Friday, February 18 may be a turning point in Egyptian history. On that day
Yusuf al-Qaradawi spoke to a giant cheering crowd in Tahrir Square.
He
praised the army – to ward off it’s repression and to encourage it to support a
transformation of the country.
He preached caution and patience, working
with the army.
And he also lavished praise on the pro-Islamist chairman
of the committee to write the new constitution, which may not be a good sign at
all.
There is one easily missed word in his speech that is the most
significant. That word is “hypocrites.” In the Islamist lexicon, hypocrites
means Muslims who do not practice “true” Islam according to the radicals. To
take Egypt out of the hands of “hypocrites” is to put it onto the hands of the
Muslim Brotherhood – or at least similarly minded people – which, contrary to
the best and the brightest policy makers, intelligence analysts, experts and
journalists, is not a moderate organization.
History may show that while
president Jimmy Carter may have “lost” Iran, one of his successors may have
helped give away Egypt. Is that alarmist? I hope so.
Watch and
see.
As so often happens, Israel will be left to pay the
bill.
Qaradawi said he looked forward to a similar ceremony in Jerusalem,
and he did not mean after a two-state negotiated solution.
IT WAS 32
years ago almost to the day when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned in triumph
to Tehran to take over the leadership of that country. Qaradawi has a tougher
job, but he’s up to the challenge if his health holds up.
Up until now,
the Egyptian revolution generally, and the Brotherhood in particular, has lacked
a charismatic thinker, someone who could really mobilize the masses. Qaradawi is
that man. Long resident in the Gulf, he is returning to his homeland in
triumph.
Through Internet, radio, his 100 books and his weekly satellite
television program, he has been an articulate voice for revolutionary Islamism.
He is literally a living legend.
Under the old regime, Qaradawi had been
banned from the country. He is now 84 – two years older than the fallen
president Hosni Mubarak – but tremendously energetic and clear-minded.
It
was Qaradawi who, in critiquing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, argued that
Islamists should always participate in elections because they would invariably
win them. Hamas and Hezbollah have shown that he was right.
Symbolically,
he gave the Friday prayer/sermon in Tahrir Square, the center of the
revolutionary movement.
The massing of hundreds of thousands in the
square to hear a sermon by a radical Islamist is not the kind of thing that’s
been going on under the 60-year-old military regime that was recently
overthrown.
The context is also the thanking of Qaradawi for his support
of the revolution – an implication that he is somehow its spiritual
father.
Though some in the West view him as a moderate, Qaradawi supports
the straight Islamist line: anti-American, anti-Western, wipe Israel off the
map, foment jihad, stone homosexuals....in short, the works.
One of his
initiatives has been urging Muslims to settle in the West, of which he said,
“that powerful West, which has come to rule the world, should not be left to the
influence of the Jews alone.”
He contends that the three major threats
Muslims face are Zionism, internal integration and globalization. To survive, he
argues, Muslims must fight the Zionists, Crusaders, idolators and
communists.
Make no mistake, Qaradawi is not some fossilized Islamic
ideologue. He is brilliant and innovative, tactically flexible and strategically
sophisticated. He is subtle enough to sell himself as a moderate to those who
don’t understand the implications of his words or able to look beneath the
surface of his presentation.
What is his view of both the Mubarak regime
and the young, Facebook-flourishing liberals who made the revolution? As he said
in 2004: “Some Arab and Muslim secularists are following the US government by
advocating the kind of reform that will disarm the nation from the elements of
strength that are holding our people together.”
There is no doubt.
Qaradawi, not bin Laden, is the most dangerous revolutionary Islamist in the
world, and he is about to unleash the full force of his persuasion on
Egypt.
Who are you going to bet on being more influential, a Google
executive and an unorganized band of well-intentioned liberal Egyptians, or the
world champion radical Islamist cleric?
The writer is director of the Global
Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of
International Affairs Journal. He blogs at www.rubinreports.blogspot.com. A
shorter version of this article was published in American Thinker.