Saturday 11/12/1438 AH – 2 September 2017 (last updated) 16:56 (Mecca), 13:56 (GMT)
Khamis Ben Brik – Tunis
Tunisian thinker Abu Yaarub al-Marzouqi has proposed creating an institution that would act as an intellectual parliament bringing together representatives of the various secular and Islamic currents, to establish a common space for dialogue that would ease the prevailing tensions and move beyond the particularities of each current towards shared values, “in order to serve the common good and facilitate a shared life that frees them from what resembles a permanent civil war between them”.
Saturday 11/12/1438 AH – 2 September 2017 (last updated) 16:56 (Mecca), 13:56 (GMT)
Khamis Ben Brik – Tunis
Tunisian thinker Abu Yaarub al-Marzouqi has proposed creating an institution that would act as an intellectual parliament bringing together representatives of the various secular and Islamic currents, to establish a common space for dialogue that would ease the prevailing tensions and move beyond the particularities of each current towards shared values, “in order to serve the common good and facilitate a shared life that frees them from what resembles a permanent civil war between them”.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Net, he said he had attended a series of workshops on four occasions, during which a “serious discussion” took place between a range of secular and Islamist thinkers. The aim was “to explore ways of overcoming the rift between these two currents”, although he acknowledged the difficulty of arriving at practical results because of differing points of view.
The full interview follows:
As thinkers, you recently met in workshops in Geneva, Istanbul, Amman and Doha to explore ways of establishing a space for dialogue between secularists and Islamists. What were the main points raised?
In those meetings, which brought together thinkers from the Islamic current and thinkers from the secular current, we talked mainly about how to overcome the rift between secularists and Islamists. The basic question we examined was how Islamists and secularists can become capable of dialogue without exclusion, each recognising everyone’s right to contribute responsibly to the process of change that all agree is necessary, and which requires freeing ourselves from mutual exclusion.
We looked at how to overcome the obstacles that lead secularists to reject Islamists, whereas Islamists – or at least the Islamic current that has accepted democratic participation – no longer reject secularists. As a result, the exclusionary stance today prevails mostly among secularists and nationalists, for political reasons linked to the competition for power and their near despair of reaching it democratically, given their weak presence among the popular base.
What would characterise this space for communication between the two sides?
Its defining feature should be mutual recognition among secularists, liberals, nationalists, Islamists and those who prefer not to belong to any of these currents. But the fundamental disagreement remains between the extremists of all these currents, who dominate the front of the stage.
Islamists must recognise that the Arab world includes people who are not Islamists, or even believers in Islam; and secularists must recognise the end of the monopoly that made their participation the product of dependence on corrupt authoritarian regimes rather than of popular weight, and accept that Islamists have the same right as they do to take part in political life.
As is well known, the first right of the citizen, and the mark of citizenship in every democratic state, is participation in public affairs and a role in the choices made, so that each person bears responsibility for what happens in their country in proportion to their part in its intellectual and material production.
How can this space be achieved in practice?
Elites do not have the capacity to create a physical space for dialogue. That is why I imagined that the Arab League, although it has lost its role, could provide this space through the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO), so that it becomes a kind of intellectual parliament for the secular and Islamist elites. This parliament might meet, for example, twice a year, with each session lasting one month.
I believe ALECSO could oversee its organisation and funding, so as to avoid the obstacles to attendance imposed by some Arab states (visas and checks that exclude many people under the new trend of governments labelling people without any justification). It would then become a regular gathering of elected representatives of the five great families, bringing together thinkers who speak for the Islamic current, the secular current, the nationalist current and the liberal current, as well as independents.
And what would this “intellectual parliament” change?
It would undoubtedly change the culture of the Arab elites, become a focus of media attention and a source of culture for Arab thinkers and political elites, and enrich the culture of dialogue on contentious issues that can only be resolved through dialogue. This would ease polarisation and tensions.
Were the workshops limited to discussions between secularists and Islamists, or did they have other dimensions?
No, the dialogue was not limited to Islamists and secularists. There were also workshops in Amman on dialogue among Islamists themselves – a meeting between democratic Islamists and Islamists who are sceptical of the democracy that, in their view, the West wants to impose, on the grounds that it interferes with the particularities of Arab-Islamic civilisation by changing its education and its laws.
How I wish there had been an internal dialogue among secularists themselves as well. But there was none, and this is an obstacle to political progress, which cannot be achieved without dialogue among secularists, because, like the Islamists, they are not all of one colour. Just as Islamists have begun to understand one another, we can imagine the same among secularists and nationalists, so that they emerge from the ideological fanaticism that harms everyone.
How can practical results be achieved when there are sharp differences between secularists and Islamists?
Of course, during the workshops there were difficulties that were almost impossible to resolve, owing to the divergent views of the two camps. I say that if the secular elites who believe in democracy and the Islamist elites who believe in democracy cannot agree that an alliance between them is the way to put an end to despotism and corruption, and if either of them allies itself with the existing authoritarian regimes, then nothing will change and we will remain mired in endless conflicts.
So you achieved no results from these discussions, did you?
On the contrary. The first result is that Islamists and secularists met and listened to each other. This was neither the first nor the last meeting, as we agreed to meet again in later workshops to continue the dialogue and arrive at a set of principles. Some principles were indeed agreed after the meeting we held two weeks ago in Istanbul, to address social and political issues.
What do you make of secularists’ claims that Islamists use peaceful means only once, to come to power, and then turn on their opponents?
We must understand that the secularists’ claims are untrue. They are neither secular nor liberal, as they claim, for if they were, they would not ally themselves with authoritarian regimes. When you ask one of them how he can be secular and ally himself with a despotic regime, he answers that they fear an obscurantist, medieval and terrorist religious power. Yet those whom they call obscurantists, medievalists and so on fight the democratic Islamists, on the ground, more than they fight the secularists.
And how would you classify yourself?
I belong neither to the Islamists nor to the secularists, because the secularists consider me an Islamist and the Islamists consider me a secularist. So I represent something of a bridge between the two camps. I try to understand both sides and to find ways for them to understand each other. I also try to show the secularists that the Islamists who call for democracy are not the same as the Islamists who reject it – for the secularists reject the Islamists who call themselves jihadists, and those do not want to form parties or take part in ordinary, peaceful political activity.
But why are secularists hostile to the Islamists who take part in the democratic game?
Those who claim to be secular have noticed that the people turn to the Islamists in elections, who win by large margins, leaving them with almost no chance of coming to power. That is why we see them allying themselves with military authoritarian regimes that hold force, such as Sisi’s rule in Egypt, and with tribal authoritarian regimes that hold money, such as the Emirates, in order to come to power.
But of course they wrap their behaviour in ideological motives, accusing all Islamists of being obscurantists who use democracy to come to power and then use religion to prevent others from doing so. In reality, those who claim to be secular instrumentalise religion in politics more than the Islamists do. In Tunisia at least, we observe that when the Islamists came to power, they wanted to change the behaviour that led to their being accused of instrumentalising religion, while the secularists, when they govern, want to prove that they are not enemies of religion. The reason is that governing usually tempers the rhetorical extremism one indulges in when in opposition.
Didn’t the Islamists make mistakes when they came to power?
Yes. The Islamists acknowledge that they made unreasonable mistakes when they came to power. They acted as though their country had centuries of democratic tradition behind it, imagined that elections alone were enough to confer legitimacy, and wanted to take control of everything. But in reality they controlled nothing. I took part with them in the former Troika government led by the Ennahdha movement, and I knew that the government had no authority over what was happening in the country.
Some things follow the traditional rhythm of the Tunisian administration. And a very dangerous phenomenon has occurred: the small mafias used to be ruled by the great mafia of Ben Ali’s regime; when the great mafia went, the mafias multiplied, and there has been a struggle among them ever since. What is called the war on corruption is in fact a struggle between mafias, not a war on corruption.
What made the Arab Spring revolutions fail in more than one country?
The counter-revolution understood the game. Military regimes and tribal regimes joined forces and financed chaos in the societies where revolutions had taken place, to prevent them from succeeding, and they are trying to spread chaos in the societies where the revolution has stumbled – such as Syria, Libya and Yemen – to bring back fear and preserve the former state of affairs, on the pretext of avoiding what happened in those countries.
Those regimes feared the ideas of the revolution, which demanded freedom and dignity. So they planned to present a distorted model of the Arab revolutions as having ended in destruction and ruin, as happened in Syria and Iraq, so that every people would want security and peace at the expense of freedom.
Can Tunisia be considered a shining candle compared with the other Arab revolutions?
We must not imagine that the Tunisian experience is a candle, because any wind can blow it out. Tunisia is still caught in the grip of polarisation between secularists and Islamists. There are, for example, parties funded by the Emirates that call for the exclusion of the Ennahdha movement, and this could drag the country back into conflict.
And how do you view the consensus policy that brought secularists and Islamists together in one government?
Saying that there is a political consensus is a lie peddled to preserve the structure of the state in the interest of certain powerful lobbies. The problem in Tunisia is that there are no political elites governing; the real rulers are two other elites: the UGTT labour union and the UTICA employers’ union.
The labour union and the employers’ union want political cover, but real power is in their hands, because they need a state to survive that lends legitimacy to their practices as pure political cover – just as Iran and Russia need Bashar’s state, because it gives them a legal pretext for their intervention, claiming that the legitimate state invited them to intervene.
The labour union and the employers’ union play the same game. But the truth is that they are the real rulers, like Iran and Russia in Syria. It is not Bashar who rules in Syria, and it is not the Ennahdha–Nidaa consensus that currently rules in Tunisia: they are political cover, in the name of a consensus that has no political effect beyond this role.
Source:
أبو يعرب المرزوقي يدعو لتجاوز القطيعة بين الإسلاميين والعلمانيين (external website, opens in a new tab) · Al Jazeera
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