Protester mocking President al-Sisi. Alisdare Hickson, CC BY-SA

Al-Sisi’s grip on power may appear firm, but his country’s problems can’t be thrown into jail like his opponents. His predecessors Hosni Mubarak and Anwar Sadat learned this the hard way.

Yet don’t expect much hand-wringing from the West about Egypt’s stability in the coming days – despite its having been through a revolution and a coup already this decade. Governments and other strategists only appear to worry about countries in this region once discontent turns “hot” – like in Syria, Yemen, Libya or Iraq.

Our research shows that this may be a serious and costly mistake. The whole region is suffering from exactly the same deep-seated problems as before the Arab Spring of 2010-11. In Egypt and various other apparently stable countries, there are very high levels of discontent that could easily boil over.

Then and now

The uprisings earlier in the decade were not simply demands for Western-style democracy. Protesters may have been disillusioned by all the election rhetoric from these authoritarian regimes in democratic clothing, but they were primarily disgusted by corruption, abuse of power and economic inequality. They wanted governments that would address these concerns rather than lining their own pockets and those of their cronies.

Unfortunately little has changed, as newly released opinion polls show for Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia – with upwards of 1,000 people surveyed in each country. While citizens worry about issues their governments prioritise, such as security, terrorism and religious extremism, their main concerns are the same as in 2010 – decent jobs, inflation, inequality and corruption.

Top two challenges by country

Arab Barometer, 2016.

People don’t believe their governments are responsive to their priorities. Fewer than one third of Egyptians think so, while in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Jordan that figure drops to a quarter or less. In Lebanon it is a mere 7%.

Across all six countries an astonishing 85% or more think their governments are not making a serious effort to tackle corruption. Meanwhile, 75% or more are not satisfied with their governments’ efforts to create jobs or fight inflation.

Views on economy, corruption and terrorism

Arab Barometer, 2016.

The discontent is worst in Lebanon, where fewer than 5% of people approve of the government’s work. Even the performance on internal security – the one area where citizens in the other five countries are relatively satisfied – was considered adequate by only a quarter of Lebanese respondents.

This region-wide disenchantment translates into low confidence in parliaments and political parties, the key institutions which ought to be representing citizens’ interests. Confidence varies from country to country: Lebanon again scores poorly. Egypt fares better than others, but this owes more to intense government propaganda than any real effectiveness.

Trust in state institutions

Arab Barometer, 2016.

Citizens also don’t feel they have the civil and political rights necessary to legitimately express their grievances and push their governments for reforms. When people are unable to adequately express their unhappiness, it inevitably increases the potential for radicalisation.

Views on civil rights

Arab Barometer, 2016.

Little changed

As a result of the Arab uprisings, governments fell in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and eventually Libya, while there were more limited political changes in Jordan and Kuwait. Governments in other countries announced political concessions, including Morocco, Algeria, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Yet since the issues which drove many of these protesters to the streets have not been addressed, their governments remain vulnerable both to mass mobilisation and to less obvious forms of radicalisation – as recent protests in Tunisia show.

Western policymakers and academics concerned with security are at risk of missing this. They do not seem to have learned the lessons of the Arab uprisings. Absent armed conflict, they still tend to dismiss the importance to stability of social cohesion, inequality and poor political representation.

Sisi or Sisiphus? Wikimedia

We must therefore reassess the stability of countries like Egypt. We must stop assuming their leaders will forever be able to simply repress dissent, and stop assuming that such repression doesn’t come with costs and risks, both human and political.

These countries are in fact security “sinkholes”: regimes whose foundations erode while apparently seeming stable, often to the point of collapse. Far from being a sign of strength or stability, remaining deaf to the needs of the people make things worse in the long run.

As al-Sisi makes his inevitable victory speech, we would be wise not to ignore these warning signs. Until we learn that conflict must be dealt with at its roots, history is liable to just keep repeating itself.

Pamela Abbott, Director of the Centre for Global Development and Professor in the School of Education, University of Aberdeen and Andrea Teti, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Aberdeen

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Freedom of thought needs an atmosphere of tolerance where people can speak their mind and no one is forced to accept the beliefs of others. In the Middle East, though, tolerance is in short supply and ideas that don't fit the expectations of society and governments are viewed as a threat.

Where religion is concerned, the "threat" can come from almost anyone with unorthodox ideas but especially from those who reject religion entirely.

Increasingly, atheists in Arab countries are characterised as dangerous extremists – to be feared no less than violent jihadists.

Persecuting atheists is the inevitable result of governments setting themselves up as guardians of faith. Among the 22 Arab League countries, Islam is "the religion of the state" in 16 of them: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the UAE and Yemen. 

For most of them, this is more than just a token gesture; it also serves political purposes. Embracing religion and posing as guardians of morality is one way for regimes to acquire some legitimacy, and claiming a mandate from God can be useful if they don't have a mandate from the public.

State religions, in their most innocuous form, signal an official preference for one particular kind of faith and, by implication, a lesser status for others. But the effects become far more obtrusive when governments rely on state religion as an aid to legitimacy – in which case the state religion has to be actively supported and policed. That, in turn, de-legitimises other belief systems and legitimises intolerance and discrimination directed against them. 

The policing of religion in Arab countries takes many forms, from governments appointing clerics and setting the theme for weekly sermons to the enforcement of fasting during Ramadan. 

To shield the government-approved version of religion from criticism, a variety of mechanisms can be deployed. These include laws against "defaming" religion and proselytising by non-Muslims but general laws regarding public order, telecommunications and the media may also apply.

In Algeria, for instance, the law forbids making, storing, or distributing printed or audiovisual materials with the intention of "shaking the faith" of a Muslim. In Oman, using the internet in ways that "might prejudice public order or religious values" is an imprisonable offence.

For Muslims who publicly abandon Islam the problem is even worse. In Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen anyone convicted of apostasy faces the threat – at least in theory – of execution.

Using a state religion as an aid to legitimacy turns the personal beliefs of individuals into a political issue, because disagreeing with the state's theological position also implies disloyalty to the state. Those who happen to disagree must either conform or risk becoming not only a religious dissident but a political one too.

Equating religious conformity with loyalty to the state allows Arab governments to label non-conformists not merely as dissidents but extremists. This in turn provides an excuse for suppressing them, as has been seen in Egypt with the Sisi regime's campaign against atheism and in Saudi Arabia where "promotion of atheist thought" became officially classified as terrorism.

Although Saudi Arabia's war on atheists stems from fundamentalist theology, in Egypt it's the opposite: the Sisi regime presents itself as a beacon of religious moderation. To describe the Sisi brand of Islam as moderate, though, is rather misleading. "Militantly mainstream" might be a better term. Theologically speaking it is middle-of the-road and relatively bland but also illiberal and authoritarian in character.

The result in Egypt is a kind of enforced centrism. While allowing some scope for tolerance – of other monotheistic religions, for example – the regime sets limits on discourse about religion in order to confine it to the middle ground. The main intention, obviously, was to place Islamist theology beyond the bounds of acceptability but at the other end of the spectrum it also means that atheism, scepticism and liberal interpretations of Islam have become forms of extremism.

Defining 'extremism'

Absurd as it might seem to place atheists in the same category as extremists such as terrorists and jihadists, the issue hinges on how "extremism" is defined: extreme in relation to what? Violent and intolerant extremism is a global phenomenon but confusion arises when governments try to define it by reference to national or culture-specific values.

Arab states are not the only offenders in this respect, though. They have been assisted by western governments defining "extremism" in a similar way – as rejection of a specific national culture rather than rejection of universal rights and international norms.

In its effort to prevent radicalisation of students, for example, the British government defined extremism as "vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values". Also in the context of eradicating extremism, the education minister talked about actively promoting "British values" in schools.

Approaching the problem in this way invites other countries to do likewise – even if their own national and cultural values would be considered extreme in relation to universal rights and international norms. Thus, Saudis can justifiably claim that atheism is contrary to fundamental Saudi values. Furthermore, the British minister's idea of instilling British values into British schoolchildren is not very different in principle from "instilling the Islamic faith" in young Saudis – which the kingdom's Basic Law stipulates as one of the main goals of education.

This article was first published on al-Bab.
 

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