Mohamed ElBaradei hits out at west's support for repressive regimes

Exclusive: Ex-nuclear chief says west must rethink Middle East policy as speculation grows he may run for office in Egypt


-Taken from the Guardian
-Cairo - March 2010

-Read the full interview transcript here

Western governments risk creating a new generation of Islamist extremists if they continue to support repressive regimes in the Middle East, the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, has told the Guardian.

In his first English-language interview since returning to Cairo in February, the Nobel peace prize-winner said the strategy of supporting authoritarian rulers in an effort to combat the threat of Islamic extremism had been a failure, with potentially disastrous consequences.

"There is a need for re-evaluation … the idea that the only alternative to authoritarian regimes is [Osama] Bin Laden and co is a fake one, yet continuation of current policies will make that prophecy come true," he said. "I see increasing radicalisation in this area of the world, and I understand the reason. People feel repressed by their own governments, they feel unfairly treated by the outside world, they wake up in the morning and who do they see – they see people being shot and killed, all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur."

ElBaradei said he felt vindicated in his cautious approach while head of the International Atomic Energy Authority. He revealed that all his reports in the runup to the Iraq war were designed to be "immune from being abused" by governments. "I would hope that the lessons of Iraq, both in London and in the US, have started to sink in," he said.

"Sure, there are dictators, but are you ready every time you want to get rid of a dictator to sacrifice a million innocent civilians? All the indications coming out of [the Chilcot inquiry] are that Iraq was not really about weapons of mass destruction but rather about regime change, and I keep asking the same question – where do you find this regime change in international law? And if it is a violation of international law, who is accountable for that?"

ElBaradei, who has emerged as a potential challenger to the three-decade rule of Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, said western governments must withdraw the unstinting support for autocrats who were seen to be a bulwark against extremism.

"Western policy towards this part of the world has been a total failure, in my view. It has not been based on dialogue, understanding, supporting civil society and empowering people, but rather it's been based on supporting authoritarian systems as long as the oil keeps pumping."

The 67-year-old added: "If you bet on individuals, instead of the people, you are going to fail. And western policy so far has been to bet on individuals, individuals who are not supported by their people and who are being discredited every day."

The popularity in the Middle East of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, he said, should be seen as message to the west that its "policy is not reaching out to the people. The policy should be: 'We care about you, we care about your welfare, we care about your human rights.'"

On his return to Egypt, ElBaradei was greeted at Cairo airport by more than 1,000 supporters, despite a ban on political gatherings. He has not yet announced whether he will stand in next year's elections against Mubarak, a key US ally who has ruled the Arab world's largest country for 28 years.

ElBaradei said western governments needed to open their eyes to the realities of Egypt's "sham" democracy, or risk losing all credibility in the battle against extremism.

"The west talks a lot about elections in Iran, for example, but at least there were elections – yet where are the elections in the Arab world? If the west doesn't talk about that, then how can it have any credibility?

"Only if you empower the liberals, if you empower the moderate socialists, if you empower all factions of society, only then will extremists be marginalised."

George Bush made the spread of democracy in the Middle East the centrepiece of US foreign policy, but the Iraq invasion largely discredited the initiative in the region. In a landmark speech in Cairo last June Barack Obama appeared to back away from his predecessor's aspirations.

"America does not presume to know what is best for everyone," Obama said. "No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other."

The speech was largely welcomed in the Arab world at the time as a retreat from the neoconservative agenda, but some democracy activists voiced concern that it heralded the US backing away from the cause of human rights in the region.

Current Egyptian law effectively prohibits independent candidates from getting their name on the ballot paper, which has fuelled ElBaradei's demands for a "constitutional revolution" to make the poll free and fair. Analysts believe Mubarak, who is 81 and currently recovering from a gall bladder operation, is planning to engineer a succession of power to his youngest son, Gamal.

ElBaradei said he was not afraid of intimidation by Egypt's vast security apparatus, but revealed that several foreign governments had expressed concern about his safety in the country, following recent reports of his followers being arrested and tortured by police.

Speaking at his home, he said: "I hear that from so many different governments, people coming to me and saying 'you should be careful'. But I don't want to go around with bodyguards … people who are extremely poor and deprived are coalescing around me in the streets saying 'we need change', and I want to listen."

ElBaradei: Unlikely champion for democracy in the Arab World

'My hope is to be a precursor for change … I'm not necessarily presenting myself as a presidential candidate'


-Taken from the Guardian
-Cairo - March 2010

-Read the full interview transcript here

A drive along the 26th July flyover, which sweeps westwards from the Nile out towards the Giza pyramids, offers a unique window on to the state of modern Egypt. With the fumes and chaos of central Cairo fading behind you, the landscape quickly becomes dotted with thousands of identikit redbrick buildings, most of them unfinished but inhabited, with half-built floors and steel rods sprouting precariously from the rooftops.

Constructed haphazardly on formerly agricultural land, these tightly-clustered conurbations are the hallmark of the ashwa’iyat, the ever-expanding informal neighbourhoods that ten million Cairo residents call home.

As the 4,500 year old pyramids loom into view though, the surroundings change again. Now the slums give way to a series of high fences manned by private security patrols; above them vast advertising billboards depict the latest lifestyle accessories for the Egyptian upper-class – from signature golf courses to baroque private villas. Behind one of these walls lives Mohamed ElBaradei, the unlikely figurehead for a movement seeking to get rid of one of the Middle East's most entrenched autocratic regimes.

"In Egypt the rich live in ghettoes," he said, waving his hand at the beautifully manicured garden, complete with pool. "The gap in social justice here is simply indescribable."

The gulf between Egypt's rich and poor is one of many social ills that persuaded ElBaradei to swap a comfortable retirement in western Europe for the mud-slinging world of Egyptian politics.

Reserved, diplomatic and restrained in his rhetoric, the bespectacled former head of the UN's nuclear weapons agency often appears awkwardly out of place in an arena dominated by bullish characters and highly personal attacks.

In recent weeks the state-controlled press has called the Nobel peace laureate a traitor, and described his campaign for political reform as "tantamount to a constitutional coup". Meanwhile his supporters have been arrested and allegedly tortured by security services.

"I was hoping for a slightly more quiet life," he admitted to the Guardian in his first international interview since returning to his native country in February. "But this is a place where I have friends, where I have family, where I have ties, and when I hear people telling me, 'you have to come and help fight for change' of course I have to weigh in and see what I can do.

"How successful I will be I don't know, but at least in the past couple of months alone I've managed to make people less afraid, I've managed to make people understand that the political system is the key to overcoming stagnation, and I've managed to make people understand that there are alternatives to Bin Laden on one side or autocracy on the other."

Sceptics would raise an eyebrow at that list of successes, especially as ElBaradei is coy about his exact intentions regarding next year's presidential election. So far he has insisted that he will not run unless a "constitutional revolution" takes place to establish a genuine system of democracy rather than the current "sham" system, but that has not stopped him intensifying his public appearances.

Last week ElBaradei's arrival at Friday prayers in Cairo's Hussein mosque sparked a media scrum. It also provided a rebuttal of sorts to critics who claim that he is too far detached from the hardships of the ordinary Egyptians he claims to be fighting for.

"I'm not trying to act presidential, I'm just want to go down and meet people and listen to their different views," he said. "It shows that it's not just the so-called intellectuals or educated that want change in this country, but rather everybody; even those that do not feel strongly about 'political freedom' still need to eat, they still need to have a home."

Since his triumphant return to Cairo, ElBaradei has clocked up a series of Egyptian and Arab TV appearances in an effort to spread his demand for domestic change. But he used his first English-language interview to draw parallels between Egypt's malaise and the wider framework of western foreign policy.

At the heart of the 67-year-old's message is a warning that unstinting western support for repressive Arab regimes to combat the perceived threat of Islamism is a dead-end strategy, with potentially diabolical consequences.

"I see increasing radicalisation in this area of the world, and I understand the reason. People feel depressed by their own governments, they feel unfairly treated by the outside world, they wake up in the morning and who do they see – they see people being shot and killed, all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur," he said.

He rejected the idea of a "clash of civilisations", but warned that dialogue between Muslims and the west would be difficult without a just settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. "Unless you find a fair and equitable resolution to this issue the people here will always feel humiliated and also, it will continue to be used by Arab rulers as a pretext for their failure to deliver," he added.

Employing the type of language not usually associated with the mild-mannered diplomat, Elbaradei described western policy in Iraq and Afghanistan as "a total failure". He said: "It has not been based on dialogue, understanding, supporting civil society and empowering people, but rather it's been based on supporting authoritarian systems as long as the oil keeps pumping."

"If you bet on individuals, instead of people, you are going to fail – and the western policy so far has been to bet on individuals who are not supported by their people and who are being discredited every day. When you see that the most popular people in the Middle East are [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah [of Hezbollah], that should send you a message: that your policy is not reaching out to the people.

Exposing the flaws of the Arab world's political systems, and establishing the link between an open and pluralistic form of governance on the one hand and an improvement in living standards on the other is one of ElBaradei's biggest obstacles in a nation with little experience of democratic participation.

"It's something totally new for Egyptians, to make them feel responsible for their future. But this isn't instant coffee: it will take time, and it's very difficult to get people to shed their fear and feel confident."

By Egypt's standards, ElBaradei's growth in support since his return has been stratospheric: more than 200,000 fans have joined his Facebook group, and an effort to secure online signatures backing reform by the "National Association for Change", a grouping encompassing "Marxists to the Muslim Brotherhood", has had reasonable success.

But in a country where dissent is heavily policed and opposition forces have largely lain dormant for a generation, ElBaradei knows his options are restricted. And after elite corruption scandals, he must combat the suspicions of those who question his motives.

"People have become so cynical in Egypt because of the kind of system we have here, that they don't really believe someone can be acting for the common good, they think he must have an ulterior motive," he said. "I don't have an ulterior motive, my hope is to be a channel or precursor for change and then let the people decide. I'm not necessarily presenting myself as a presidential candidate."

With the election a long way off, and no constitutional amendments yet in the pipeline, ElBaradei is hedging his bets. But he remains set on fighting for deep-rooted change in a country where stagnation has become the status quo.

"The west talks a lot about elections in Iran, for example, but at least there were elections – yet where are the elections in the Arab world? If the west doesn't talk about that, then how can it have any credibility?" he said.

Amid the tasteful modern art and constantly chugging water-sprinklers, it will take a lot for ElBaradei to prove that he has what it takes to be one of those liberals, capable of providing a voice for the inhabitants of Cairo's slums and beyond.

Egypt – and the west – will be watching that struggle with interest.

ElBaradei: Cautious reports on Iran 'were framed to avoid war'

Former nuclear watchdog says IAEA had to be aware of 'political implications of our work'


-Taken from the Guardian
-Cairo - March 2010

-Read the full interview transcript here

The UN's former top nuclear watchdog said tonight that his cautious language in reports about Iran's nuclear programme was part of a deliberate policy to keep a lid on tensions and avert a rush to war.

Mohamed ElBaradei, who was director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency for 12 years before stepping down last November, pleaded with the international community to "learn the lessons" of the Iraq invasion and prevent further conflict in the Middle East.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, he said that despite its technical status, the IAEA's work was deeply politicised. "We are a technical organisation totally embedded in a political setting," said ElBaradei, "and we have to be aware of the background and political implications of our work."

ElBaradei, who was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2005 along with the IAEA, has been criticised by some for allegedly toning down agency reports on the threat posed by Iran.

A report earlier this year – the first under the stewardship of ElBaradei's successor, Yukiya Amano – was noted for its blunter language concerning Iran's nuclear programme, prompting some to accuse ElBaradei of concealing facts.

"It is now clear that … ElBaradei was engaged in what may well prove to be the most lethal cover-up in human history," said one Forbes magazine columnist following the report's publication.

ElBaradei denied any cover-up had taken place, but acknowledged he believed he had a duty to frame agency reports in a way that could not be exploited by those seeking war. "When I was working at the agency we would literally go through 30 drafts or so of each report before it was ready, because I knew every word could be used politically and in a very subjective way," he said. "Every word was weighed to make sure that it was immune from being abused, and I always wanted to make sure that we were not overstating or understating, but rather just stating the facts."

He rejected suggestions this amounted to undue political interference in the agency's work. "I think the tone was set by me, that's true," he said. "But all the facts were in every report, unvarnished."

ElBaradei's cautious reports are in contrast to the title of his memoirs, Crawling Away From Armageddon, which will be published in the autumn.

The book is expected to reveal details of ElBaradei's private conversations with US officials, with whom he fought in vain to avoid a US-led invasion of Iraq. "I would hope that the lessons of Iraq, both in London and in the US have started to sink in," he told the Guardian. "Sure there are dictators, but are you ready every time you want to get rid of a dictator to sacrifice a million innocent civilians?"

ElBaradei went on to praise Barack Obama for adopting a different approach from the Bush administration.

"I believe that the IAEA has a role not only to do inspections and verification, but also to work with the different parties to find solutions," he said.

"And I don't think there's any solution to any of these issues of insecurity except through meaningful dialogue. I left the agency a very happy man when I saw that this approach has been adopted by Barack Obama."

ElBaradei: The full interview transcript

The following is a full transcript of the Guardian's exclusive interview with Mohamed ElBaradei at his home near the Giza pyramids in Cairo, Egypt. It took place on Tuesday 30th March, 2010.

Read the news stories:
Mohamed ElBaradei hits out at west's support for repressive regimes
Mohammed ElBaradei: unlikely champion of democracy in the Arab World
Cautious reports on Iran were 'framed to avoid war'

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Jack Shenker: How are things going with the National Association for Change [NAC] and your effort to collect signatures supporting the campaign?

Mohamed ElBaradei: Well this is something totally new to the Egyptians, to make them feel responsible for their future. They have been used to being told what to do and how to do it, being told to accept whatever lot comes their way in terms of governance – who is going to be their president, what kind of political system they will have, swinging between total alliance with the Soviet Union to very close cooperation with US. So they’ve been completely marginalised in terms of feeling that they own this place, and my goal for them to take charge, to be empowered, to understand that democracy is the way to go in the future is something totally new.

During Nasser’s period they were told, ‘give up your rights, and in return we’ll give you major projects like independence, nationalism, development’ – lots of which didn’t come through for a variety of reasons. But right now they’re being told to give up their rights, yet nothing else is materialising in terms of improving standards of life, in terms of improving and building the Arab community, in terms of R&D, there is really nothing for them to feel proud about in terms of major achievements. But at the same time they’ve been asked to give up all their rights, particularly under this Emergency Law. So to get them from where they are today, after some 50-odd years, to feeling that they are empowered and can change things is becoming very difficult.

I see people who are desperate and have totally lost hope that they can change things, and of course they’re afraid because of the Emergency Law – what you see here is that you can’t even have more than four or five people moving in the street without [the regime] saying ‘this is against the Emergency Law’. You can’t hold big meetings of people because they say ‘this could be agitation against the regime’. We can’t even have a headquarters for this informal association [the NAC] because it is not registered and we will not be able to register it because they tell me this is a political movement and if it’s a political movement you have to go through the party process which is cumbersome and ridiculous. We probably can’t raise funds because we are not a formal entity. So there are a lot of hurdles to overcome in terms of logistics.

But more important is getting people gradually to understand that they have to join the rest of the world and to understand that their economic and social progress is very much linked to the kind of political regime they have. That linkage is what I’m trying to hammer home.

However, having said all that, which sounds pessimistic, I see that there is a thirst for change. When you see that there are around a quarter of a million supporters on Facebook, mostly young guys, proportionally – in a country with a population of 80 million and with internet penetration of only about 16% - this is more than what Obama had. He had 2.2 million online supporters before the election, in a country of 300 million, so proportionally we have more than what Obama had in terms of internet support.

JS: Clearly your arrival back here has generated a lot of momentum, but how do you start converting that into concrete change? I noticed with your visit to Hussein mosque on Friday that you looked, if you don’t mind me saying, very presidential – meeting crowds in front of the cameras, etc. – and you’ve also been meeting delegations from the Coptic community, the arts world, and so on. It seems as if in contrast to your public demeanour a few weeks ago you’re starting to act more in a consciously statesmanlike manner – is that a deliberate campaign strategy?

MEB: It’s not... I have to clarify two things. Firstly, and I keep repeating this – and I have to because people have become so cynical in Egypt because of the kind of system we have here, that they don’t really believe someone can be acting for the common good, they think he must have an ulterior motive. I don’t have an ulterior motive, my hope is to be a channel or precursor for change and then let the people decide who they want to be president; it could be anybody, and I’m not necessarily presenting myself as a presidential candidate. I’ve said before that there are a whole lot of common-sense guarantees have to be in place first, including changing the constitution, and of course I need to see that a wide majority of people want me to be that agent of change. I said I will not let them down, but I’ll be very happy just to be a prompt for change.

So it’s not that I’m trying to act presidential, I’m just trying to go down and meet people and listen to their different views – and there are so many different views, I mean they haven’t had the practice of democracy in fifty years, they don’t know how to go about it or where to start. But the Hussein visit was great in the sense that the government media has described me as a ‘virtual figure’ who doesn’t exist in reality, and the picture coming from there was very different. I was quite surprised to see how many people who are extremely poor and deprived are coalescing around me in the streets saying ‘we need change’, and I want to listen – that, I think, sent a different message to the regime. It shows that it’s not just the so-called intellectuals or educated that want change in this country, but rather everybody; even those that do not feel strongly about ‘political freedom’, even for those who don’t have that as a priority, they still need to eat, they still need to have a home.

JS: One of the key constituencies of people fighting for change in Egypt over recent years has been workers, and we’ve seen a lot of very powerful industrial action in that sphere. Are you coordinating with trade unions and workers groups, and do you think that people who are striking over issues like factory privatisation, etc. can be brought on board to your campaign?

MEB: Well we have this so-called National Front for Change [the NAC] and I’ve said that this is a coalition of every Egyptian who believes in change, all the way from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Marxists. Anybody who believes in that overarching goal should join us but we know that there are so many different ideological differences, and that’s fine – like in any country, you have the Labour and the Tories and everyone else, and you let the people decide whom they want to be in charge. So in order not to distract from the cause, I’m limiting myself to saying those who believe that we need change should sign this declaration and say yes, we agree with that. And then once we have that change let them all go their own different ways and let the people decide. So yes we’re open to workers, we’re open to farmers, we’re open to everybody.

But it will take time; people have to understand that change after so many decades of a total lack of democracy will take time. Even just to give people confidence and shed themselves of the fear, this will take time. What I think I’m doing is stirring things up, getting people to realise that there are different ways of going about things and that there are better ways which have been tried and tested in other countries – the majority of countries – and that they work much better, because if you don’t give people freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, freedom of religion, the basic freedoms that everybody takes for granted in a democracy then you’re at a dead-end street.

JS: In that effort to stir things up are you hampered by the state of the official opposition? I’m talking about parties like Al-Wafd, Al-Tagammu, and so on who are ostensibly opposed to the government but have in many ways been quite obstructionist towards your own campaign, and particularly the reports in Al-Masry Al-Yom that Al-Wafd had agreed a secret deal with the government to help isolate you...

MEB: Well I take frankly a very broad-picture and gracious view of all this; I’m not talking about people, I’m talking about policies. If people agree with what we’re doing they are welcome to join us. We are not a front for hidden entities or parties, we are front for individuals; anybody who belongs to any party is welcome and we have had meetings with many different people from different parties, attending as individuals and not as party representatives.

However, if the existing parties are sharing the same goal, I’m happy to coordinate with them. I don’t believe that I want to work within this superficial structure. If they think that this is the way to help things – and I do hear from them similar rhetoric – then fine, but they haven’t been able to effect any change for the past twenty years at least, and we need to try something new and something different. And my goal right now is that I should be able to get as many people as possible to sign and support our call for change because if we can do that it will definitely create a different dynamic. I’d like to see as many people in the next six months or so saying, ‘we would like to see free and fair elections, we would like to see amendments to the constitution and eventually a new constitution’. There is nothing risky about signing that, but it will take time for people to gradually feel like they can do that. I think we have forty or fifty thousand signatures at present which is not bad for a couple of weeks, and I hope there will be a snowball effect.

JS: The Mubarak regime has always been very effective at containing potentially mass mobilisations that threatened the government – you’ve had Kifaya, 6th April, Ayman Nour’s campaign – and every time they’ve proved very adept at neutralising these break-outs of public opinion. I’m thinking especially of Ayman Nour here, who was effectively delegitimized by the regime. How will you avoid that same trap?

MEB: Well, that’s a good question. It’s really up to the people, I continue to say and repeat that I can only help you to help yourself; I’m not able to do much alone and if you really want change everyone has an individual responsibility. Everyone is responsible, everyone has to participate and everyone must fulfil whatever they think they can do; this concept of individual responsibility – which has been completely lost in Egypt – had to come back, there is no one coming in on a white horse that is going to change things for you. What you see every day is people looking at you for change, and I keep telling them, ‘no, I look at you to help me in effecting change’. There are a lot of mental processes and states of mind which have to change, and as I said the change is not going to start or end by 2011 – this could be the beginning, but it is going to take a long time. It’s culture, it’s education, it’s the mindset.

JS: What do you think the government’s strategic response will be to your campaign? Your intervention in the domestic political sphere seemed to take them initially by surprise, but we both know they will fight back against attempts at reform. Do you think there is a danger to yourself personally? And what about your supporters, amongst whom we’ve seen arrests and allegations of police torture already?

MEB: Well of course there are a lot of people outside the country who are afraid for my own security, but I have been in the public domain for many years and have always had this security risk looming in the background. I should take as many precautions as possible, but I don’t want to go around with bodyguards – you saw me at Hussein, just walking along. It comes with the territory. But I see a lot of concern outside of Egypt about my own security, I hear that from so many different governments, people coming to me and saying ‘you should be careful’...

JS: Other governments specifically warning you about your security in Egypt?

MEB: Yes, I’ve had a lot of that. But, as I said, I don’t spend much time thinking about that, though of course I have to take as many precautions as I can.

JS: Well that brings me on to the western perception of Egypt. This is one of your first interviews to the international press since returning to Egypt, and your first interview with an English-language newspaper; it often seems that in Western media and political circles, the rhetoric of the NDP regime – the narrative of Mubarak presiding over great economic growth and containing the threat of Islamist revolution – that narrative is basically accepted verbatim, and that’s the narrative that gets played out in the West. So now that you’re speaking to the Western media, what’s your message to the West, both the media and the governments?

MEB: Well, I think they need to have a more in-depth understanding of what’s happening in Egypt, and the role of Egypt in the Arab World and beyond. We have been lagging behind – I think Tim Sebastian wrote an article a few weeks ago saying Egypt has been watching from the sidelines whilst people went to the moon and carried out great revolutions, and we’ve been just simple observers...

JS: It was a controversial article!

MEB: Yes, yes... But our contribution to human civilisation has been minimal at best. And in addition I see increasing radicalisation in this area of the world, and I understand the reason. People feel repressed by their own governments, they feel unfairly treated by the outside world, they wake up in the morning and who do they see – they see people being shot and killed, all Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Darfur.

So it’s easy, and you hear it all the time, to say that there is a conspiracy theory by the West against Islam, against the Arabs. And this is not a sustainable system; people talk about the ‘clash of civilisations’ and all this sort of thing, and there is no clash of civilisations – it’s just a question of being able to understand each other, and creating a dialogue and creating the conditions in the Arab World and the Muslim World whereby they can join the rest of the world in moving together as one family for scientific, technical, sociological, political developments.

That is not happening for two reasons. There is the Palestinian issue which is a red flag for every Arab. It’s just a sense of humiliation. There was an article in Foreign Affairs recently which said that there are three different groups of countries: the Arab World, who feel humiliated and angry, India and China, who feel confident, and the West who feel afraid, and I think that’s a good description. There’s a lot of anger and a lot of humiliation here, starting of course with the Palestinian issue, and you cannot hide your head in the sand over this. Unless you find a fair and equitable resolution to this issue the people here will always feel humiliated and also, it will continue to be used by Arab rulers as a pretext for their failure to deliver.

Then of course you have Iraq and Afghanistan. Western policy towards this part of the world has been a total failure, in my view. It has not been based on dialogue, understanding, supporting civil society and empowering people, but rather it’s been based on supporting authoritarian systems as long as the oil keeps pumping.

JS: You say Western policy has been a total failure in Iraq and Afghanistan; do you think the Western policy of pretty much unstinting support for repressive autocrats like President Mubarak has also been a failure? And what will the consequences of that failure be?

MEB: Well I think if you bet on individuals, instead of people, you are going to fail – and the Western policy so far has been to bet on individuals, individuals who are not supported by their people and who are being discredited every day. When you see that the most popular people in the Middle East are [Mahmoud] Ahmedinijad and Hassan Nasrallah, that should send you a message: that your policy is not reaching out to the people. The policy should be, ‘we care about you, we care about your welfare, we care about your human rights’.

You cannot just talk about human rights. The West talks a lot about elections in Iran, for example, but at least there were elections – yet where are the elections in the Arab World? If the West doesn’t talk about that, then how can it have any credibility? I’ve said that to many of my friends in the West. There is a need for re-evaluation, and the idea that the only alternative to authoritarian regimes is Bin Laden and co. is a fake one, yet continuation of current policies will make that prophesy come true. Only if you empower the liberals, if you empower the moderate socialists, if you empower all factions of society, only then will extremists be marginalised.

JS: Let me read you a definition of dictatorship: “In contemporary usage, dictatorship refers to an autocratic form of absolute rule by leadership unrestricted by law, constitutions, or other social and political factors within the state.” Is Egypt a dictatorship?

MEB: Well Egypt is not a democracy, that’s for sure. We like here in the Arab World and in Egypt to have stereotyping – this is Islamist, this is socialist, this is an extremist. But human beings are much more sophisticated than that, and political systems also have different characteristics. But we are not a democracy. And if I look at what we have right now in Egypt, it’s a sham. If rulers want to say yes, this is an authoritarian system but in return for you giving up your political rights we’ll take care of your economic welfare, then that’s a different story. But don’t present the system as something that it’s not.

JS: I guess one of the issues concerning me is that in autocratic regimes all around the world you find presidents falsely portraying themselves as benevolent patriarchs, above the fray of daily politics...

MEB: Yes, it’s a tribal system. Egypt for 7000 years really never really had civic society, never really had a democracy, so it goes well beyond the last fifty years or so. It’s a whole change of culture, and what we have now is an individual-based system of governance rather than an institutional system of governance...

JS: And yet I feel that in your public comments you’ve largely held back from criticising President Hosni Mubarak by name; is it not time to hold him accountable and say outright, ‘he is a repressive autocrat, some might even call him a dictator’?

MEB: What I want to do at this stage is call for a constitutional revolution. I’m trying to break every political rule of the game, and I think it’s much more effective not to focus on individuals. And wrongly or rightly, I think everyone is doing what they think is good for the country. That’s my message now: I do not want to reopen the past, we have too much on our hands for the future. So I’m discussing policies, not individuals; I can criticise policies, but I’m not questioning the intentions or actions of individuals. And I think at this stage, that’s the right way to do it. I said from day one that I want to coalesce the Egyptian people around one great idea, which is their salvation – a move from authoritarianism to democracy.

JS: Looking at some of your specific campaigning strategies, you’ve said in the past that as a member of the Egyptian elite you feel you have a duty to campaign for democratic renewal and political reform. Are you trying to mobilise other parts of the Egyptian elite? When you look around gated communities such as this one, there are many upper class and upper middle-class business people who have done very well out of the Mubarak regime financially. If they have a stake in the status quo, how will you get them on board your campaign?

MEB: Well first of all I’m not campaigning, I’m expressing my views in public, and I’ve been amazed by how much people are ready for change and ready to understand and adopt my ideas for change, and appreciating that without biting the bullet and going for a real democratic system we’ll continue in our current state of total stagnation. This is a popular movement; how many people will join, I really don’t know. In many ways it’s like a black hole, because all the rules of the game need to change and there is no level playing field. What I’m trying to do is hammer at this idea: if you really want to get out of stagnation, if you really want to feel that your freedoms and rights are protected, if you really want to see a better future, there are no two ways about it – you have to move to a democratic system.

And that of course is difficult to explain to the average Egyptian; the linkage between political freedom, which they have never experienced, and their ‘bread and butter’ isn’t clear to them. But I think it is starting to seep through; people are starting to talk about constitutions, whereas two months ago nobody even knew we had a constitution! So it will take time, and we have to take the long-term view of change; it isn’t instant coffee, and it won’t happen overnight. It’s very difficult to get people to shed their fear and feel confident. But the key is to make sure people are ready to join, ready to share their fear and despair, and get into their head that they can, like other people in the world, be in control of their own destinies.

There will be a lot of resistance. A lot of people have been benefiting from the current system, as you rightly said; in Egypt the rich live in ghettoes. The gap in social justice here is simply indescribable; when I go to a slum in central Cairo and then I return to my home, these are two different lives. There has been economic development but for some reason it hasn’t trickled down, and obviously that’s a major issue. And I need to focus on this, because economic development and the market economy is all very good but I have to keep my eyes on the 42% of Egyptians who live on less than $1 a day, and the 30% who cannot even read and write. There are so many ills in Egyptian society.

JS: The parliamentary elections are six months away; I know you’re taking a long-term view, but will the NAC get involved in the parliamentary election battle? Considering it is highly unlikely that there will have been any constitutional amendments by that stage?

MEB: I can only tell you what is going to happen next week. It all depends on how much support we can get, how much mobilisation we can achieve. We will see. This is a non-violent movement; if I get millions of Egyptians saying ‘we want change’ then the regime needs to change – there are no two ways about it. I say to the regime, ‘your authority comes from the people, and if those people have made their feelings about you loud and clear then you have to change’. But that depends on how long it takes the people to catch up, and in the meantime the parliamentary elections are not going to solve our problems; the whole constitution needs to change and we need political guarantees. So many things need to change, but what’s important is that we have a president who believes in a completely new constitution, that will move Egypt in a serious way towards democracy. Then we will probably have to go through an interim period, and if we do that everything else will fall into place.

You know, people talk about progress in education and healthcare but all of that is very much linked to a system where the people can call the shots.

JS: You say you believe in non-violent campaigning. If the constitutional amendments don’t happen and the current regime attempts to engineer an undemocratic transfer of power, to Gamal Mubarak or to anyone else, and if millions of Egyptians who are desperate for change see that the regime is refusing to back down, will we see violence on the streets of Egypt?

MEB: I don’t know. The Egyptian people by their very nature are peaceful people, but it’s one of the inherent rights of every individual to have freedom of assembly and demonstration. All I know is that if we do not get all these changes, and if there is no level playing-field and no equal opportunity for people to run in the presidential elections, and no guarantees of the sort you get everywhere else, then I’m not going to be a part of that process. I’ll continue to speak on the ills of society, but I’m not going to legitimise the system by being part of it. What other people will do, I don’t know.

JS: You and your wife were probably looking forward to a quiet life after your retirement as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], so what was it that really prompted you as an individual to take on this challenge of stirring up one of the world’s most stagnant political landscapes?

MEB: Well I was looking for a slightly more quiet life, not a completely quiet life! I still have lots of commitments I have to act upon. I’m writing a book, for example, and I have a legal commitment to finishing that book, and at the end of this month I have a commitment to go to Harvard and Fletcher, and there are a number of boards which I have to go an sit on, so I did have a lot of plans regarding what I’d do next. I’ve been working throughout my life in a global setting, not really focusing on one country. Inequities, insecurities, disarmament, all that sort of thing. But what prompted me to act in Egypt was the increasing number of people who were saying to me, ‘you should come and help’.

And of course my perspective is always the big picture, I care about everyone else around the world. But this is my country of origin. This is a place where I have friends, where I have family, where I have ties, and when I hear people telling me, ‘you have to come and help fight for change’, of course I have to weigh in and see what I can do. How successful I will be I don’t know, but at least in the past couple of months alone I’ve managed to make people less afraid, I’ve managed to make people understand that the political system is the key to overcoming stagnation, and I’ve managed to make people understand that there are alternatives to Bin Laden on one side or autocracy on the other.”So things have happened, but not everything will change overnight, and in which direction things will move I do not know. I want to put the ball in the people’s court, because they are not used to that; they want a saviour, and I am not a saviour.

I want to go and spend some time with my granddaughter in London and have a life at this stage, but I will do as much as I can here. The ball is in the people’s court, and all I can do is give them a torch to light and tell them which direction to go. Whether they will go in that direction or not is the big question.

JS: Let me move on for a moment to some questions about the IAEA. There’s a sense that some of the reports about Iran coming out of the agency under your successor, Yukiya Amano, have got a rather different tone from the reports issued under your stewardship – would you agree with that assessment?

MEB: Well I think I’ll excuse myself from passing judgement on that. I can speak only for my reports; I’m sure he [Mr Amano] is trying to do what he thinks is the right thing to do. I haven’t seen a change of substance in the reports; there is maybe a change of tone, but that’s a function of personality.

I have been always of the view that, as a lawyer, I have to stick to the facts and I will not have anything in my reports that I cannot vouch for 100%, because these are issues that have to do with war and peace. And I also believe that we [the IAEA] have a role not only to do inspections and verification, but also to work with the different parties to find solutions. And I don’t think there’s any solution to any of these issues of insecurity except through meaningful dialogue. I left the agency a very happy man when I saw that this approach has been adopted by Barack Obama.

JS: It’s interesting because heading the IAEA is really a dual role: it’s a technical job but you also have to try and keep a lid on tensions...

MEB: Yes, of course we are technical but we are a technical organisation totally embedded in a political setting. Yes we are technical, we have to do technical work, but we are dealing with the politics of nuclear energy and we have to be aware of the background and political implications of our work. When I was working at the agency we would literally go through thirty drafts or so of each report before it’s ready, because I knew every word could be used politically and in a very subjective way...

JS: Were you very conscious when drafting the reports of wanting to avoid using the kind of language which could be exploited...

MEB: Yes of course, every word was weighed to make sure that it is immune from being abused, and I always wanted to make sure that we were not overstating or understating, but rather just stating the facts.

JS: There have been suggestions in some quarters that in some reports on Iran, though they were correct in substance, a deliberate tone may have been adopted in an effort to minimise tensions – do you think that’s fair?

MEB: I think the tone was set by me, that’s true. But all the facts were in every report, unvarnished. Yet the tone of course is very important, not to reduce tension but to put things in context. I never looked upon my role as simply that of technocrat or technician, but I also understood how I could make use of the political setting both to help us in our inspections and to help us find solutions. The inspections were not an end in themselves.

JS: You worked very hard to try and stop the rush to war that ended in the US-led invasion of Iraq; do you fear that history is repeating itself now with Iran?

MEB: I don’t think so, I hope not. For one thing there is a new administration in the US that hail from a different perspective, and I would hope that the lessons of Iraq, both in London and in the US have started to sink in. Sure there are dictators, but are you ready every time you want to get rid of a dictator to sacrifice a million innocent civilians?

There is a major issue, which has to do with our sense of humanity. What you can see now with this investigation in London [the Chilcot Inquiry] and all the indications coming out of it, which are that Iraq was not really about weapons of mass destruction but rather about regime change, and I keep asking the same question – where do you find this regime change in international law? And if it is a violation of international law, who’s accountable for that?

These are issues which are not going to go away. I just hope that some of these lessons are now being understood. For example in the case of Iran, there is no other solution other than sitting at the negotiating table and trying to reconcile your differences and work out where every party is coming from. Unless of course there is an imminent threat, in which case that needs to be addressed collectively by the international community. But that imminent threat is not there today; there is concern about Iran’s intentions, but nobody is claiming that Iran today is assembling a nuclear weapon. And when you talk about the tone of reports, that’s the kind of thing I always wanted to convey: we are concerned, but we’re not panicky.

JS: OK, I know we’re well past our time and have to leave it there. Let me just give you one closing question: Hosni Mubarak has been in power for almost three decades in Egypt, and you say he’s achieved nothing but stagnation. If you could speak to people like Barack Obama and Gordon Brown directly about their support for Mubarak, what would you tell them?

MEB: Change will have to come from within the country, from within Egypt. I don’t think change will come from outside. But as part of the human family, east and west, north and south, we have to be true to our human values. If we believe that democracy and respect for human rights is the way forward we have to speak about it and apply it systematically, otherwise none of us will have any credibility, as east or west, as individuals or institutions.

Out with the new, in with the old

-Taken from Monocle
-Luxor - March 2010


How do you go about updating a city that’s over 5,000 years old and is estimated to contain one-third of the entire world’s ancient monuments within its walls? That’s the question currently vexing the administrators of Luxor, in Upper Egypt, and their proposed solution – effectively to turn the town into one big open-air museum – is causing bedlam.

The redevelopment, which began in 2004 under governor Samir Farag, an energetic former military man, has so far involved the resettlement of an entire community whose families had lived among the tombs for generations, the snap demolition of “unsightly” downtown slum areas (including a series of beautiful Belle Epoque buildings from the 19th century), and a police-enforced effort to minimise contact between international holidaymakers and local Egyptians at key sites.

The only snag was that as well as showcasing the remnants of ancient Thebes (as the city was known during the dynastic period), present-day Luxor is also a modern urban hub of 400,000 people – many of whom do not fancy being shunted aside for mummies and mausoleums.

Tourism is one of the bedrocks of Egypt’s flagging economy, and with the government needing to generate at least 600,000 jobs annually to keep pace with the growing number of new entrants into the labour market the redevelopment of Luxor – which lies 400 miles south of Cairo – was identified as a top priority.

As well as the incomparable Luxor and Karnak temple complexes in the city centre, Luxor has the legendary Valleys of the Queens and Kings (home to the tomb of Tutankhamen) just across the Nile, attractions which already pull in 2.5 million visitors a year.

But despite the potential for job creation, local residents, business owners and archaeological experts are increasingly up in arms.

Matters have come to a head over the excavation of a two mile “Avenue of the Sphinxes” in central Luxor, which dates back three millennia and is due to partially reopen next month. Sceptics have highlighted it as an example of the government’s alleged disregard to the local community and argue that this brand of redevelopment is unsustainable; uncovering the avenue has led to the displacement of 800 families and large swathes of formerly public land have been flogged off to high-end developers, destroying the livelihoods of many poorer shopkeepers and guides who relied on the tourist trade for their income.

“The whole thing is a disgrace,” thundered one American archaeologist recently. “They’re murdering the soul of the place.”

Even UNESCO recently slammed the Egyptian authorities for bulldozing potentially momentous historical sites as part of its grand blueprint for the city.

The debate over Luxor’s future taps into a wider question surrounding the global tourist experience: how do governments balance the demands of international visitors with the duty of care they owe to their own citizens, and when do attempts to curate the movements of the former lead to an unwarranted attack on the latter? Handled in the right way, Luxor’s fabulous Pharaonic riches should be a boon to both locals and the state, providing much-needed employment for residents and filling the government’s coffers. But Egypt’s increasingly unpopular ruling clique has never been particularly responsive to the needs of its most vulnerable communities, and the quick-fix development strategy it is pursuing in Luxor is in danger of degenerating into a messy mistake that provides tourists with nothing more than an artificially-sanitised Pharaonic Disneyland and leaves the city’s contemporary residents out in the cold.

Mr Farag, who is fond of characterising himself as an unstoppable single-track train, has so far proved impervious to such criticisms. “No one can scare me,” he declared last week in a fit of pique worthy of the Boy King himself. “No one is more important than the government and I will not be threatened by the media or the press.”

Workers' jihad at Islamic website

Staff at IslamOnline have gone on strike. But is it about workers' rights, religious principles or national rivalries?

-Taken from the Guardian's 'Comment is Free'
-Cairo - March 2010

Islamic advice websites aren't the first thing that spring to mind when talking of strikes, sit-ins and workers' occupations, but if there's any proof needed that Egypt's extraordinary wave of industrial action is reaching every corner of the nation, then today's drama at IslamOnline.net fits the bill.

With more than 120,000 hits a day and a global reach that extends through several languages, IslamOnline is one of the biggest and most influential Muslim websites in the world. From Baghdad to Basildon, Muslims use it as a key source of scholarly advice on everything from impotency to the insurgency in Iraq.

So the question of who owns and controls the site is a vitally important one. And that's the question being wrestled over today, after hundreds of staff walked out in protest over what they say is an attempt by conservatives in the Gulf to hijack the site and force it to pursue a more traditional and hardline agenda.

Tension had been simmering for months between the website's Cairo-based editorial offices and the managers in Doha, whose plan this week to fire many of the 350 employees in Egypt led to an all-night occupation of the company's offices, which was still continuing at the time of writing.

"We're all resigning," Fathi Abu Hatab, a former IslamOnline journalist and one of the strike leaders, told me over the phone from inside the building. "If we lose this battle then IslamOnline as we know it will be dead. We were an exception – in our professionalism, in our moderation, in our refusal to be bound by hidden agendas. And like all exceptions in the Arab World, we've come to the end of the line."

So what is the battle, exactly? There's not a lot of agreement on this point, with a host of competing explanations trickling out of the IslamOnline offices on to Twitter, Facebook and even a live online video stream that the workers set-up to show their grievances to the world. Some of the staff believe this is primarily a business dispute over pay, conditions and company management but others are reading more into it, placing the tussle over editorial control at IslamOnline into a wider political rivalry between Egypt and Qatar, and an even broader context of cultural warfare between Egypt and the Gulf.

As detailed in the news reports, there's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that a new board of directors in Doha has been throwing its weight around in debates over the site's content. Analysts have argued that the site's relatively open and inclusive nature (where discussions over homosexuality sit side by side with the latest fatwas on vegetarianism, martyrdom and T-shirts) has unnerved some of IslamOnline's more conservative financial backers in the Gulf. At this stage it's hard to verify that one way or another, but if true it would only be the latest salvo in a long-running campaign by the Gulf to wrest cultural ascendancy in the Arab World away from Egypt.

In the often febrile Middle Eastern media market, domination of the cultural landscape has tended to go hand in hand with political ascendancy. Historically the biggest centres of cultural production were Beirut and Cairo; the latter's singers, film-makers, actors and writers were untouchable in the 1950s and 1960s.

Egypt's status as the capital of Arab culture mirrored its political fortunes under Gamal Abdel Nasser; Umm Kolthoum sang, Youssef Chahine directed, and Nasser was the all-singing, all-dancing leader of the "Arab street" who faced down western colonialism at Suez in 1956 and swaggered across the world stage.

Then came the oil explosion of the 1970s, and the Gulf states suddenly found themselves with a load of petro-dollars at their disposal. Over the next couple of decades, with Lebanon mired in civil war and Egypt rocked by the assassination of Sadat and the beginning of the moribund, bureaucratic rule of Mubarak, Saudi Arabia (and to a lesser extent the UAE) embarked on an ambitious and eye-wateringly expensive programme to force control of the region's culture away from their rivals.

The Arab culture wars are open on a number of different fronts, but all involve Egypt losing its grip on the Middle East's cultural tiller. On television, for example, Egyptian soaps and serials have long dominated prime-time schedules, but now the UAE is fighting back with multimillion dollar productions like Million's Poet, an insanely popular reality TV show that commands 70m viewers from across the Arab World, yet is based around an obscure form of Gulf Arabian poetry. The result has been a hitherto unknown appreciation for the Gulf dialect across the Middle East. "Ten years ago the only dialect you heard in the media was the Egyptian one, and later the Lebanese," Nashwa al-Ruwaini, an executive producer for the show told the New York Times. "With satellite TV, the people in Egypt now hear and understand what people in the Gulf say. And the Gulf has started going to the Egyptian market and the mainstream."

Garnering respect for Gulf culture isn't the random by-product of a successful private enterprise; it's a carefully-planned, government-backed strategy. The whole show is funded by the Abu Dhabi Authority of Culture and Heritage, and forms part of a much wider push to make Abu Dhabi the capital of culture in the Middle East, with local versions of the Louvre and Guggenheim under construction and globally-renowned architects like Zaha Hadid drafted in to help. Suddenly Egypt's pyramids feel a little dated by comparison; now wonder the government is building a brand new $550m museum at Giza to hit back, scheduled to open in 2013.

It's not just a matter of the Gulf producing new cultural products to rival Egypt's; investors are actively taking over Egyptian cultural institutions and reshaping them to reflect more conservative Gulf values. Egypt's film studios were managing to produce only about five or six films a year in the early 1990s; now, almost solely because of Saudi investment, they're churning out around 40, some of which now have to conform to the "35 rules" of piety laid down by the Saudi backers – a huge shift away from Egypt's traditionally more pluralistic Islamic values to the much more austere form of Wahhabi Islam prevalent in the Gulf.

And it's not only movies. Contracts for famous belly-dancers have been snapped up ("It's the Wahhabi investors," says Abir Sabri, one of Egypt's most celebrated dancers who was bought out by Saudis and now performs with her body and face covered-up, chanting Quranic verses. "Before, they invested in terrorism - and now they put their money in culture and the arts."). Hotels have been purchased (the Grand Hyatt in Cairo caused a storm a couple of years ago when its Saudi owner declared in a moment of religious devotion that alcohol was to be banned from the complex - up to $1m of champagne and spirits was emptied into the Nile as a result).

This "Saudisation" has left some Egyptians, such as the billionaire communications tycoon Naguib Sawiris, feeling like a foreigner in their own land. "As far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest problem in the Middle East right now," he says. "Egypt was always very liberal, very secular and very modern. Now ... I'm looking at my country, and it's not my country any longer. I feel like an alien here."

As the IslamOnline workers prepare themselves for a second night of occupation in an attempt to assert their editorial independence over those that bankroll them, a broader upheaval is under way in every corner of the Arab media world, one that could prove dangerous for cultural pluralism.

"There is an Egyptian taste to IslamOnline at the moment which is very discernible; if the site packs up and moves to Qatar the spirit and attitude of the site will change," says Khalil al-Anani, an expert on political Islam at Durham University.

"That would be a big loss to the Muslim community globally, because we are facing a wave of Salafist media at the moment – on the internet, on satellite TV, and elsewhere – and IslamOnline was one of the key outlets resisting that trend."

IslamOnline website in crisis as employees in Egypt stage sit-in

Future of one of the world's largest Islamic sites in doubt as row escalates between Qatari managers and workers in Egypt

-Taken from the Guardian
-Cairo - March 2010

The future of one of the largest Islamic websites in the world was in doubt today after hundreds of staff walked out, accusing new managers of trying to hijack the site in order to promote a hardline, conservative agenda.

IslamOnline, which draws over 120,000 visitors a day and is one of the most popular internet destinations in the Middle East, was plunged into crisis following an attempt by the website's senior management in Qatar to wrest control of the site's content away from its editorial offices in Cairo.

Insiders claim that the move, which would involve many of the site's 350 Egypt-based staff losing their jobs, is part of a broader effort by conservative elements in the Gulf to reshape the identity of a media outlet long viewed as a bastion of liberal and reformist voices within the Islamic world.

"This is not an issue of money," journalist Fathi Abu Hatab told the Guardian via telephone from the website's offices, which are currently under occupation by staff. "It's a matter of editorial independence and media ethics, and we are not going to back down. They are trying to hijack IslamOnline, and we are resisting."

IslamOnline was founded in 1997 by the controversial Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a popular preacher who has previously been banned from entering the United States and Britain.

Promoting a "holistic" vision of Islam, it offered Muslims a wide range of online guidance on political, family and social issues. With a reputation for including non-Muslims and secular Muslims on its payroll, the multilingual website quickly gained global popularity as a source for theological answers to questions involving everything from homosexuality to Hamas.

"When it was launched, IslamOnline was very distinctive and very different," said one former employee, who worked for the site for seven years. "Most other Islamic websites are quite dull and dense, but this one saw Islam as a way of life and offered practical help."

Most importantly, it enjoyed a degree of editorial independence from its financial backers, a welcome rarity in the Arab media world.

That independence came under threat last month when a new set of Qatar-based managers criticised journalists in Egypt, where most of the site's content is produced, for running articles on Valentine's Day and film festivals, and began to shut down sections of the website devoted to culture and youth. That put the site's board of directors on a direct collision course with staff, who soon found that their access to the website's servers had been restricted.

Today, after hearing reports that many of them were to be fired as part of an editorial shake-up, over 250 staff went on strike.

"We will all resign," said Abu Hatab. "They may own the offices and the URL, but they don't own us."

Workers taking part in the sit-in used a variety of innovative ways to air their grievances to the general public, including setting up real-time video footage from inside the offices and streaming it on the web.

"Those of us that stayed in the building overnight slept on our desks," said the site's new media analyst, Abdallah Elshamy. "But when we weren't sleeping we were also putting out a lot of messages on Twitter and other social media which kept the attention on us and eventually forced management to the negotiating table."

Analysts believe that the dispute at IslamOnline is part of a wider conflict between Salafist Muslims in the Gulf, who follow a more literal and traditional interpretation of the Qur'an, and the more reformist brand of Islam popular in countries like Egypt.

“If you look at the content of IslamOnline, it is relatively moderate and aims to cultivate an atmosphere where different perspectives can come together,” argues Khalil Al-Anani, an expert on political Islam at Durham University. “In some respects it embodies a new and very successful Islamic school of thinking, one that has promoted tolerance and discourse, and some of the more close-minded Salafists involved in funding the site feel threatened by this sort of discourse.”

The past decade has seen a series of flashpoints between conservative Islamic investors based in the Gulf on the one hand and Egyptian cultural institutions on the other. Egypt’s flagging film industry has been recently been revitalised with Saudi money but many observers believe that cinematic output has become more pious and restricted as a result; contracts for popular belly-dancers have also been snapped up by petrodollars, and in 2008 one of Cairo’s biggest five-star hotels caused an outcry when its owner, a Saudi sheikh, decided to make the entire premises alcohol free – reportedly emptying $1m of champagne and brandy into the Nile.

Al-Anani believes that if IslamOnline does collapse in its current form it will be a major blow to pluralism within the Islamic media sector. “There is an Egyptian taste to IslamOnline at the moment which is very discernible; if the site packs up and moves to Qatar the spirit and attitude of the site will change,” he says. “And that would be a big loss to the Muslim community globally, because we are facing a wave of Salafist media at the moment – on the internet, on satellite TV, and elsewhere – and IslamOnline was one of the key outlets resisting this trend.”