Islamist-Secularist Standoff at Core of Arab World Conflict – Report
MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) – The Syrian government’s resilience in its more than two-year fight against an increasingly Islamist insurgency was a factor that encouraged the Egyptian military to overthrow its Islamist president, a Russian pundit said while releasing a new report Wednesday.
“The secular regime of [Syrian President Bashar] Assad managed to survive, and this prompted the [Egyptian] army to act,” Veniamin Popov of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations said during a presentation of a report on Islamist versus secular forces in the Arab world.
The Egyptian coup and the Syrian civil war are just two examples of the secular-versus-Islamist standoff that is at the core of ongoing turmoil in the Arab world, said the report, authored by members of the Valdai International Discussion Club.
The report, titled “Islam in Politics: Ideology or Pragmatism?,” was based on the results of the Middle East Dialogue conference, organized by the Valdai Club in Morocco in mid-May and attended by numerous high-profile politicians from the region.
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Their contending between one another and with secular political forces, which retain broad political support despite a string of setbacks, upsets the geopolitical balance of power in the region, prompting alliances between traditional enemies and spats between old allies, Naumkin said.
He cited as an example the theocratic Saudi Arabia backing the recent secular military coup in Egypt, which ousted from power the Muslim Brotherhood – a group that subscribes to a version of Islamism different from the Saudi one. “The region’s geopolitical architecture is in total uproar,” Naumkin said.
“The pendulum will go on swinging between secular and religious forces for a long time because neither is ready to cooperate … which goes for all Arab countries,” said Popov, who also co-authored the report. “If they are unable to work out a compromise and start developing the state … the clashes will continue.”
http://en.rian.ru/world/20130821/182895630/Islamist-Secularist-Standoff-at-Core-of-Arab-World-Conflict--Report.html
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