Minor tensions or major crisis?
Recent months have seen evidence of an impending crisis in Egyptian-US relations. The Bush Administration seems determined to pursue its neo-imperialist policies in the Middle East despite Egyptian objections, writes Hassan Abu-Taleb*
It takes little to realise that Egyptian-US relations are passing through a very delicate phase and that the accumulation of individual tensions may presage a major crisis. A "crisis" in mutual relations entails a set of developments and disputes, precipitated within a relatively short time span and carrying the potential for a qualitative transformation in the nature of the relationship. It further involves certain fundamental decisions that may lead to military or political confrontation, depending on the nature of the case. In Egyptian-US relations several issues have come to distance the two countries, bringing to the fore a partial, legitimate divergence in interests, although one that could develop into a major divergence if not remedied with a high degree of wisdom.
The question of Saadeddin Ibrahim is a case in point. The Americans maintain that this AUC professor is a prisoner of conscience being penalised for his opinions on alleged infringements of the rights of Egyptian Copts, in particular, and of public liberties in general. To the Egyptian government, on the other hand, Ibrahim's case is straightforward, and involves an individual who was prosecuted for violating the law and sentenced accordingly under the laws and regulations in force in Egypt.
Although Cairo and Washington have frequently had such conflicting perspectives on various issues, in this case the Americans have taken the dispute to another level. In a flagrant bid to put pressure on Cairo, the US rejected an official Egyptian request for an additional US$150 million in aid to be given within the framework of US plans for the war against terrorism. The action represents a significant escalation in the manner in which the US reacts to Egyptian positions, with Washington's disagreement now extending beyond official statements and media campaigns to the economic domain.
This background is necessary in order to understand US attitudes towards the serial, A Knight without a Horse, currently being aired on Egyptian television. The Americans claim that this soap-opera is anti-Semitic and that it fosters anti-Jewish feeling in the region. The Egyptians have refuted these accusations and countered that no one has the right to meddle in Egyptian treatment -- dramatic, scholarly, or otherwise -- of historical events that concern Egyptians, and that such interference can only be construed as an infringement upon Egyptian rights to free expression and creativity. It is not necessary, here, to reiterate what many have pointed out as being the glaring inconsistency between America's claims to be an advocate of public freedoms and its vehement stance against such freedoms when it comes to a group of writers and artists in an Arab Muslim country.
The conflict over A Knight without a Horse has also partially overshadowed yet another, no less significant, issue that has broadened the breach between the Egyptians, people and government, and the US. US immigration has recently introduced a new visa restriction on Muslim preachers and Qur'an reciters from Al-Azhar and the Ministry of Al-Awqaf (religious endowments) entering the US. It has long been the custom for these institutions to send a number of such religious figures to the US during Ramadan in order to strengthen their bond with Muslims in the US. This year, however, the US Embassy in Cairo has decided to test the Al-Azhar and Ministry of Al-Awqaf candidates on their knowledge of the Qur'an, as one of the conditions for approving their requests for a visa.
As a result, and in protest at the American decision, the two institutions have refused to keep this tradition this year, and understandably so. Imagine an American consular official, barely capable of stringing two words of Arabic together, and ignorant of even the most fundamental precepts of Islamic jurisprudence and exegesis, testing Egypt's Qur'anic scholars. Imagine one of our venerable religious scholars having to sit before such an official and await his verdict as to whether or not the scholar is up to scratch in his memorisation of the Holy Book and in related knowledge. The picture is too absurd to contemplate!
This new American custom, impeding contact between Egypt's religious institutions and Muslims in the US during a holy month such as Ramadan, is undoubtedly also being applied to Muslim scholars and institutions from other Arab and Islamic countries, in what appears to be an attempt to rend the fabric binding Muslim peoples around the world. Taken together with reports of US plans to reorder the Arab world and alter its educational, religious and political systems, this phenomenon gives credence to the conclusion that certain influential forces in the US regard Islam in the Arab world as a threat to the values of Western civilisation. Moreover, these forces think that not only must this threat be eliminated at its source, but all links must be severed between it and what they perceive to be "moderate" Islam -- that is to say an Islam adapted to Western and American values.
Such bilateral issues also overlap with other regional issues over which Cairo and Washington are at odds. Among the issues that rankle most are Egypt's refusal to take part in US-led plans to invade Iraq and overthrow its government, its fears that the US is seeking to divide Sudan, its dismay at Washington's indulgence, if not active condoning, of Sharon's barbaric policies towards the Palestinians and at Washington's refusal to respond to Arab proposals on regional security.
Clearly, the makings of a crisis between Cairo and Washington are there, especially because the controversies at issue intersect with the generally neo-imperialist orientation of the Bush Administration, which is seeking to redraw the map of the Middle East right down to the political, educational and religious systems in Egypt. For its part, Cairo, long accustomed to dealing with the US, has always sought to contain tensions before they escalate to irredeemable proportions.
However, though a mode of interaction between the two countries has developed that has been successful in subduing tensions on an ad hoc basis, in spite of the 26 years of developing Egyptian-US relations, such cumulative experience has yet to develop into a mechanism for crisis management. True, there have been attempts towards this end that have gone under names such as "partnership", "joint councils" or "coordinating committees". However, such attempts have generally been confined to relatively limited time frames and objectives, such as coordinating the provision of aid for certain purposes or exchanges of opinion at official levels over specific contingencies. Such ad hoc mechanisms have, in turn, been instrumental in forestalling the development of an Egyptian lobby in the US.
As for the non-governmental channels of communications that have evolved over the past four years between leaders of public opinion, politicians, academics and intellectuals from the two countries, their impact on the state of bilateral relations remains unclear. At all events, such channels also lack permanence, and they have only a fraction of the influence wielded by the powerful Jewish lobby that sits at the core of the American political process. More significantly, such forms of interaction have no efficacy when it comes to containing tensions over issues of a bilateral nature, and they have even less on issues intersecting with the US's current imperialist ambitions.
Consequently, in view of the ongoing pressures exerted by the Zionist lobby on US decision-makers, and the latter's ideological disposition to exert increasing pressure on Egypt in order to force it into as narrow a corner as possible in the service of Israeli interests, one can only conclude that a major crisis in Egyptian-US bilateral relations is brewing. Enhancing this prospect are Washington's new imperialist orientation, and, in the face of this, a grassroots mood in Egypt that is determined to resist foreign pressures, whatever their source.
* The writer is an expert at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and chief editor of the Arab Strategic Report.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 28 Nov. - 4 Dec. 2002 (Issue No. 614)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/614/op13.htm