Continuing from last week, this time we will wrap up the incredible story of a lady with almost superhuman traits, a lady who has some rather controversial ties to an organization banned in many countries, yet that never really stopped her from becoming ever more influential in the West. With a Nobel Peace Prize and a chair at Facebook’s Oversight Board, Tawakkul Karmān is stronger than ever.
While last week we focused more on her life and those who helped her rapid career, this week our focus will shift more to the details way beyond her. Because she is far from being alone with such incredible stories. She is much part of a phenomenon. That is just a slice of the story how the West utilizes a clandestine organization, but at the same time, that very Muslim Brotherhood penetrated Western politics.
A role model Muslim women rights activists.
As we saw last week Tawakkul Karmān made her career as the “The Mother of the Yemeni Revolution”, fervent supporter of the so-called “Arab Spring” and the Brotherhood government of late president Mursī. Yet these are not the best credentials. Especially looking back now, thought these mattered were all heavily addressed and criticized in the Middle East at the time, all of these notions are rather negative examples of the deeds of the Brotherhood.
Since the downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in the summer of 2013, not only their political groups was demolished and imprisoned under President as-Sīsī, but even Mursī himself died in prison in June 2019. Not only him but also his son and most promising heir, ‘Abd Allah Muḥammad also passed away less than a year later. And though many in the West and even the acolytes of the Brotherhood in the Middle East have praised Mursī as being a democratically elected leader of Egypt, the Brotherhood has not only a bad reputation in the West, but it is also outlawed in several Arabic countries, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Syria, Iraq, and Algeria, which are not necessarily on the same political and ideological stance in most matters. And while some bans, like in Syria, or Algeria that came way before the “Arab Spring”, in many countries, like Saudi Arabia, or the Emirates that came after Mursī. Showing that even very conservative Arab countries reviewed their stance on this group, at least politically and officially, the West never really did that. Has it been otherwise, such a shift of mentality surely would have affected Karmān’s status.
The same can be said about being a promoter of the “Arab Spring”, which might have been fashionable at the time, but in the West, that theme gradually became forgotten, and the Arab world in large came a very negative judgment of it all. Which emanates from the results. By now most of the Arab political thinking, except some example, like Tunisia, where the results were not that devastating, shifted to view the whole phenomenon was a Muslim Brotherhood push for power and ideological supremacy, with Gulf sponsorship and Western support, which brought nothing but destruction and chaos. And it should be noted that even in cases, like Tunisia, where the change has a more positive view, the Brotherhood’s gain of influence is heavily debated. Even in these cases, it is viewed that the attempt was clear, but for the sake of change it worth it.
Yet the clearest example of the contradiction between the image and reality, not only in regard to Karmān but to most of the promoters of the “Arab Spring”, is the case of Yemen. Karmān herself is a Yemeni, and as we saw coming from a very prestigious and influential family. Her actions greatly contributed to the downfall of a political system, which not long before her father greatly helped to establish, and of which Tawakkul herself was in large part a beneficiary. It could be argued that her morals and bravery show exactly here, as seeing the negative impact and injustice of this system she fought against it, even regardless her connections to it, but the results give a somewhat different picture. The transition envisioned by her and others, not only never took place, but first changed to the contrary with the rise of the al-Ḥūtī Movement, and then brought unseen destruction with the subsequent Saudi-Emirati war imposed on Yemen, which still goes on. And it not only brought immense suffering to the Yemeni people but practically dismantled the state. In late April the Emirati supported Southern Transitional Council practically overthrew the official Yemeni government lead by Hādī, thus reviving the southern Yemeni state incorporated to Yemen in 1990. And with Riyadh removing support from Hādī the partition of the Yemeni state has become a practical reality, though still not putting an end to the fighting. Thus retrospectively proving that harsh and authoritarian methods of late President ‘Alī ‘Abd Allah Ṣāliḥ bad as they were, they were still the only viable path of Yemeni unity. The “Arab Spring” and its promoters, whatever were their true intentions, practically destroyed Yemen, which as one unified state never existed in our age before, or after ‘Alī ‘Abd Allah Ṣāliḥ. That alone should provoke some rethinking of the campaigns and the career of such figures as Tawakkul Karmān.
None of these, however, hindered Karmān’s career. She left Yemen in 2012, and never really bothered to check on the progress, thought later heavily criticized the al-Ḥūtīs and promoted Hādī. But after the Nobel Prize and the newly acquired Turkish citizenship, her interests shifted to a broader social role. Many of her defenders suggested that Karmān was never a true politician, more like an activist, and while she fought valiantly for her values, it is not her fault that at the end these ideals could never truly manifest, nor in Yemen, or in other parts of the Arab world. The complex realities and regional competitions hindered the pro-democracy changes she fought for. And truly some merit could be given to these suggestions. Much less to her more active social role, as she became a more active figure in the West than in the Muslim world. She came to symbolize Muslim feminism, or the active social and even political role of a mindful Muslim woman. And this idea is cherished in the West.
However, one is not real familiar with the Middle East, only in the level of popular imagination and mass generalization, the contradiction seems to be quite obvious. The very elites in the West, who despise the feminine roles given in the Muslim world, as they imagine it, and constantly talk about “liberation” of the Muslim women, came to choose a lady from the Brotherhood. And this promotion campaign many times recurred how brave she was when in the first major protest in Yemen she dared not to appear in niqāb – a cloth covering the face on women leaving only the eyes open -, but in the more “progressive” – as many suggested – hijab, or ‘abāya – Muslim shawl for women covering the head and the hair, but leaving the face open.
Not knowing much about the Middle East and Yemen specifically, only building on the popular imagination that indeed could be interpreted as a sign of openness and wish from “female liberation”, as possibly the Yemeni society is not ready for more. She made the first brave step, but the whole cultural mindset and centuries of traditions can not be changed singlehandedly. Much rather she should be praised that she took the first step to bring Muslim women closer to the standards of the Western feminine role praised by modern Western feminism. And we can see many examples, like her very sister, Ṣafā’, who also became a social phenomenon in the West on her own right, who in the West in many cases took of the shawl and appeared, like Western women. Though even these cases, as we saw last week that attitude tends to change, depending on the occasion and the audience.
Tawakkul Karmān, however, never took off her shawl even in the West. Quite the contrary, she promoted it. For which she was challenged and called out for, but that criticism never bothered her. About this in a famous quote of her’s she said the following:
“Many in early times was almost naked, and as his intellect evolved he started wearing clothes. What I am today and what I’m wearing represents the highest level of thought and civilization that man has achieved, and it is not regressive. It’s the removal of the clothes again that is a regression back to ancient times.”
And here it should be pointed out that many questioned her adamancy to the hijab, as “it was not proportionate with her intellect”. First of all, it should be pointed out from last week that Tawakkul Karmān was never well-studied intellect. She had rather limited education and grew up in a Brotherhood family, while these traits of her intellect were attributed to her after her political role and the Nobel Prize. And the disparity shows well in the quite above. Aside from the very childish reasoning and deduction, what is clear is how much she despises elements and attributes of the feminine lifestyle so much promoted in the West, where the veiling of women is viewed as repressive and a sign of masculine dictatorship. Many still chose to defend her, as she is only defending her cultural heritage, and her whole character is still progressive in her world. But is it?
That view can only be held by the mass generalization that lives in the West. Not even in Yemen, which counts to be a very traditional society, all women wear hijab, and while that is the standard, those who wear niqāb, unlike in Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia, that is a minority. Which makes it very curious how in most pictures about Karmān’s Yemeni protests most women around her all wear niqāb, yet in other pictures of protests at the same time, far not all women dressed like this. All over the Middle East socialist-republican governments made huge progress on women’s emancipation from education to civil rights. One sees that examples from Turkey before 2000, but to a great degree even now, the Egyptian cinema and theater from the ‘60s, Iran before the revolution in ‘79, or Syrian and Lebanon, it is clear to see that the stereotypic view on Muslim women is in large false, only true in a large degree to the Gulf. And even in countries, like Iran, where such mandatory clothing measures were introduced, a slow and gradual shift can be witnessed, and these measures are constantly challenged. While this mandatory veiling of women in many countries, like Syria, or Tunisia is unimaginable, thought women’s equality can be still addressed. Not just politically impossible, but even socially.
It was much more the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and other conservative movements, which promoted such change, and gained a substantial foothold in the last three-four decades. One compares pictures from Egypt in the ‘60s to the 2000s can clearly see which way society changed. Undoubtedly a sentiment of resistance of Western cultural penetration had a role in that, but just as much the work of the Brotherhood. And one wants to see the results don’t have to search far from Karmān associates. Very few places are so clear evidence of this trend and the contradictions with it as Turkey, where in the 2000s urban life greatly resembled the West. That is one of the reasons why Turkish soap operas were so successful, as they were far from being alien to European audiences. That, however, greatly changed with the rise of the AKP government, which took small, but constant changes to remove the restrictions of Atatürk era and allow a more traditional, conservative lifestyle. While in 2000 even hijab was forbidden in schools and public facilities, now it is fashionable and promoted. And few have done so much for this trend as the AKP intellectuals, the local branch of the Brotherhood. People, like Erdoğan’s daughters, Esra and Sümeyye, the best friends and promoters of Tawakkul Karmān, as we saw.
One sees the lectures of Sümeyye, like one in 2016 in Chicago, it is clear to see that this current heavily promote a vision that is seen regressive in the West. She heavily promotes the hijab and the moral supremacy of her values over others and specifically targets this not only to the Turkish but even to Western societies. But even more puzzling to see that she, like many others, uses cliches about Muslim women that are less mirroring the realities, but much more stereotypes in the West, yet she promotes them. That social agenda under the pretext of “religious freedom” was heavily promoted all around the Arab world with Turkey serving as a role model, right from the 2000s, and the “Arab Spring” was just a chapter in that. What really shows that this social agenda has a very heavy political content shows in the fact that in all “Arab Spring” stricken countries the new ruling Brotherhood parties all resembled the name of the AKP, aka Justice and Development Party, like in Egypt, Morocco, Libya, etc.
Having seen Karmān’s work, and even more those of her promoters, it is clear to see that she never changed course, or left the original political quest, only joined a more fashionable from, social activism. And it is still very puzzling, with all detail kept in mind, how come that she is still heavily promoted in the West, as it is evident by elevating her to the oversight board of Facebook. By which she will become one of censors of the most influential social media outlet today, having an immense influence on our public discourse.
A unique case?
Of course, one example can easily brushed aside, as though Tawakkul Karmān’s career and values might have their peculiarities that are a unique case not representing a trend. She was chosen to be a bridge in the cultural exchange between the progressive West and the Muslim world, and hard as it might be, she still represents in large Muslim women. So she might be odd, but at least the Muslim world was approached. But is she really that unique example?
In fact, the faces of the “progressive Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern woman” were introduced to the Western world in many forms.
One of these in Amal ‘Alam ad-Dīn, much better known by her married name, Amal Clooney, the wife of George Clooney. This lady was born in Beirut in 1978 to a Druze father and a Sunni mother, and to a very influential intellectual family. As the family moved to London, Amal was educated in the most prestigious elite schools and started her public life as a political journalist at the London based “pan-Arabic” newspaper al-Hayat (al-Ḥayā – Life), owned by the Saudi royal family. She became a lawyer in New York, but by 2004, at the age of 26, she was already in The Hague international tribunal. Her career rapidly rose to skies many times representing the U.N. or the British state – having British citizenship as well – and started to take only globally significant cases. This progress in fact was so swift that by 2013 she became an advisor of U.N. Syrian special envoy Kofi Annan, who did little to ease the tension in Syria, but highly contributed to escalation and the war on Syria. Amal Clooney during the “Arab Spring” took many notable cases, like defending al-Jazeera journalists, usually on the side of the current, and in any case, it is puzzling how rapidly her career progressed, while she is still only 42 years old. She represented many Muslim women, like Iraqi Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nādya Murād, or promoted Pakistani Nobel Peace laureate Malāla Yūsafzayī, all giving a very shocking and brutal image of the Muslim world. Amal’s status thought already skyrocketing was further solidified by her marriage to George Clooney, thus becoming a member of the Hollywood elite. She gives a modern image of the Muslim woman, who never wears traditional clothes, rarely it is mentioned that she is an Arab, or Muslim, and upholds the most progressive meaning of Western feminism. Though her connections to the Brotherhood was always as strong as to the British political and American social elites. And what a surprise, in 2019, at the age of only 41, she became the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s special envoy for not other tasks, but for media freedom. Is Karmān that unique?
And such is the example of Somali born Dutch-American feminist activist Āyān Hirṣī ‘Alī, who made also made a very rapid and remarkable career as a feminist and an atheist critic of Islam. Her reputation comes from her harsh childhood suffering genital mutation and arranged marriage. She was even a member of the Brotherhood at an early age, but upon visiting Germany she escaped from an arranged marriage and asked for political asylum in Holland, which she got. Since then she renounced her faith, even religion at all, and became harsh, though much promoted critique of the Muslim world. Since her escape she had the best education the West has to offer, though her views stayed very simplistic, and her credentials are based on her early childhood experiences.
It is strange how all these faces represent Muslim women in the West. They all seem to be very different, but they all had very substantial experiences with the Brotherhood. Murād and Malāla more on the suffering side, but they all give a rather distorted image of the Middle East to the West. And they are all highly promoted in the West. That is the club where Tawakkul Karmān found her place, many ways being very similar to Amal Clooney, or Hirṣī ‘Alī.
A champion of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Indeed if there is something extremely difficult to explain to any outside audience that is the perplexing nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. A movement, which is labeled even by some famously conservative and radical Muslim states like Saudi Arabia as a terrorist organization, yet, on the other hand, many times pictured even by some top Western analysts as a moderate, liberal religious movement, sometimes even suggested as a democratic alternative to authoritarian governments. This latter happened a number of times with Egypt before 2011 when it was very difficult for the Egyptian government and elite to rationalize Cairo’s heavy-fisted policies against the movement. And indeed many Western scholars rightly pointed out that the Brotherhood has many times renounced violence, declared democracy, and political inclusion as their core values. For just one example of the many, in a 2007 publication of SOAS, Hugh Roberts write the followings[1]:
“The Muslim Brothers today are not radical. They long ago distanced themselves from the radicalism of Sayyid Qutb’s critique of the Free Officers’ regime and explicitly rejected the thesis of the takfiri fringe groups which condemned the Egyptian state as un-Islamic and infidel; … The Muslim Brothers are not fundamentalists… Far from fundamentalist and backward-looking, it is in fact properly described as Islamic-modernist.”
To some limit history even proved them, as this very movement gave Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Muḥammad Mursī after decades of practical military regime. A system, which soon overthrew this president and reinstated itself with a new, even younger leader, current president ‘Abd al-Fattāḥ as-Sīsī. Thus the Brotherhood managed to portray itself as the victim of Egyptian politics and a champion of rights and democracy, from where it made impressive inroads to the Western political discourse. So much so that this image managed to form much of the ideas the West attributes to so-called Muslim reform movements.
The three most difficult features of the Brotherhood somewhat even justify these premises. First of these that the Brotherhood by now even in its most direct form, so not counting its fundamentalist predecessors it is based on, has a century-long history with a number of leaders and turns in their cause. So just because at one point, we can find contradictions that not necessarily describe the whole phenomenon. A fact many times used by Brotherhood activists as an excuse to discredit criticism.
The second thing is that the Brotherhood is more of an ideology, a social view manifesting in many fields of life from politics to religion. It not at all one tightly interfused institution, but much rather a behavioral system, which does indeed manifest in political, or social groups, but not necessarily, and even these organizations don’t necessarily form up closed block. In this sense, they are comparable to the Western “human rights groups”, like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House and those alike. These do share an underlying ideology, might even promote and help one another, but they are acting independently, and might even condemn certain actions of other groups, especially if they face scrutiny. Therefore it is very difficult to describe the mentality as a whole, beyond the individual groups, while focusing on the specific organizations come limitations to any, even the most meticulous studies.
Thirdly, the core mentality of the Brotherhood applies old Islamic concepts of taqiyya and kitmān, which allow the denial of religious beliefs partially or completely in given circumstances. These are being under unjust persecution, the threat of death, or the annihilation of the whole community, but also to assimilate into a community or society very sharply different laws and belief systems, which would prevent the open practice of the religious life. Under these practices, or “disguises” the individual, or the community can conceal the true nature of the beliefs, and keep themselves as true believers, as long as they are loyal in hearth and consciousness. These concepts are generally associated with the Shia branch of Islam, where they are regulated and upheld, but in fact, were practiced by some of the Companions of Prophet Muḥammad, therefore accepted and used by certain Sunni groups as well. However, since in general these are renounced by ordinary Muslims – both Sunnis and Shiīs – and much less regulated at the Sunna, it is actually very difficult to know, whether a community or movement truly renounce certain ideas, or just conceal their true nature. The practice of taqiyya and kitmān is very common – thought denied – at the followers of the Brotherhood mentality, which not only allow them to publicly renounced certain actions or statements, while in fact acknowledging them, but also allow the use of concepts completely alien, or absolutely repulsive to the main current. Especially in alien, or perceivably hostile environment, like the West is for many Islamist radicals, the use of concepts like pluralistic democracy, minority inclusion, total equality between different beliefs and sexes, or between majority and minority can be used for political aims, even if the followers of the ideology renounce them.
The result of these features is a network where the main current creates dozens of affiliate networks, and a large number of activists loosely tied – or not tied at all – to these organizations, where a member if scrutinized can be rendered outsider, or if a group faces a scandal it can be renounced. That is why we can see many arguments claiming for example that while the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood in the ‘80s was violent and terroristic, the Egyptian branch in the ‘90s was very different, peaceful, and democratic. And while it is true that some radical elements, like those who killed President as-Sādāt 1981 were violent, they by no means describe the whole Brotherhood, as these were only offshoots, and many peaceful ideological movements had terrifying offshoots.
It is true that the Brotherhood is much rather an ideology, a lifestyle than a close community, which can be understood by experience much easier than with description. Only with these features kept in mind can one understand the complexity of the phenomenon, which manifests in Tawakkul Karmān. How can a woman believing in the supremacy of Islamic ideology, even in its more rigorous form can become a symbol of women’s rights in the West, where Islam is held to be repressive towards women? How can a person be a fighter of democracy and inclusion and still be a chief supporter of the current Turkish political class, or a champion of the so-called Arab Spring, which gave rise to the most extreme elements of the Islamic world from Syria to Libya, all to way to her native Yemen? Yemen, which practically became destroyed by the Arab Spring. And while she happily supports the current Turkish political elite facing harsh accusations for its behavior with the press, she takes a seat at the Oversight Board of Facebook.
That duplicity or ambivalence is the very essence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s nature striving for power and propagation of its ideas, but backpedaling at any convenient occasion. In a way one could even be happy that the Western audience finally gets a glimpse of their ambivalent nature, thus better understanding the complexity of Middle Eastern political and ideological conflicts. But it is very doubtful that leaders like those of Facebook, or Hillary Clinton – more like her advisors – would not see the contradictions around Karmān. Which raises even bigger questions about the morality and the intentions of those, who associate themselves with such characters.
[1] Roberts, Hugh: Islamism and Political Reform in British-Egyptian Relations, In: British-Egyptian Relations from Suez to Present Day, London Middle East Institute in London, 2007 London, p. 95
SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies is possible the biggest research center on the Middle East in the West. SOAS produces the core of the Western Middle East mainstream experts.