Islamist lawyer Montasir al-Zayat recently surprised a conference at the Al-Ahram Center in Cairo by announcing the formation of a new political party. Zayat is a colorful personality, a one-time confidant of Ayman al-Zawahiri, he broke with him by advocating the Gamaa Islamiya's ceasefire and renunciation of violence. At the Ahram Center's conference on the Gamaa's ceasefire initiative, Zayat revealed that the new political party Union for Freedom would incorporate a number of Islamist trends but would not be the mouthpiece of any one faction. It would offer a civil platform within an Islamic reference, would be open to Muslims and Christians, and would symbolize the Islamist movements transition from armed struggle to peaceful political cooperation. He denied that he himself would be one of its leaders, but promised to fight on behalf of its application for a license.
My first thought on reading this story was that it would be awfully odd if the Gamaa - responsible for many of the worst atrocities in the 1990s - were granted a license to form a political party when licenses were denied to the Muslim Brotherhood (mass popular base, no ties to violence) and the Wasat Party (so liberal as to arguably not even be Islamist anymore). But maybe it will never come to that.. because a bunch of Gamaa leaders denied any involvement in this alleged new party. Their colorful denunciations of Zayat filled the Egyptian media. So now nobody knows what's going on, other than it's all very colorful... and has Zayat's name in all the papers, where he likes it.
Whatever the outcome, the discussions about the Gamaa ceasefire initiative are very interesting. This has always been fascinating, an initiative which split the Egyptian radicals, helped drive Zawahiri to bin Laden, and has inspired Saad Eddin Ibrahim (for one). Abd al-Monem Said had some interesting comments as reported, while former Gamaa shura council member Najah Ibrahim didn't show, but his self-evaluation was published in al-Masry al-Youm today. Also an interesting take from Dia Rashwan.
The question of why violent Islamist movements might renounce violence is obviously relevant today. Unfortunately, as important as the prison conversations and theological reflection and better understanding of Egyptian society may have been, it's hard to ignore the role of the ferocious repression by the Egyptian security apparatus. That's certainly the lesson which most Arab governments have learned... and they aren't the only ones. Unfortunately that often misses the massive collateral damage to the Egyptian political arena, the stultifying propaganda campaigns, the unaccountable military courts, the torture, and all the other ways in which the counter-terrorism campaign morphed into regime maintenance and democracy suppression. And here we are today.
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