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Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists

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This was a wonderful journey into what might be of Islam. With all the turbulent noise surrounding it, The author sheds light on its core.He uses existing examples of moderate movments within the Egyptian society which gives it a realistic, hands-on feel. A great read for anyone who wants to know what is going on when it comes to hope within the Islamic world and how this framework of the new Islamists might be the answer.
Superb refernces and quotes used throughout...

Often in contemporary political discourse about Islam and Islamist movements, one hears either that there is no such thing as moderate Islamism, or that if there are any moderates they are marginal and insignificant. Surely, the thinking seems to go, if there were any moderate Islamists we would have heard of them by now. Professor Baker's book undercuts this conventional wisdom, demonstrating that the mainstream of contemporary Islamism discourse is in fact the moderate Wassatteyya trend. However, his challenge to the prevailing wisdom on the subject is not merely an empirical one, but a conceptual one as well. On the most basic level, what are we to make of non-Western ideologues endorsing commitments we take to have a Western provenance? And more importantly, how is the term "moderate" to be used in characterizing Islamist discourse? Does being moderate mean endorsing American foreign policy in the Middle East across the board? This is the position of the various RAND Corporation studies on the subject; there are no "moderate Islamists," only scattered pockets of "moderate Muslims" whom the US government ought to fund and organize to maximize their impact. If Baker is right, however, "moderate" should have a more dynamic, more contextual significance. Qaradawi for one has not absolutely rejected suicide bombing, female circumcision, or domestic violence, arguing instead that they can be legitimate under exceptional and abnormal conditions. Within our own political debates, this would obviously count as an extreme point of view; within Islamist discourse it counts as center-right. If our aim is to find opinion leaders in the Middle East who are on the same page with us about everything already, then we might end up with a fairly restricted set of moderates on our map (although, if Baker and Bruce Rutherford are right, even in that case it would be a bigger and more mainstream set than is typically thought). If, on the other hand, our aim is to open a dialogue, leveraging what points of agreement we already have so as to work towards convergence on the rest, then Baker's classification is the right one to use. Whichever tack one ends up taking, this book remains the best point of entry to the topic.

This highly readable and highly relevant book has given me an entirely new perspective on politics in the Middle East. Anyone concerned by the results in Iraq of our current understanding of the Middle East will see in this book the road map to another way. Baker provides perhaps the most balanced, well-informed, and optimistic perspective on Islamist politics available today. Whether you consider yourself conservative, liberal, or right down the middle, this book is a must-read.

It is true that the Islamist scholars have taken over the arena in Egypt; however this is a result of the governmental media, which sees in liberals a threat to its own authority.

Liberals in Egypt are in part, those who stood on Sadat's side when he started a number of reforms in the late 70s of the last century. They do have a practical view for Egypt. They are the grandsons of those who ruled Egypt in the first half of the 20th century.

In Egypt, as in many other countries of the third world, a President comes to ruin the picture of the President before him. Nasser did that with Naguib. Sadat did that with Nasser. Mubarak won't build a new tradition of course, since he is a clerk more than a politician!

Since the start of his rule, Mubarak brought back Nasser's second line of men in. Among them was Safwat ElSherif, (Information Minister for more than 22 years thereafter), Mufeed Shehab (High Education Minister for about 10 years and one of those who Sadat detained in the 15th of May reform revolution of 1971, as he called it) and Kamal El-Shazli (Minister of the affairs of the People's Assembly for many years and the most hated man in Egypt today).

These men didn't give a chance for liberals to speak out. They draw the government's picture, as if it was the only liberal force in the country. As if the government is the only one which wants relations with Israel. As if the government is the only one which can have relations with the USA and the West.

By silencing their voices, the government guarantees that it is the only one which can have relations with the outside, be it the USA, the rest of the West, or even Israel. The government doesn't want to have a competitor in its relations towards the outside. If outsiders see it that way, then it would be an ultimate success for her.

Sadat's legacy had to be buried down, and Mubarak was to be branded the man who did everything, even the Yom Kippur war!!!!

At the time, the USA maybe knew that, but its interest went on with Mubarak and his corrupt regime. However, now things have changed, and the USA knows where the liberals are, and she knows that they are buried by the government and are ignored from speaking out and saying what hey have to say.

Islamists are a Ghost used by the government, and were given a way by it. Many of the Islamist intellectuals mentioned in the book were given way to media by the government "controlled media". They would have never been the lions of the arena unless there was government support.

Therefore, today, "Kefaya" which is a civil society movement and made up mostly of the Islamists, Nasserites and Leftists, is not that dangerous for the government, but actually very helpful. Also, the latest clashes in Alexandria between Muslims and Christians, over a play said to be "against Islam", might be instigated by the government itself, so that it sends Washington a message indicating that it fights extremist Muslims while it is so moderate! Thanks God, since Washington is not that stupid as the Egyptian government thinks!
The Egyptian government is making everything possible to survive the un-survivable. It is in panic and is taking the wrong decisions in the wrong time.

Liberals are awaiting a chance to come out. They know that about 40 million "silent majority" are supporting Liberalism.

Many in the West have been deceived, like the author here, by just observing the cream of the Cake. Many have said that people in Egypt were happy that Sadat was killed, by just observing what they see, without any added effort to see what is hidden within society.

Islamists might take over for a while till people who vote (and this will not take long) will see what these people will do. Egypt is not ready to be another Taliban. Most people in Egypt are liberals, even the poor, like Peasants, who r not ready to give up their profit, to the backward brothers.

A strange book. As a project of relating the ideas of Egyptian "New Islamists" as they would like themselves presented, the book does a very good job. But on the other hand, it is completely uncritical, and provides very little of the context for the positions described. Baker's unrelenting praise of the New Islamists gets wearying after a while, especially as most often the "New Islamist" positions are little more than warmed-over Islamic modernism, internal tensions and superficialities included. Perhaps the New Islamists are a welcome contrast to the more mindless, violent variety of Egyptian Islamist more familiar from the media. It is, however, too much of a stretch to portray these garden variety of cultural conservatives part of an intellectually sophisticated movement with liberal attitudes.

Moderation in all things, except, Allah forbid, moderation!

Oh, there are plenty of nice ideas in this book. One of them is that it's not a bad idea for a society to permit Women to have educations. My grandmother, born a Muslim, went to school, but only for one day. Now we hear one Islamic thinker, Tusuf al Qaradawy, who boasts about his four daughters. The eldest has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics. The next one has a Ph.D. in chemistry. The third is studying for a Ph.D. in engineering, while the fourth is going to study for one in genetics. His three sons are successful as well. Good for them!

I think it is a terrific idea to study the real world. Such studies often highlight the fact that truth is an inherent value. And that is likely to help people be more prosperous and happier. I think it only makes sense to allow everyone to contribute to one's society. And I think it makes sense to get along with one's neighbors, so that everyone can be better off.

Islamic reform sounds like a useful idea.

Still, there is one small thing that makes me wary of this "Islam without fear." Namely, I ask myself what would happen were everyone to act the way this book suggests in international affairs. If that were to happen, we'd all kill ourselves off in wars. Once at war, those Women in nuclear physics would build some bombs, the chemists would design new poisons, the engineers would figure out how to deliver them, and the geneticists would design some biological weapons.

If you don't believe me, just see how the New Islamists want to deal with their Israeli neighbors. There isn't the slightest thought of "live and let live." Nor is there any idea of coming up with something which gives equal rights to everyone. Nope, it's just pure greed. The attitude is simple. We're important. They aren't. We deserve more. But that always leads to strife in the long run.

If this is going to be a political deal with the extremists, it will not work. Think about it. It is not a good idea to say, "We'll help you attack the United States and Israel if you'll let our Women go to school."

Making an alliance with an extremist position has huge drawbacks. Consider the German Pagans. For centuries, they had no rights at all: they could be killed on sight. Finally, in the 1930s, they were tolerated for the first time in over a thousand years. And what happened? In 1945, Germany lost the war. And the Pagans were discredited.

As far as I am concerned, Germany in 1940 was anything but moderate. And I think the New Islamists could well fall into the same trap.

Daniel Pipes has said that Baker's books on the Abdel Nasser and Sadat eras, 1954-81, bespeak his familiarity with the Egyptian political scene; as he puts it, he has made "a voyage to an intellectual, cultural, and moral world into which I was not born but where I no longer feel a stranger." Islam without Fear clearly shows the strengths and weaknesses of this voyage. On the plus side, Baker not only knows his topic but has a feel for the Egyptian scene, both Islamist and otherwise. His survey of the "New Islamists"--a group of important Egyptians (such as Kamal Abul Magd, Muhammad Selim al-Awa, Tareq al-Bishry, Muhammad al-Ghazzaly, Fahmy Huwaidy, and Yusuf al-Qaradawy) at the vanguard of Islamist ideological development--is informed, smart, and supple. He documents their thinking, assesses their achievements and failings, and points to their significance.

On the minus side, Baker, professor of international politics at Trinity College, Hartford, has lost any sense of objectivity and instead adopted the outlook of his New Islamist subjects, for whom he serves as an English-language cheerleader. Rehashing the silly and discredited trope distinguishing between moderate and extreme Islamists, he treats the leading lights of the world's most vibrant totalitarian movement with an overt and embarrassing enthusiasm (centrist, positive, impressive, human, and humane are adjectives describing them that appear in just the book's first five pages). Worse, the study contains an element of deception, a hiding of problems, symbolized by Baker's long account of a headline-making debate in January 1992 between Qaradawy and an arch-secularist named Farag Foda but his omission that this exchange contributed directly to the assassination of Foda five months later by an Islamist terrorist.