Clearly, Sisi faces too many pressing domestic issues to try to unify the deeply divided[6] and increasingly anarchic[7] Middle East; should he long remain in power, however, this could become one of his goals and perhaps even take the form of an anti-Muslim Brotherhood alliance under his leadership.
Islamism
Which brings one to the deepest mystery about Sisi: Is he an Islamist, someone seeking to apply the Islamic law in all its severity and in its entirety?
Personally pious, he is said to have memorized the Qur’an. According to the Financial Times, “Not only does his wife don the Islamic headscarf now sported by most Egyptian women, but one of his daughters is also said to wear the niqab”[8] (a body and head cover that reveals only the eyes). He became defense minister because the Muslim Brotherhood considered him an ally. Since then, however, he has made himself the mortal enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood while allying with the yet more extreme Salafis—Islamists trying to live as Muhammad did. While Sisi’s 2006 essay does not resolve these contradictions, it does offer clues.
Several of his observations about early Islam make it clear that Sisi aligns himself with the Salafis. With them, he recalls the period of Muhammad and the Four Righteous Caliphs (612-660 A.D.) as not only “very special” and “the ideal form of government” but also “the goal for any new form of government.” With these early caliphs as models, he envisions Muslims uniting “so that the earliest form of El Kalafa [the caliphate] is reestablished.” In passing, he gratuitously denigrates the Shiites of early Islam (for attempting to offer power “to family members [of Muhammad] rather than to the most qualified leaders”).
Husni Mubarak (left) shaking hands with Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in an undated photo, which Sisi admirers see as the passing of the generational torch. |
Other comments of Sisi’s, however, criticize Islamists. When an actual caliphate recently declared itself in Syria and Iraq,[9] he responded a week later with unrestrained hostility. Shortly before he submitted his paper in 2006, Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, won a victory in the Palestinian legislative elections, prompting Sisi’s mild but critical observation that elected Islamists are likely to face “internal governance challenges down the road.” He added that “there is hope that the more moderate religious segments can mitigate extremist measures” although Sisi’s current hard line against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt suggests that he (along with millions of other Egyptians) has given up any such hope. Sisi even states that Islam as such creates political problems for rulers: “The religious nature of the Middle East creates challenges for the governing authorities.”
Anti-Mubarak
Although Sisi represented the Egyptian armed forces at the Army War College, his paper included some brave and accurate statements critical of his country’s leadership, even mentioning Mubarak by name:
· Faux democracy: “Many autocratic leaders claim to be in favor of democratic ideals and forms of government, but they are leery of relinquishing control to the voting public of their regimes.” Also: Middle Eastern governments that claim to be democratic actually “have very tight centralized control and unfairly influence election outcomes through control of the media and outright intimidation.”
· Poor economic policies: “Excessive government controls and bloated public payrolls stifle individual initiative and tend to solidify the powerbase of ruling political parties. In Egypt under President Sadat, government controls were lifted in an effort to stimulate economic growth; however, these efforts have not blossomed under President Mubarak.”