{"id":47472,"date":"2011-12-08T10:40:50","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T08:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=47472"},"modified":"2014-01-06T22:53:27","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T20:53:27","slug":"joining-a-dinner-in-a-muslim-brotherhood-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/12\/08\/joining-a-dinner-in-a-muslim-brotherhood-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Joining a Dinner in a Muslim Brotherhood Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF<\/span>
\nCAIRO<\/p>\n

If you want to understand the Islamic forces that are gaining strength in Egypt and scaring people here and abroad, let me tell you about my dinner in the home of Muslim Brotherhood activists.<\/p>\n

First, meet my hostess: Sondos Asem, a 24-year-old woman who is pretty much the opposite of the stereotypical bearded Brotherhood activist. Sondos is a middle-class graduate of the American University in Cairo, where I studied in the early 1980s (\u201cthat\u2019s before I was born,\u201d she said wonderingly, making me feel particularly decrepit).<\/p>\n

She speaks perfect English, is writing a master\u2019s thesis on social media, and helps run the Brotherhood\u2019s English-language Twitter feed, @Ikhwanweb.<\/p>\n

The Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as the dominant political party in parliamentary voting because of people like Sondos and her family. My interviews with supporters suggest that the Brotherhood is far more complex than the caricature that scares many Americans.<\/p>\n

Sondos rails at the Western presumption that the Muslim Brotherhood would oppress women. She notes that her own mother, Manal Abul Hassan, is one of many female Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated candidates running for Parliament.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big misconception that the Muslim Brotherhood marginalizes women,\u201d Sondos said. \u201cFifty percent of the Brotherhood are women.\u201d<\/p>\n

I told Sondos that Westerners are fearful partly because they have watched the authorities oppress women in the name of Islam in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Egypt can ever be compared to Saudi Arabia or Iran or Afghanistan,\u201d she replied. \u201cWe, as Egyptians, are religiously very moderate.\u201d A much better model for Egypt, she said, is Turkey, where an Islamic party is presiding over an economic boom.<\/p>\n

I asked about female circumcision, also called female genital mutilation, which is inflicted on the overwhelming majority of girls in Egypt. It is particularly common in conservative religious households and, to its credit, the Mubarak government made some effort to stop the practice. Many worry that a more democratic government won\u2019t challenge a practice that has broad support.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Muslim Brotherhood is against the brutal practice of female circumcision,\u201d Sondos said bluntly. She insisted that women over all would benefit from Brotherhood policies that focus on the poor: \u201cWe believe that a solution of women\u2019s problems in Egyptian society is to solve the real causes, which are illiteracy, poverty and lack of education.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked skeptically about alcohol, peace with Israel, and the veil. Sondos, who wears a hijab, insisted that the Brotherhood wasn\u2019t considering any changes in these areas and that its priority is simply jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cEgyptians are now concerned about economic conditions,\u201d she said. \u201cThey want to reform their economic system and to have jobs. They want to eliminate corruption.\u201d Noting that alcohol supports the tourism industry, she added: \u201cI don\u2019t think any upcoming government will focus on banning anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

I told her that I would feel more reassured if some of my liberal Egyptian friends were not so wary of the Brotherhood. Some warn that the Brotherhood may be soothing today but that it has a violent and intolerant streak \u2014 and is utterly inexperienced in managing a modern economy.<\/p>\n

Sondos looked exasperated. \u201cWe embrace moderate Islam,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are not the ultra-conservatives that people in the West envision.\u201d<\/p>\n

I heard similar reassurances from other Brotherhood figures I interviewed, and I\u2019m not sure what to think. But opinions vary, and I\u2019m struck by the optimism I heard in some secular quarters: from Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, an 80-year-old leftist who is a hero of Egyptian feminism, and from Ahmed Zewail, the Egyptian-American scientist who won a Nobel Prize and is passionate about education.<\/p>\n

Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister and Arab League secretary general who is a front-runner in the race for president, was similarly optimistic. He told me that whatever unfolds, Egypt will continue to seek good relations with the United States and will unquestionably stand by its peace treaty with Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot conduct an adventurous foreign policy when you rebuild a country,\u201d he said. \u201cWe must have the best of relations with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I raised American concerns that Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extremist Salafis might replicate Iran, he was dismissive: \u201cThe experience of Iran will not be repeated in Egypt.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think he\u2019s right. Revolutions are often messy, and it took Americans seven years from their victory in the American Revolution at Yorktown to get a ratified Constitution. Indonesia, after its 1998 revolution, felt very much like Egypt does today. It endured upheavals from a fundamentalist Islamic current, yet it pulled through.<\/p>\n

So a bit of nervousness is fine, but let\u2019s not overdo the hand-wringing \u2014 or lose perspective. What\u2019s historic in Egypt today is not so much the rise of any one party as the apparent slow emergence of democracy in the heart of the Arab world.<\/p>\n

via Joining a Dinner in a Muslim Brotherhood Home – NYTimes.com<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF CAIRO If you want to understand the Islamic forces that are gaining strength in Egypt and scaring people here and abroad, let me tell you about my dinner in the home of Muslim Brotherhood activists. First, meet my hostess: Sondos Asem, a 24-year-old woman who is pretty much the opposite of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":47474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[393],"tags":[4923,7407],"class_list":["post-47472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-egypt","tag-muslim-brotherhood","tag-muslim-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}