Does Secularism Have a Role in Egyptian Struggle?
May 13, 2014 5:05PM
Post by Austin Dacey
With Egypt’s presidential election a few weeks away, former Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi seems all but unstoppable. In an interview with Egyptian television this week, the career military chief sounded confident in the elimination of what is effectively the only opposing electoral force, the Muslim Brotherhood.
As he accused the Brotherhood of “arrogance in religion” for holding “that we are not true Muslims,” el-Sisi could have been mistaken for an enemy of religious politics. But the military regime he heads should not be confused with a secular regime. This point emerges clearly from the discussion of the future of Egyptian democracy taking place over at The Immanent Frame. Some experts have gone further to argue that secularism is not even a helpful category when talking about the Egyptian struggle.
Let’s examine at a smaller scale John Voll’s arguments for his conclusion that “[w]hile relations between religion and state are central” to the present struggle in Egypt, “the clash is not basically about secularism.”
Voll attends to the composition and demands of the original Tahrir movement, the Tamarod (“Rebellion”) movement to oust Morsi, and the ongoing resistance to military rule.
While there are religious dimensions in the protest repertoires of the three rounds of opposition—against authoritarian rule, against possible theocracy, and now against direct military rule—none of them is clearly definable as a clash between secular and religious forces in the public political arena. The common elements in these three movements of populist protest are opposition to an intrusive state, whether religious or secular, and demands for greater freedom in lifestyle and improved economic opportunities.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/austindacey/7873/does_secularism_have_a_role_in_egyptian_struggle/