Seeing God in Tahrir: Ethics of the Revolution
by Yasmin Moll
Many commentators both inside and outside Egypt have focused on the anticipated role of the Muslim Brotherhood in a post-Mubarak Egypt. In many of these analyses, the Brotherhood is used as a metonym for the projected role of Islam in the public sphere. However, while the Brotherhood will certainly play a formative role in post-revolutionary politics and governance in Egypt, it does not have a monopoly on Islamic discourse in the country.
Indeed, self-described moderate Islamic televangelists (al-duaa al-mutawasitoon) – figures such as Amr Khaled, Mustafa Hosni and Moez Masoud – enjoy a popularity and credibility with ordinary Muslim youth in Egypt that is hard to match. While the official religious establishment of Al-Azhar shied away from supporting protesters in Tahrir and elsewhere on the eve of the January 25th Revolution, many of Egypt’s most prominent televangelists were vocal in their support of thawrat al-shabab (the youth revolution).And throughout the uprising and after, their catchwords have been religious tolerance (tasamuh) and religious co-existence (ta’ayush).
In Mubarak’s Egypt, these televangelists’ credibility and authority with their primarily youthful publics derived not from a mastery of the authoritative textual canon of the Islamic tradition a la Azharite scholars, but rather from their projected status as “ordinary Muslims” struggling to lead an Islamically-correct life in a world where it is manifestly difficult to do so. Continue Reading →