypt. One day, you get snatched from the street by the secret police and tossed into prison, where you are repeatedly tortured. The police have made no secret of the fact that they want information from you, and once they get what they want, your life is over. It turns out that your cellmate is an activist who happens to be an atheist, and he was tossed in prison for speaking out against oppression and corruption. You two decide to band together to try to escape. You have nothing in common on a religious level; you are a religious Muslim and he does not believe in God. Yet you find that only by cooperating can you escape your cell and have a chance at survival. So, what do you do? Do you sit and make du’a and pray for Allah to bring about your release, or wait patiently for your martyrdom, or do you plot with your cellmate, grab the guard when he brings dinner, toss him in the cell, grab his keys, and escape? Me, I’d firmly be on the side of escape, even though technically you are going against the ruler who is the de facto head of the secret police who kidnapped you in the first place.

I see the situation in Egypt being analogous to this, writ large. Complicating the issue further is whether or not Mubarak can be considered a Muslim ruler at all, since he rules his country not according to the Sharia’ah but rather by a mishmash of Western law and some Islamic personal law. Those who would consider him a disbeliever due to the fact that he does not rule according to Islam sidestep the whole “rebelling against the Muslim ruler” completely, and perhaps they are more correct in that belief. I will refrain from calling anyone, even Mubarak, a kaafir, because I’m not a scholar to give such a fatwa and I dislike to use the word at all. Allah knows best, and I have my opinion, but I’ll keep it to myself because I think it is not essential to the argument.

So here we are. We have Muslims and “secularists” standing alongside Christians. We have Christians protecting Muslims during Friday prayer and Muslims protecting Christians during Sunday Mass. I watch all this and I feel my heart swell with pride that these human beings have come together to be human, to fight against injustice. I won’t open their hearts and see if they are doing it in order to be able to worship without fear, or to have the freedom to live in a democracy so they can fornicate and use interest and make sure everyone can have porn channels on their satellite dishes. I know there are those whose goals are only for the dunya, only so they can be “free” to sin in this world, and that they have no awareness of how short this life is and what awaits them in the next. That is between each person and Allah. I will allow myself to be amazed at them all standing together for a common goal; I will allow myself to laugh at the heartfelt funny sign held by a young man telling Mubarak to leave so he can get married; I will allow myself to cry at the sight of a protester cupping the face of a terrified soldier in his hands while he tries to comfort him; I will allow myself to believe that less oppression is better than more oppression and even though the people of Egypt are mixed and their reasons are mixed and their goals are mixed, their struggle is a worthy one: the desire to live without fear, to be able to marry and work a halfway decent job, to not have to worry about appearing “too” religious, to not have to bribe everyone from the totally useless guy who “helped” find a parking spot, to the satellite company to the business licensing department to every other Tom Dick and Harry in the huge bureaucracy that damn near paralyzes the country. If the country is more free and less corrupt, that is a good thing for Muslims and Islam. Those who want to use their freedom for evil, well, they’re probably doing that even now under oppression so what can you do?

A rising tide lifts all boats, so let’s pray that the tide of revolution comes flooding in to wash out the evil of Mubarak’s regime and allows Islam to become even stronger in the country and in the world, so that when the time is right and Allah allows us a Khalifah again, more Muslims will be ready for it. And a true Khalifah will be a good thing for the entire world. Yeah, I know you non-Muslims don’t agree with that, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together.

And Allah knows best.