Saudi Arabian special security forces march during a military parade at a base near Mount Arafat, southeast of the holy city of Mecca. AFP

STANFORD, Asharq Al-Awsat—Ten years ago yesterday, the Saudi capital, Riyadh, was rocked by three near-simultaneous suicide bombings at housing compounds for expatriates. Over 30 people died and 160 were injured in what was, and remains, the deadliest terrorist attack in the kingdom’s history. The bombing came as a shock to most Saudis and robbed the country of its relative innocence as far as internal violence was concerned. After decades of calm, Saudi Arabia suddenly became the scene of a dramatic and protracted terrorist campaign that would claim many victims and worry many an oil investor before Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was finally crushed in 2006.

It is hard to overestimate the political impact of the Riyadh bombings. These caused a major shift in Saudi attitudes toward Islamist extremism and a complete overhaul of the Saudi internal security apparatus. The terrorism campaign—and the Saudi response to it—also did much to change Western perceptions of Saudi society, many of which, in retrospect, were biased and flawed. Finally, the campaign backfired against Al-Qaeda, leading to its demise as an organization in the kingdom. In short, the learning curve was steep for everyone involved. Specifically, the experience taught us ten important things about terrorism and Saudi Arabia.

First, we learned that terrorist campaigns need not have deep, structural causes. In the summer of 2003, many observers attributed the violence to a fundamental malaise in Saudi society, derived from some combination of economic sclerosis, lack of political participation, and religious indoctrination. However, as I showed in my book, Jihad in Saudi Arabia, the causes were mostly exogenous: the terrorists had radicalized and trained abroad, and the timing was dictated by events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like many terrorist campaigns, this one was the result of developments within an organization.

The second lesson is that wars affect international terrorism in unpredictable ways. Nobody I know had considered that the fall of Kabul might produce terrorism in Riyadh. In retrospect, we can see that it made strategic sense for Al-Qaeda to send its army of Saudi trainees back to the kingdom, given that the alternative was near-certain death or capture in Afghanistan. Conversely, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 had the unexpected—but exact opposite—effect of undermining the Al-Qaeda campaign in Saudi Arabia, by creating a battlefront that for Saudi Islamists was theologically less controversial—and thus more worthy of material support—than the home front.

Third, war volunteers often become terrorists even though they started with less malign intentions. Most of the Saudis in Afghanistan in 2001 had not intended to join Al-Qaeda, but to train so they could fight in Chechnya or other war zones. They had left as foreign fighters, motivated by a desire to help Muslims at war abroad. Once in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda indoctrinated them into Bin Laden’s global jihad project. Prior to 2003, many Saudis saw fighting abroad as a relatively harmless activity distinct from terrorism. However, the perpetrators of the Riyadh Compound Bombing were nearly all former foreign fighters; they were the proverbial chickens coming home to roost.

Fourth, not all jihadists endorse Bin Laden’s global terrorism strategy. In fact, most radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia were what I call “classical jihadists,” who approved of fighting in war zones such as Chechnya, but not in uncontested areas like Saudi Arabia. Prior to 2003, many Western observers mistook classical jihadism for global jihadism and overestimated Al-Qaeda’s support base in the kingdom. The relative support for each of the two positions became very clear when young Saudi militants flocked to Iraq after 2003, leaving AQAP desperate for recruits.

Fifth, radical Islamism is not an existential threat to the Saudi state. In 2003, some Western observers thought the Al Saud kingdom might not make it, and many expected the violence to escalate into a veritable insurgency. We now know that Al-Qaeda never stood a chance, because it had no popular support and because the group’s core was a closed network of Afghanistan veterans that was easy to rein in once identified.

The sixth lesson is that terrorists often make grave strategic miscalculations. Al-Qaeda’s decision to launch a campaign in Saudi Arabia was disastrous, because it destroyed the group’s entire infrastructure in the kingdom, including logistics networks that might have remained useful for much longer. Osama bin Laden, like Western observers, overestimated Saudi popular support for Al-Qaeda. Like many terrorists, he had lost touch with his original constituency, and he fell for the temptation to act when waiting would have been better. As Abdulrahman Al-Rashed famously predicted in this very newspaper ten years ago, “By targeting New York on September 11, the extremists have shot themselves in the foot. In the Riyadh bombings the same extremists shot themselves in the head.”

Seventh, Saudi Al-Qaeda members were much like terrorists everywhere else. They were young males from urban backgrounds who had joined through social networks, often in search of camaraderie and adventure. There is little evidence of a “tribal factor” or “southern radicalism” in their profiles. To the extent that ideology motivated them, it was ideology in a very rudimentary sense, not some elaborate theological code. Most common was the belief that Muslims were being exterminated by non-Muslims. Only a handful of members had a very strong interest in the finer points of their ideology.

Eighth, technology can help terrorists, but it usually favors governments in the long run. In the early part of the campaign, militants exploited the Internet, mobile phones and digital cameras to their considerable tactical advantage. However, authorities soon caught up with the militants and developed a tracking and surveillance capability that severely restricted Al-Qaeda’s ability to communicate or move around.

Ninth, counter-terrorism works best when it is targeted and calibrated. The Saudi response to the Riyadh Compound bombings was relatively successful because it was restrained. History is full of governments that responded to terrorism by lashing out against an invisible enemy, thereby creating new grievances that only served to aggravate the problem. Unlike Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s, Saudi Arabia did not conduct mass arrests and appears to have abstained from systematic torture. It also developed a prisoner rehabilitation program that, despite some cases of recidivism, is better than most alternatives. However, not everything is rosy: like the United States, Saudi Arabia has a detainee problem in the form of individuals that the government, for various reasons, does not want to put on trial, but who are considered too dangerous to release.

Last but not least, it’s not over. A sustained terrorism campaign in Saudi Arabia is unlikely any time soon, but the threat from ad hoc attacks will persist for at least another decade. The Yemeni incarnation of AQAP is thriving and wants to take its war to Saudi Arabia. The Al-Qaeda movement has a long memory, and the legacy of the Riyadh attackers is preserved in Internet propaganda and by people who knew them personally. Someone will want to finish what Bin Laden started ten years ago. We owe it to the victims of the Riyadh Compound bombings to stop that from happening.

Head of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church Pope Tawadros II (L) leads the Coptic Christmas midnight mass at the Al-Abasseya Cathedral in Cairo on January 6, 2013. KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

“The Muslims and Copts are one hand” was one slogan that could be heard ringing out across Tahrir Square throughout the Egyptian revolution. More than two years later, a mob of Egyptian Muslims doused Copt Saber Helal with gasoline and set him on fire in a town north of Cairo. How times change—or not.

In reality, the Tahrir Square unity was the aberration, not last week’s sectarian violence. Egypt’s Coptic community—comprising approximately ten percent of the overall population—have a long history of persecution, predating even the Islamic era to when Egypt was ruled by the Roman and Byzantine empires.

If we look at the period from the birth of the republic until the January 25 Revolution, it is clear that relations between Egypt’s Coptic and Muslim communities have steadily declined. Periodic sectarian riots and mob attacks flared up throughout the period, resulting in hundreds of Copts being killed and thousands more injured. There have also been mass burnings of Coptic-owned homes, businesses and churches. More recently, there have been a number of deadly massacres and terrorist attacks, including the Kosheh massacres, the Nag Hammadi massacre and the Al-Qiddissin Church bombing.

In light of this recent history, last week’s sectarian unrest is nothing out of the ordinary, although it did mark a sharp rise in sectarian violence. Muslims and Christians clashed in the town of Khosous, leaving four Copts and one Muslim dead. The following day, clashes broke out again after Copts held a funeral mass for the victims at Cairo’s Saint Mark’s Cathedral. Mourners were reportedly attacked and forced to take shelter in the cathedral for hours as local residents—and according to some reports security forces—laid siege to the building.

Saint Mark’s Cathedral holds a special place in the hearts of Egypt’s Copts. Not only is it the seat of the Coptic pope, but the new cathedral’s inauguration in 1968 was attended by President Nasser himself. The president used the occasion to emphasize that he was president of all Egyptians, regardless of creed. These are familiar words, but ones that did not ring hollow at the time, as evidenced by the president’s close relationship with Pope Kyrillos VI as well as the president’s pan-Arab, rather than Islamist, rhetoric. In the eyes of many, Copts and Muslims alike, Saint Mark’s Cathedral is a symbol of Egyptian tolerance and identity. Last week’s siege is the first time that the cathedral has ever come under attack, setting a troubling precedent.

Relations between the Copts and the state—and between Copts and their Muslim neighbors— deteriorated under Sadat and Pope Shenouda III, who was quite the firebrand in his early days. Indeed, Sadat banished the Coptic pope to the Monastery of Saint Bishoy in the Egyptian desert, claiming in a speech before parliament that he was seeking to build an independent state for the Christians within Egypt with Assiut as its capital. Sadat famously said, “I am a Muslim president of a Muslim country.”

Relations between Muslims and Copts settled into a relative normality during the Mubarak era, although this period was also punctuated by attacks on the Copts. The last such incident was the deadly Al-Qiddissin Church bombing in Alexandria in the month leading up to Mubarak’s ouster. It is also important to note that the former dictator deliberately isolated Copts from the state by leaving the Church largely to its own devices and excluding Copts from roles in state institutions. Nonetheless, Copts are now viewing Mubarak’s rule through rose-tinted glasses, harking back to the ‘good old days’ before the chaos of the post-revolutionary era. Pre-revolution, the situation was far from perfect—but at least they were relatively safe.

Following the revolution, we have seen the demolition of a church in Upper Egypt and the ensuing Maspero demonstration that resulted in bloody clashes between Egypt’s Copts and the army, something that would have been unthinkable in Mubarak’s day. More recently, the new pope, Tawadros II, took to the media to directly criticize President Mursi’s response to the recent sectarian violence, accusing the president of “negligence” for failing to protect Saint Mark’s Cathedral.

This week, an Egyptian police officer was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment for torturing to death a Salafist who was forced to confess to taking part in the 2011 Al-Qiddissin Church bombing. The politicized nature of sectarianism in Egypt is becoming increasingly evident. Today, we hear accusation and counter-accusation swapped between the Muslim Brotherhood-run government and civil society as to who is responsible for the sectarian unrest. The Egyptian judiciary even opened a probe into former interior minister Habib El-Adly’s alleged involvement in the Al-Qiddissin Church bombing.

Alexandria’s Al-Qiddissin Church bombing serves as an important lesson for all Egyptians. The deadly sectarian attack that killed more than twenty worshippers also showered the nearby Sharq Al-Madina Mosque in debris and blood. The lesson for Egypt’s Muslims and Copts is simple: you cannot harm each other without harming yourselves, and by extension Egypt.

Worshippers attend a service at the St Samaans Church in the Mokattam village, in Cairo.

A woman wielding an iPhone rushes over to Father Thabet’s wife as she sits comfortably on one of the pews. It is opened to a Facebook page showing a still from Maria TV, Egypt’s first television station with an exclusively female, niqab-clad staff. “My friend asked me if this was them [the anchors] from the back,” the woman says incredulously. “I said no, it’s them from the front!”
The Coptic Church in London provides comfort for the UK’s Copts, preserving their religion, community, and culture. But it is also far from home.
Egyptian Copts—who constitute 10 percent of the population and are the largest Christian community in the Middle East—are haunted by a growing sense of alienation from their home country. This can be attributed to both an intensified Islamization of Egyptian society as well an increase in emigration of their community to the West. The Coptic Church in London provides comfort for the UK’s Copts, preserving their religion, community, and culture. But it is also far from home. Ask Father Antonious’s wife for her opinion of Muslim Brother and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, and she waves her hand in the air: “Oh, he’s in God’s hands.” For the community abroad it may be, as blogger Salam Moussa puts it, “not so much that they left Egypt as that Egypt has left them.”

On 4th November 2012 The Copts elected their new pope, Tawadros II, a former youth leader. At home and overseas, his election provides a significant source of hope and reassurance in the face of other influences chipping away at their community. Many onlookers unfamiliar with the Coptic ritual of selecting a new pope—in which a small, blindfolded child picks one of three names as voted for by the Coptic clergy—found the method bemusing. Marko Jako, a Coptic journalist living in Egypt, told The Majalla that “the Church is a light for the world by being an example. The transparency of papal elections was motive to think: why can’t all elections be this way, with the applicants competing without any violations or using dirty methods and all accept the result?”

When push comes to shove

Emigration of the Copts from Egypt to the West has occurred for over fifty years, but has increased in recent times. The exact number of Copts now living in Egypt is contested, as the figure could conceivably affect the status of Christians under the new constitution that is currently being drafted. While official statistics issued by the Egyptian government estimate the community’s population at 5.13 million, the Coptic Church estimates the community at fifteen to eighteen million out of Egypt’s eighty-five million people. However, a significant decline in their population over the years means that even those who consider that the numbers are exaggerated admit that the diminishing presence of the Copts in Egypt is a legitimate concern. A strong Christian presence in Egypt puts pressure on the Islamists to enact egalitarian principles and many believe that a drastic reduction of the Coptic community could be detrimental to the democratization of the country.

Hundreds of Egyptian protesters march in Shubra in Cairo on October 9, 2012 to mark one year since Maspero.

However, the weakened security that followed the ouster of Mubarak and the rise in religious fundamentalism in Egyptian society—more specifically, the formerly suppressed Salafism (a conservative strain of Islam)—signify new challenges. These issues coincide with an increasing intensity and number of attacks against the Coptic community, including one on New Year’s Day 2011 when a car bomb exploded outside a Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria, killing at least twenty-three and injuring at least seventy-nine. In May 2011, sectarian violence in Cairo killed twelve people; in October of that year, twenty-seven people including twenty-six Copts and one Muslim man, died during fighting with the security forces after a protest march in Cairo over the burning of a church—a highly significant turning point for Copts known as the Maspero demonstrations. As the Coptic journalist Marko Jako says, “Emigration of Copts to West wasn’t started by recent violent actions, but these actions gave more motives to those who were hesitant about immigration to take the decision, especially after Maspero.”

Government inaction

Religious divisions and differences in their views about the application of Sharia law between the ruling Muslim Brotherhood party and their extremist Salafis coalition partners are being cited as a cause of the trouble. The trend is not only a concern for Egyptian Christians, as Jako says: “This growing role scares the majority of Muslims too, maybe as same as minorities. Once I heard discussion between a Muslim and a Christian years ago, the Muslim told the Christian that if radicals took control, ‘You will be treated as infidel, but for me I’ll be treated as apostate and beheaded.’”
Many believe Morsi should be stronger in his condemnation of religious extremists…he has so far failed to act in a decisive manner
Human Rights Watch has recorded “growing religious intolerance” and sectarian violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt. However, it also notes a failure by the Egyptian government to effectively investigate and prosecute those responsible. A sense of solidarity permeated Muslim and Christian relations in the early days of the uprising against Mubarak’s presidency and it was thought that this would endure. “The first few weeks of the uprising saw people of all religious backgrounds standing together for one cause, but unfortunately because the foundation wasn’t there that didn’t continue,” Shehata laments.

Many believe Morsi should be stronger in his condemnation of religious extremists, and that he should be working hard to define mainstream Islam as being separated from these acts of violence. However, he has so far failed to act in a decisive manner. In the wake of the riots that erupted across Egypt and the rest of the Arab World over an anti-Islamic film, the Economist published an article, “Morsi’s Moment,” on 22 September, in which it stated that “Muhammad Morsi . . . has seemed a lot keener to express sympathy for the feelings of those who sought to trash the American embassy in Cairo than to upbraid them for their riotous behavior.” It added that condemning the acts “would cause Mr. Morsi trouble with his extremist Salafist coalition partners.”

Egypt’s president Mohammed Morsi

Mourad Mohamed of the Freedom and Justice Party, which has strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood and holds nearly half of seats in Parliament, recently told Al Jazeera: “I feel sorry for these instances and we are condemning them and we cannot accept these instances, at the same time we see these as symptoms of a dictatorship that was prevailing due to the previous regime, the Mubarak regime and Sadat regime where democracy was absent.”

The response from a Coptic bishop in Egypt who also appeared on the program reflected the mounting frustrations over what appears to be inaction on behalf of the government: “I think there is a big difference between rhetoric and seeing actual action . . . Many months into the presidency of the current administration but we haven’t seen any real positive proactive policies of citizenship building.”

According to Jako, that sentiment was also voiced by Egypt’s new Pope: “Last week, members of the Freedom and Justice Party visited Pope Tawadrows II to congratulate him . . . during the talk they asked him about what he [would] like to see in Egypt, [and] he replied, ‘I want to see freedom and justice.’”

President Morsi insists that Egypt is open to Muslims and Christians, yet little is being done to curb the religious extremism or promote inclusion in today’s Egypt. Copts are not reassured by Morsi, who was notably absent during their Pope’s recent enthronement but who is regularly seen holding talks from inside mosques. “He stresses about going every Friday to a mosque to preach; this is his aim, even he said that ‘I am president for all the Egyptians’—but he is not,” Father Antonious said.

This has led many Copts to question whether Morsi’s loyalty to his own faith is stronger than his oath to his countrymen. “We are all Egyptians, the majority is Muslim and that is fine, but he should reach out to everyone,” says Shehata. “His actions are not encouraging. He is contradictory. He doesn’t show any signs of helping Christians. He hasn’t shown enough for the Copts to trust him. He should distance himself from the Muslim Brotherhood as a group. He should focus on the economy.”

A new pope and a new constitution

Mahmoud Ghozlan, a member of Egypt’s Constituent Assembly who is tasked with drawing up the new constitution, said on Ikhwanweb that Islamists were “keen to meet demands advocated by all factions and components of society, especially Egypt’s Copts.” Coptic Journalist Jako also sounds positive: “The last elections showed that [the] Coptic community is an important number in the political equation, and there are many qualified people who can help,” but he adds that “Egypt, as ever, is managed hierarchically, so it depends on the top authority.”

Saïd Shehata points out that “those drafting the constitution are Islamists.” On Al-Jazeera, Mohammed Mourad stressed that one of four of Morsi’s advisors is a Copt and said, “We need to give a fair chance for all Egyptians to get up into the hierarchy.” However, Copts fear the Muslim Brotherhood’s focus on the umma (the larger Muslim community), and their promotion of an Islamic nation over an Egyptian nation would leave them second class citizens at best. They are also concerned that the Brotherhood has reneged on previous promises. “The plan to make a Copt a vice president was a huge disappointment. They very quickly recanted and that didn’t go ahead and vice presidents turned into advisors,” remembers Shehata.

Pope Tawadros II arrives for his enthronement ceremony on November 18, 2012.

Today, in Egypt and abroad, the Coptic community still looks to their Pope for guidance. In his new role, Pope Tawadros II has trod a fine line between advocacy and quietism in the political sphere. He has approved Article 2 of the draft constitution on the role of Islamic Sharia in the state, which stipulates that the “principles of Sharia are the main source of legislation”—a subject of intense debate after Salafis vied to have the word “principles” omitted from the text. However, he has also said that he hopes the constitution-drafting body will be able to unite all Egyptians and has “absolutely rejected” imposing a religious state, advocating instead the principles of citizenship. “In almost in every interview I watched and read he says that justice is must be carried out, and the treatment of every situation has to be according to the law. If he succeeded in this point only, that will be great change for all Egyptians,” says Jako.

Most Copts agree that the Pope, who is “absolutely liked by most people” according to Shehata, should not take an active role in politics. Due to the marginalization of their community, however, Copts were forced to consult the church over state bodies for many years. “In my opinion, the church should not be involved directly in the political issues,” says Jako, although he hopes that in “being an example of tolerance and listening, modesty and accepting different people will be motive for others to replicate the model.”

Saïd Shehata believes the Pope should engage Copts in political life: “In the church, the biggest challenge is to engage Christians to become important actors. The Pope is symbolic figure; he has a big role to play to encourage Christians to have hope and participate—but not to lay out a map.”

So what does the future hold for Copts in Egypt? If things continue the way they have been then, as Jako says, “the future looks dark.” Yet, he also notes a positive aspect of the revolution in that “people have become more able to think, and criticize.” Shehata supports this, saying, “An average of nine to ten million Christians in Egypt are educated and would be willing to take a political role.”

Father Antonious, however, is firmly against the church playing a role in politics: “The word ‘politics’ comes from ‘politika,’ meaning ‘cheating,’” he says, “so this is politics—lying, showing something untrue. This is not Christianity.”

Many elements have contributed to the reduction of the Coptic community in Egypt. While some believe the future lies in the hands of god, others are convinced that the future of the Copts lies in their own hands. Ultimately, it may prove to be a true test of both faith and will.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

A year later, in 1955, Nasser published a book called Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution. In this work, Nasser lays out the rationale behind the revolution and explains the lens through which he sees the world.

Nasser identifies three circles that Egypt falls within: Arab, African, and Islamic: “We cannot look stupidly at a map of the world, not realizing our place therein and the role determined to us by that place.” In this sense, Egypt is surrounded by the “Arab circle”, which is “as much a part of us as we are a part of it, our history has been mixed with it and that its interests are linked with ours.” In essence, Nasser is laying out the basis for his pan-Arab nationalist ideology, which would become one of the most dominant political ideologies to grip the region, knocking aside pro-Western capitalism and pro-Soviet communist ideologies with ease.

The second circle is based entirely on geography. After all, the continent in which Egypt is situated is Africa. This can hardly be ignored. At the time of Nasser’s writing in 1954–55, the massive decolonization of Africa had not yet taken place, but the writing was clearly on the wall. He wrote, “It is not in vain that our countries lie to the northeast of Africa, a position from which it gives upon the dark continent wherein rages today the most violent struggle between white colonizers and black natives for the possession of its inexhaustible resources.”

Nasser’s third circle, the Islamic one, has taken on increasing relevance today: “Can we ignore that there is a Muslim world with which we are tied by bonds which are not only forged by religious faith but also tightened by the facts of history?” He points out how Egypt became a safe haven for Muslims when the Mongols ravaged the region, and how this is an important part of Egypt’s heritage. In essence, Nasser was appealing to the strong Islamist sentiment that pervaded Egyptian society then, and continues to this day.

Even though it has been nearly sixty years since Nasser penned the philosophy of his revolution, the three circles that he identified then remain intrinsic to Egypt today. Most Egyptians see themselves as Arabs, though there are religious and ethnic minorities—like Coptic Christians—that view themselves differently. There is no question that they are part of the African community, as Egypt plays a large role in the African Union (AU). Indeed, Nasser was a founding member of the Casablanca Group, the AU’s predecessor, and the second president of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which emerged from the Casablanca Group, from 1964–65.

However, with the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as the leading political force in Egypt following the 2011–12 revolution, Nasser’s third circle has taken on new relevance, almost overshadowing the importance of Arab nationalism. This is an interesting and important development, but also one that troubles secular Egyptians and the large Coptic minority as well as some Westerners, who fear the emergence of an Islamic republic.

Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that the Brothers will move rapidly to impose an Islamic form of government on Egypt, since President Morsi’s victory was only by a small margin and there are plenty of forces within Egypt, including its military, that would not stand for this. That being the case, the Brothers will likely proceed carefully and pay heed to Nasser’s rhetorical question: “What is our positive role in this trouble world and where is the scene in which we can play that role?”

Afghans burn the U.S. flag in Ghanikhel district of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Sept. 14, 2012 during anti-American riots. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

This was followed by a series of similar events and clashes, such as the Danish cartoons that were published five years ago, a Dutch short film—not to mention calls to burn the Qu’ran in Florida, and others. However today, an anti-Islam film has managed to represent a greater danger than at any time before. This is because this film was reportedly produced by an Egyptian Copt; and it is being seen at a time when Egypt’s sectarian scene is on the verge of igniting. In addition to this, we are now passing through the post-revolutionary era, namely the Arab Spring, which the Americans have lauded, saying this will open a better world in terms of communication between peoples, rather than dictatorial government.

Anybody who believes that the clash of civilizations—or religions—will end in the next decade is wrong, for this is something that will only get worse! This is not because of an increase in the number of people who want to insult and abuse the religion of others, for such figures have always been present, but rather due to the growing means of communication and activism.

For example, just a few weeks ago a documentary about the history of Islam was broadcast which was far worse than the cheap—in terms of production and content—YouTube film that has sparked protests across the region. The host of this documentary claimed that Islam and the Qu’ran came into existence only 100 years after the Arabs occupied most of the Middle East; however, not many people paid attention to this because it was not promoted on YouTube. In addition to this, there is another American film—made with high production values—that insults Islam; however, nobody has paid attention to this because it is outside the radar of popular culture and political controversy.

This abuse is not just limited to Islam; Christians, Jews and Hindus are fighting their own battles against hostile literary and artistic projects. The difference is that Muslims are afflicted with the presence of armed extremist organizers—such as Al Qaeda—who believe it is their duty to defend Islam. Catholics protested against and indeed tried to ban the Da Vinci Code, which denies the divinity of Jesus Christ. Prior to this, large controversy focused on Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ movie, particularly its portrayal of the Jews. These all resulted in controversy that sparked disagreements and tensions and hatred at a time of intellectual, political and cultural turmoil.

In comparison, nobody is paying any attention to those who are working to confront this phenomenon by producing films or books that defend religion and show it in a positive light, not to mention counter negative stereotypes that have abounded with the spread of the culture of hatred. Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, a Kuwaiti national, is the creator of the 99, which aims to extol the history and culture of Islam to the youth around the world. There are a few others who are trying to do the same, however we have not seen any demonstrations to thank or support them!

The problem is larger than it seems today, and this goes far beyond anger directed at the producer of a film that insults Islam. Discord and hatred is rising between different religions and communities. Just a few weeks ago, we saw two guests on an Arab television show get involved in a physical confrontation live on air over the tensions between the Sunni and Shi’ite communities. Meanwhile, Libya is experiencing a crisis due to the demolition of Sufi shrines, something that almost led to the eruption of full-scale hostilities between the Sufi community and the Salafists responsible for this. And in Morocco, semi-literate people have been keen to announce that their country is only for followers of the Maliki Islamic madhab, and there is no room for followers of the Hanbali school. This demonstrates how relations can deteriorate and sour if we do not pay attention to this and fail to understand how this will risk our own future. We have seen how religious conflict led to the recent division in Sudan, whilst it also threatens Iraq with the same. In addition to this, northern Lebanon lives under the specter of war and God only knows what will happen in Syria!

This article was originally published in Asharq Al-Awsat on 15 September 2012.

Yemeni protesters gather around fire during a demonstration outside the US embassy in Sanaa over a film mocking Islam on September 13, 2012

The deputy Libyan ambassador to the UK, Ahmed Jibril, has said that a radical Islamist group, Ansar Al-Sharia, was responsible for the attack on the American embassy. Others point to groups linked to what remains of the Al-Qaeda organization, and point to recent calls from its head, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, to avenge the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi, an Al-Qaeda leader killed in a drone attack on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in June.

On Wednesday, a mob stormed the American embassy in Cairo and tore down the American flag, replacing it with a black Islamic banner. Today, a mob stormed the grounds of the American embassy in Sanaa, Yemen. In both cases, the local police drove the intruders out and sealed off the area, but protests continue. It remains to be seen if popular anger will lead to more attacks on American facilities elsewhere tomorrow after Friday prayer services.

So far, there have been no more fatalities or armed attacks, which suggest the Libyan incident is an isolated example. While it is conceivable that there may be connections between transnational radical militants coordinating protests, it is far more likely that the protests which have occurred simply reflect popular anger towards the inflammatory film. The Libyan attack therefore may have been an opportunistic attack by radical militants who were waiting for an opportunity to strike.

The chances that others will follow in their footsteps can only be guessed at, but the anger aroused by the release of the controversial film is a tempting resource for terrorists to exploit. Coupled with the chaotic situation of countries still in a transition, like Libya and Yemen, where arms are easy to obtain and government control is shaky, the chances of further bloodshed and sectarian strife is high.

Whatever the producers of the film in question, ‘Innocence of Muslims’, intended to do by releasing it, they have succeeded in stoking anger in the Muslim world and the US, making them the unwitting allies of terrorists who seek to exploit it. While their actions have already contributed to the deaths of several people, it would be an even greater tragedy if the actions of both groups sabotaged the chances of citizens of Libya, Egypt and Yemen of rebuilding their societies in the wake of revolution and dictatorship.

A Libyan National Electoral Commission worker takes a break from working as his colleague checks the ballot boxes of the National Assembly elections in Benghazi on July 12, 2012

Following a number of delays and recounts, the National Election Commission announced that the National Forces Alliance party has won 39 of the 80 seats reserved for political parties in Libya’s 200 member General National Assembly. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood’s affiliated party, the Justice and Construction party, won 17 seats, less than half of the secular party. Interestingly, even more conservative Muslim parties had a more difficult time securing votes from conservative Libyans. The al-Wattan party for instance failed to win a single seat.

The significant victory of the National Forces Alliance party has been attributed to its leadership. Headed by the former leader of Libya’s first interim government, Mahmoud Jibril, many Libyans have come to associate the party with the type of change that led to the revolution in the first place. In addition, Jibril’s former experience as a member of Libya’s economic development board has helped brand the party as a source of knowledge regarding the types of economic reforms the country will need to implement in its efforts to reconstruct the post-war economy.

Indeed, Jibril’s party has declared its intention to attract foreign direct investment to Libya, and believes it is a priority to improve the country’s infrastructure. Importantly, the NFA has also been vocal about the social policies it will implement as a means to address some of the lingering development issues the country faces in its transition. For instance, the NFA has suggested it would like to create a minimum wage and expand the country’s social security system.

It is important to note however that while most Libyans voted for the NFA, this by no means suggests that Islam will not play an important role in the policies of a future government. For one, the NFA itself believes that Sharia should be the main legislation in the country, and it has not described itself as a secular party.

Moreover, the make-up of the General Assembly has not yet been confirmed. Though it is known that the NFA has won the majority of the 80 party seats, a further 120 seats are reserved for candidates who ran as individuals. According to a recent article in The Guardian, some of these individuals may declare themselves for one of the parties when Parliament meets in August. Such a move could reorient the policy inclinations of the general assembly towards more religious values. Nevertheless, it has been noted hat the majority of the individual candidates are representative of Libya’s numerous tribal and ethnic minorities. As such it is unlikely they will favor being engulfed in a party that already represents the interests of majority groups in the country.

American Muslims and members of all faiths demonstrate March 6, 2011 in Times Square, New York

The Franco-American argument about which country deserves to lecture the other on everything from liberty to multilateralism—has raged for centuries, but France just won the latest round. In France the May elections exposed the self-defeating folly of attacking Muslims to rally xenophobic sentiment—a lesson that has so far failed to resonate with the American political establishment. With Muslims growing in numbers and organizational strength on both sides of the Atlantic, Nicholas Sarkozy’s ousting should be a cautionary tale to US presidential candidates, and the hundreds of congressman up for election this November—all must beware the Muslim vote.

Sarkozy’s late conversion to unashamed Muslim bashing was not the life raft it promised to be, instead helping to rally an estimated 2 million Muslims to vote against him and giving Francois Hollande a majority of 18 million votes, to Sarkozy’s 16.8 million.

In America, heading for a closely contested election, Muslim Americans could prove even more crucial in the upcoming vote.

The outcome of the US presidential election in 2012 hinges on a few key swing states, most crucially, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. No president since 1960 has won without taking at least one of the first three, with current polls citing microscopic gaps in support between the two candidates.

Unbeknown to most, Muslims have the potential to be the decisive voice in determining the results in all four. While the Muslim population at best accounts for a fraction of a percent nationally, in these key battlegrounds they make up some one percent of voters. Moreover, unlike other minority communities who are beset by low turnouts, Muslims have historically voted in block and in the last decade have started to vote in extremely high numbers.

If the race to the White House stays tight, this historically little-understood, sidelined and isolated demographic of Muslim Americans, could finally make an impressive debut onto the national stage.

This is not fear mongering nor wishful thinking —depending on one’s political preferences—Muslims have swung US elections before. The Muslim vote was instrumental in helping former President George W. Bush secure the controversial contest in 2000. Back then Muslims, who accounted for more than 100,000 registered voters in Florida, were the only minority to back the Texan en masse, giving him some 70 percent of their votes in a state decided by a mere 537 ballots. By winning the Sunshine State, Bush won the presidency while losing the popular vote to former Vice President Al Gore.

As strange as it may sound, Muslim Americans and the Republican Party were not always the alien bedfellows they now appear. Excluding the 20 to 25 percent of the Muslim population estimated to be African American (and known to be loyally Democratic), the sparse data that exists on US Muslims voting preferences indicates that most are favourable to Republican messages on free markets, low taxation and religious values. George W. Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, for one, was a firm advocate of incorporating Muslim Americans into the Republican fold—to counteract to the Jewish vote that, for all the right’s saber rattling over Palestine and Iran, has remained stubbornly Democrat.

But Rove’s union was not to be. The disastrous Bush-era wars in Iraq, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, not to mention the explosion in anti-Muslim fervour institutionalised by legislation such as the Patriot Act, aroused a political shift as marked as anything seen in US politics.

This post 9/11 fallout pushed Muslim Americans to organize, and become much more politically aware.

Slowly shifting their allegiance to the Democratic Party in the mid-2000s, their conversion to the Democratic camp was cemented by President Barack Hussein Obama, who wooed Muslims with his diverse heritage and initially reconciliatory language toward the Muslim world.

The alliance looks set to endure for the duration of Obama’s presidency, but beyond 2012 or 2016, Muslim voter loyalty will be far less certain. While many identify closely with Obama, they are far less sure of the Democratic Party, explains Farid Senzai a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) and the author of a recent a report intended as one of the first comprehensive works on America Muslim voting behaviour.

Complicating this political differentiation further is the staggering diversity of the American Muslim demographic, which consists of old and new immigrant groups, coming from places as diverse as Morocco, Iran and Southeast Asia—not to mention the home-grown domestic population.

The community also suffers from huge wealth disparities. While Muslims largely appear to be more financially affluent than the average American—meaning that they have as yet largely untapped resources to bestow upon political allies—pockets of extreme poverty also exist. Although most American Mulsims prioritize the economy as an electoral issue, it is hard to isolate a particular economic message. For all the differences, however, one unifying issue prevails: Islamophobia.

In Florida, which has been plagued by instances of organized Koran burning, witnessed a bomb attack on a Mosque and where Christian communities have come together to try and ban the building of Islamic houses of worship, the rallying cry has been particularly loud. As such, the Florida Muslim community has grown into one of the most cohesive and vocal in the country.

The process has not been purely spontaneous, receiving a necessary boost from Muslim electoral advocacy groups such as Emerge USA that have sprung up in recent years and work to bolster political participation. With their assistance, however, the community’s political engagement is slowly becoming self-sustaining.

Since 2007 when Emerge first started conducting polls and doing outreach, the organization has managed to boost registration and turnout in targeted districts from almost zero to anywhere from 50 to 100 percent. According to Emerge USA vice chairman Khurrum Wahid, in Florida almost 80 percent of Muslims eligible to vote did so in 2008. This compares to 58 percent of voters overall. In non-presidential elections, the difference has been just as stark and in 2010 some 60 percent of registered Muslims voted in Florida, in contrast to 41 percent nationally. While it will be difficult to replicate the excitement of 2008, Emerge still expects Muslims to turn out in well above average numbers this November.

There remains huge room for organizational and institutional growth. The exact number of US Muslims is still small and, owing to the US Census’ omission of religious affiliation, notoriously hard to put a figure on. Estimates vary from the 2.75 million projected by the independent Pew Research Center in 2011, to almost 10 million suggested by some pro-Muslim groups. But, for all the uncertainty, one thing is undeniable; the Muslim American demographic is growing and growing fast. At an average population rate of increase of five to six percent, it laps the American average of less than one percent.

Ignoring these new voters, or worse, using them as tools to boost support among the right, threatens to prove politically disastrous. Gone are the days when Muslim bashing earned Democrats and Republicans alike a sure-fire ticket to Washington. Politicians in both camps better wake up to the reality soon, or face the consequences.

An Egyptian man shows his ink-stained finger after voting in the country's first free presidential election at a polling station in Cairo on May 23, 2012.

Conspicuously absent from Egypt’s presidential elections—the first round of which ends today (Wednesday)—has been a serious discussion about the flagging economy. Last week, when Standard & Poor’s declared that a depreciation of the Egyptian Pound was inevitable and that it was reducing its credit rating on the banking sector, there was nary a mention of it in the local press.

Among the many businessmen, party leaders and economists I’ve spoken with there seems to be a faith-based notion that the election of a new president—albeit one whose powers remain undefined by a constitution that has yet to be written—will almost by itself revive foreign direct investment, worker remittances, Suez Canal traffic, and tourism arrivals. This for an economy that suffers from an acute liquidity crisis and is expected to grow by less than one percent this year, if at all.

Khairat El-Shater, deputy supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood and himself a highly successful businessman, laid out for me a compelling plan to modernize Egyptian tourism, rebuild its failing infrastructure and establish a world-class industrial base. When I asked where the financing would come from given Cairo’s depleted foreign exchange reserves and absence of investment from abroad, he said it would come surging back after the election.

On Tuesday, Tarek Shaalan, who heads the economics committee for Egypt’s largest Salafi party, told me the economy would be saved by the post-election enabling of Islamic banking and investment funds that would flush to the surface the country’s vast underground economy, where it could be audited and taxed. All this would happen by the end of the year, he said, once the new president is sworn in.

It’s not just the Islamists who are stirred by the presumption of a post-election idyll. With few exceptions, Cairo’s investment banks are seizing on isolated signs of recovery—mainly an extraordinary rise in worker remittences from Libya, a modest increase in foreign reserves of $100 million and a slight rise in local-currency deposits—as the basis of sanguine growth estimates.

None of this is to disparage Egypt’s historic elections nor enthusiasm among the people who boldly struggled for them. And it is entirely possible that political stability, or at least a facsimile of it, will revive investment and the tourist trade. Structural problems that impair the economy run wide and deep, however, and expectations of their speedy resolution could ultimately render Egyptians cynical and dismissive about the very democratic system that can redeem them after thirty years of oppression and neglect. While they are rightly proud of having deposed a dictator, the popular notion that “the hard part is over” makes for a dangerous conceit.

Journalists and human right activists protest in front of the courthouse in Istanbul during the trial of two prominent Turkish journalists Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener on November 22, 2011.

One wonders what Rumi would have made of modern Turkey’s most powerful religious group, the neo-Sufi Fethullah Gulen Movement, set up in the early 1970s by a former state-employed imam, in control today of a media empire and a network of schools and businesses that stretches across the world.

Outside Turkey, among the few who know of it, the Movement has long had a positive reputation.

Playing on simplistic western ideas of Sufism as ‘tolerant’ Islam, its leaders have proved adept at marketing it as a moderate alternative to Al-Qaeda and its offshoots. A day after the Twin Tower attacks, Gulen placed a full page advert in the New York Times saying that “a terrorist cannot be a Muslim, nor can a true Muslim be a terrorist.”

The advert was very much on message. Based in the USA since 1999, Gulen has been unswervingly critical of efforts to turn Islam into what he calls “a means to control people.” In reality, he says, it is a “religion of belief, prayer and good morals” which is perfectly in line with Western democratic norms.

Gulen was an early exponent of inter-faith dialogue, meeting Pope John Paul II in 1998. He has met Jewish community leaders on numerous occasions since. Across Europe and the US foundations set up by his followers organize conferences on ‘moderate Islam’ and the importance of civilizational dialogue.

Schools funded and staffed by his sympathizers offer English-language education—modeled on Turkey’s state curriculum—to the children of elites from Mongolia to South America.

Every year, in the second half of May, hundreds of children from the schools come to Turkey to participate in what the Movement calls the Turkish Olympiads, competing to sing the best Turkish song, to recite the best Turkish poem, to dance the best Turkish folk dance. The finals are broadcast on prime-time TV and reported assiduously by newspapers of all ideological stripes.

“This organization will transform Turkey from a regional power to a world power”, Ali Agaoglu, the CEO of one of Turkey’s biggest construction companies, enthused after last year’s finals.

Even Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, known to be no great fan of the Movement, if only because its power risks encroaching on his, was unstinting in his praise. “When I go abroad, I see our flag flying not just in our embassies,” he told the gala audience last year. “I see it in the schools too, and that makes me proud.”

Yet, despite the public displays of enthusiasm that greet the Olympiads every year, attitudes towards the Gulen Movement inside Turkey have long been mixed.

In part, the suspicion can be put down to the Republic’s deep suspicion of what it calls irtica (reaction), a convenient shorthand for any expression of Islam that is not in line with interpretations backed by the state.

In 2000, three years into an army-backed campaign to crush political Islam, a prosecutor charged Gulen with attempting to undermine Turkish secularism. Gulen has always denied the charges, and in 2006 a court dismissed the case.

Since then, the power of the Movement has grown exponentially. Sales of its flagship newspaper, Zaman, have grown in five years from around 300,000 to just under a million. When a non-Turk boards a Turkish Airlines flight today, it is Zaman‘s English-language version they are offered to read, not the more secular Turkish Daily News, as was once the case.

Analysts put its rapid rise down to its success at capturing the newly-confident zeitgeist of Anatolia’s new entrepreneurs.

In Gaziantep, Konya, Kayseri and Denizli, socially conservative Anatolian cities that have risen from small trading towns to major industrial exporters in the last twenty years, pro-Gulen business associations regroup the strongest businesses.

Everywhere you go in these cities, you meet businessmen who echo the sentiments Gulen has expressed in his sermons for years: pride in Turkey, the descendant of the great Ottoman Empire, the conviction that after years of weakness and shame the country is on the way up again, the conviction that strength lies in strong faith, an emphasis on moral conservatism rather than radical Islam.

But the Movement’s growth has increased suspicions, and skepticism about its intentions is no longer limited to secularist die-hards.

At the heart of suspicions lies the sprawling investigation into a group that Turks know as Ergenekon, the name of a Romulus and Remus-style myth of Turkish origins.

The investigation began in 2007, when police found a stash of explosives at a retired military petty-officer’s house in Istanbul. Within months, scores of people had been arrested on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the self-styled ‘Muslim democrat’ government in power since 2002: mafiosi, hired killers the state had used to gun down Kurdish dissidents in the 1990s, ultra-nationalist lawyers and—shockingly—several four-star generals.

Secular politicians reacted from the start with horror. But for many Turks, liberal or conservative, the investigations were welcome. Evidence of plotting was clear. There was a history too: the army had intervened in politics four times since 1960. Finally, the unelected ‘guardians’ of the Turkish Republic were being brought to account. It was a victory for democracy.

Then things began to go wrong. It wasn’t just the abysmal quality of the three Ergenekon indictments, or their length (5000 pages). Nor was it the fact some suspects have been held in custody for over two years either: Turks are used to that. It was the way investigations seemed to turn into a witch-hunt of critics of both the government and the Movement.

In 2009, there was a police raid on the house of a terminally-ill 73-year old woman well-known for her advocacy of girls’ education. In 2010, a senior police officer who had spent his life fighting left-wing terror was arrested on charges of membership of an extreme left-wing terror group. In 2011, two journalists who had done more than any to shed light on Ergenekon were arrested on suspicion of being members.

Many blamed the Movement for the arrests. Long accused of being a missionary by conservatives (her mother was Swiss), the woman had set up schools that were a competitor of Movement schools. The police officer had just published a book alleging that Movement supporters controlled senior positions in the police. The journalists had both written books critical of the Movement. “Anybody who touches [the Movement] burns,” one of them shouted as police led him away.

Sympathizers of Fethullah Gulen point out that Turkey is full of critics of the Movement who have not been arrested.

But the reactions of the Movement’s media to the arrests did nothing for its reputation. A news presenter on Samanyolu television, the Movement’s TV flagship, smiled as he announced the woman’s death from cancer shortly after the raid. When the police officer was arrested, Zaman columnists made much of allegations that he was having an affair with a schoolteacher.

“If he had not had an affair, would [he] be in prison today,” asked Huseyin Gulerce, a leading columnist for Zaman. “God protect us all from our moral frailties. For it is these that the Deep State uses.” (The Deep State is the shadowy nexus of civilians and military men Turks believe have controlled Turkey from behind the scenes for decades.)

Gulerce then went on to quote the alleged founder of a military police unit blamed for scores of murders during the 1990s. “Before we recruit people for JITEM, we dirty them thoroughly: they are no good to us if they are clean.” The implication was clear: the police officer was a member of JITEM, a group he was among the first officials publicly to give evidence against in the 1990s.

As international concern grew over the fate of the arrested journalists, meanwhile, it was the pro-Gulen media which led lobbying to keep the vaguely-worded anti-terror laws and ‘Special Authority Courts’ which enabled judges to keep the men in custody for over a year without even informing them of the case against them.

Get rid of the courts, Zaman chief editor Ekrem Dumanli wrote, and “all the trials against deep structures will fail. That is what Ergenekon supporters have been demanding for a long time.”

It is a rhetorical trope that has become wearingly familiar in recent years. In the past, the secular regime smeared its opponents as irticaci (reactionaries). Today, Ergenekon has replaced irtica. Only the media’s fondness for unattributed sources and ad hominem attacks remains unchanged.

The irony, analysts say, is that Zaman was among the most outspoken supporters, back in 2004, of the government’s European Union-backed plans to dispense with the State Security Courts which had been used for decades to lock up opponents of the regime.

Why oppose one court and defend another which is almost a carbon-copy of the first? That, critics of the Gulen Movement say, is the nub of the issue.

“What we have seen over the past six or seven years is a veiled war for control between two judicial cliques,” secularists backed by the military and Gulen sympathizers, says Orhan Gazi Ertekin, a judge and political analyst.

The State Security Courts were controlled by military judges, and secularists controlled other courts. Today, secularists are still strong in higher courts, the Court of Appeals and the Constitutional Court. The new Special Authority Courts, responsible for running the investigations into allegations of coup plots and terrorism, are controlled by Gulen sympathisers.

“The Movement has won the power struggle,” Ertekin says. “They are the new Kemalists. The mind-set is the same. Expecting them to be any more ‘Islamic’ than the secularists is as meaningless as expecting them to be any more democratic.”

Ertekin sees the signs of a growing rift within the judiciary between Gulen supporters and Islamists, allied until recently by a shared desire to combat authoritarian secular ideas. Politically too, old allies appear to be drifting apart: the government recently rushed to pass laws protecting Turkey’s intelligence chief after the same prosecutors who have spearheaded Ergenekon investigations tried to take him in for questioning.

“The alliance between the Justice and Development Party government and the Gulen Movement is finished”, says Ali Bayramoglu, a columnist for the pro-government and Gulen-neutral daily Yeni Safak.

Smelling blood, Turkey’s media have stopped applauding the Movement and timidly begun to question its motives. The international media too, which played such an important role in burnishing the Movement’s image as a standard-bearer for ‘liberal Islam’, have begun to rethink.

The New York Times, until recently a fairly unreflective cheerleader of Fethullah Gulen and his educational activities, has recently published two articles criticizing the Movement.

The second in particular, published in April, stung the Movement to respond. Gulen’s lawyer Orhan Erdemli accused “some marginal circles” of generating what Today’s Zaman called “imaginary scenarios to besmirch Gulen’s reputation.”

“[T]hey set about campaigns of lynching through the media in order to destroy this great interest, love, and high respect for Gulen held by the public opinion”, Today’s Zaman reported Erdemli as saying.

Fighting words. But Rusen Cakir, a liberal columnist who has watched the Movement for decades, nonetheless senses that many in the Movement are increasingly anxious at the turn events are taking.

“The Movement wants to leave behind the ‘extraordinary’ events of recent years and return to civil society activities,” he says.

Political scientist Dogu Ergil agrees. “The Gulen Movement is Turkey’s biggest export”, he says. “And when you internationalize yourself, you have to… balance things.”

As it works to re-brand itself, the Movement would do well to consider Rumi’s words: “Either appear as you are, or be as you appear.”