From the Ruins of Lebanon, Islam Rises

Cairo

She grew up in Cairo with the privileges that go to the daughter of a military officer, attended a university and landed a job in marketing. He grew up in a poor village of dusty unpaved roads, where young men work long hours in a brick factory while dreaming of getting a government job that would pay $90 a month.

But Jihan Mahmood, 24, from the middle-class neighborhood of Heliopolis, and Madah Ali Muhammad, 23, from a village in the Nile Delta, have come to the exact same conclusion about what they and their country need: a strong Islamic political movement.

“I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak,” Ms. Mahmood said, referring to the president of Egypt. “That is why I am proud to be a Muslim.”

In interviews on streets and in newspaper commentaries circulated around the Middle East, the prevailing view is that where Arab nations failed to stand up to Israel and the United States, an Islamic movement succeeded.

The lesson learned by many Arabs from the war in Lebanon is that an Islamic movement, in this case Hezbollah, restored dignity and honor to a bruised and battered identity.

“The losers are going to be the Arab regimes, U.S.A. and Israel,” said Dr. Fares Braizat of the Center of Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan.

“Hezbollah is a resistance movement that has given us a solution,” said Yomana Samaha, a radio talk-show host in Cairo who identified herself as secular and a supporter of separating religion and government. But when asked if she would vote for a Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Egypt, she said “Yeah, why not?”

“The failure of pan-Arabism, the lack of democracy, and corruption- this drives people to an extent of despair where they start to find the solution in religion,” said Gamal el-Ghitani, editor of Akhbar al-Adab, a literary magazine distributed in Egypt.

Echoing that view, Diaa Rashwan, an expert in Islamic movements and analyst with the government-financed Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said, “People have come to identify themselves more as Muslims during the last five years in response to the U.S.-led ‘war on terrorism’ which Egyptians frequently feel is a discriminatory campaign targeting Muslims and Islam worldwide.”

(Extracted from And Now, Islamism Trumps Arabism

Michael Slackman

New York Times, Sunday, August 20, 2006)