Many Muslims called the novel blasphemous.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death.

That sent Rushdie into hiding for years.

Now, there is a new conflict over Rushdie in India, where he was burn.

The British author was scheduled to speak this weekend at India’s largest literary festival organized in the northwestern city of Jaipur.

But Rushdie canceled after police warned him of a threat against his life.

The organizers tried to have Rushdie appear by video-link, but the owner of the hotel where the festival was held canceled the video link Tuesday, just minutes before Rushdie was scheduled to appear.

Under the previous authoritarian regime, religious expressions in public were illegal. Women faced arrest if they wore a veil on the street. Men with beards faced harassment.

Now, Tunisia’s practicing Muslims have begun asserting themselves on the streets, in politics and in the media. After Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime fell earlier this year, the new government took over a religious radio station previously owned by a relative of Ben Ali’s. The government selected Iqbal Gharbi to manage the station – called Zeitouna Radio. She hoped to inject a bit more professionalism into the place.

“Zeitouna Radio is in a transitional moment,” she said. “It was a private radio and now it became governmental. And the govt has the right to watch over it and to see what’s going on in there.”

The appointment did not go over well at the station.

Now, Gharbi is no stranger to controversy. As a professor of anthropology with a Phd from the Sorbonne, she’s penned provocative essaid on the role of women in Muslim societies, and on feminism and Islam. But even by those standards, what happened at Zeitouna was unique for her.

The staff went on strike. And for days, a recording of the Koran played in place of the usual programming. There are three on-air preachers who usually have programs during the day, talking morality, ethics, and other religious matters. Ahmed Seelie is one of them.

“We are having a protest because this manager was appointed,” he said. “She’s a woman, and she’s a professor of psychology, but not of religion. So she cannot be the manager of this radio station. Zeitouna radio is focused only on the Koran and religion.”

Sheikh Mohammad (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

“It was humiliating,” Meshfer said. “This is not normal for someone who graduated from the Sorbonne. I’ve been here these past ten months working to try to fix the radio station, trying to get people to work together as a team. And she comes in here and humiliates me.”

Gharbi admits she could have handled some things better, but she maintains the real reason the staff rejects her is her gender. Zeitouna staffers dispute this, and have said the real disagreement is religious versus secular ideology. Gharbi said, “it’s the same thing.”

“Now we’re in a fight between two kinds of people,” Gharbi said, “those who are reading and looking to Koran in a modern way, analyzing it with modern eyes, and those who are more conservative. And they’re against women in general.”

The staff at Zeitouna have never been raging extremists. The fact that they were allowed on the air at all under Ben Ali is testimony to their moderation. But Manouba University Professor Amel Grami said the dispute at Zeitouna radio is an indication of how Tunisia’s Islamists are using the current weakness of the central government to assert their power in the streets, and at the universities.

“In some universities nowadays we have this type of aspect of conflict, because many students from Salafist groups or Islamist groups they refuse to have unveiled woman teaching Islam, or methodology of works, or comparative religion,” Grami said. “They refuse to know even some religious texts from Judaism or Christianity. So they are trying to impose a new subject. So this is the big challenge for our educational institution.”

“Challenge” is putting it mildly. On exam day, Islamist students shut Manouba University down. They demanded the right for women to wear the “Niqab,” a type of dress that covers the entire body, including the face, and also to have a prayer room in the university.

A YouTube video allegedly from the protest shows Islamist students chanting FROM behind the locked gates of the university, as other students look on from outside. Gharbi said her situation at the radio station is indicative of the Islamists asserting power after years of being stifled. She said the Islamist’s aggression, and sensitivity, is a result of Ben Ali’s repressive policies.

“This is the result of the oppression in the period under Ben Ali,” she said. “Because we used to marginalize these Islamists. Now, we need to accept them, and we need to know how to deal with everyone in society. Otherwise this will be a dictatorship again, and we don’t want that.”

Gharbi said she won’t back down. She’s still locked in the battle with the Zeitouna radio station staff over her management position. Zeitouna staffers would still like the newly elected government to appoint another boss.

The answer is the Malay Peninsula. It’s the long finger of land that includes parts of Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

In southern Thailand, conflict has killed more than 4,700 people over the past eight years.

In this region, most people are ethnically Malay Muslims. And Malay militants are fighting to separate from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state.

The militants target Buddhist civilians. Meanwhile, the Thai government is accused of arbitrarily detaining and torturing Muslims.

Andrea Wenzel of WAMU went to the southern Thai province of Pattani to see how people there are dealing with the violence.

Abbot blessing SUV (Photo: Andrea Wenzel)

In this part of the country, people need all the protection they can get.

Anand, a local Buddhist visiting the temple, said that not long ago, the temple was hit by a bomb but nobody was hurt. Anand said the temple has a kind of spiritual protection. But Anand’s not taking any chances; he wears Buddhist amulets around his neck — and a revolver on his hip.

A conflict in Thailand’s Deep South has killed nearly 5,000 people since 2004. In this part of the country, most people are ethnically Malay Muslims. Malay militants are fighting to separate from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state. The militants target Buddhist civilians, as well as Muslims working with the government. At the same time, Thai authorities are accused of arbitrarily detaining and torturing Muslims.

“I can’t see that it’s going to get any better. I can only see it’s going to get worse and worse,” said Prakru Sopitpotikhun, the abbot of the Buddhist temple. He said the minority Buddhist community is under attack and people are leaving.

“A number of them think they don’t really have much future here so they move out. They don’t feel very safe,” the abbot said.

The Buddhists who remain have curtailed their activities. On Fridays, the Muslim holy day, everyone has to stop working. The abbot said rubber tappers who don’t, risk having their ears cut off by Muslim militants.

At the Ban Samyord mosque, the imam, Yako Minha, preaches about Muslims living together with people of other faiths. He’s lived in the area with Buddhists his whole life.

The imam said this area was the birthplace of Malay separatist movements in the 1960s. Back then the fight was against the Thai military, but now, the imam said he doesn’t understand why militants kill so many civilians. He compares the current conflict to the regional dish, khao yum, a colorful rice salad served with many types of finely diced vegetables. Only instead of carrots, chili and cucumber, the conflict is a mix of things like history, politics, illegal drugs, and land disputes.

A short drive from the mosque, the imam points out a Muslim cemetery that now sits in a Buddhist village. The imam said he himself has negotiated land disputes over the years. He used to be in local government.

He said the conflict here would be a lot worse if it weren’t for personal connections between Buddhist and Muslim leaders like himself. One of his old friends is the abbot, Prakru Sopitpotikhun, who was blessing the SUV earlier in the day. They used to play together when they were kids.

Imam Yako Minha and Abbot Prakru Sopitpotikhun (Photo: Andrea Wenzel)

“He said I’ll leave there within three days,” the imam said. “Now it’s 30 years. So I asked him when will your three days be over?”

The imam said the first time he teased his friend about it, the abbot responded with a four-letter word. But he’s laughing now.

Their friendship is about more than childhood nostalgia. It’s also about protection. The Buddhist abbot said he relies on the imam and other local Muslims for intelligence to keep his monks safe.

“People warn us about places we shouldn’t go because of the situation,” the abbot said. “For older generations, there’s still interaction between Buddhists and Muslims who’ve been living here for long time.”

The abbot adds that younger generations also need these kinds of networks to protect them from the violence, but they don’t get to interact with one another because of security problems. And it’s these same young people who are recruited to take part in the violence.

The abbot and the imam say they want to show teens that the fighting is not about religion, and that political conflicts are better solved through dialogue. They two men plan to bring teens together to learn about each other, and to play sports.

The morning after the imam and the abbot met for a chat, there was a drive-by shooting nearby. A 62-year-old Buddhist truck driver was killed.

No one thinks a few games of soccer will be enough to repair damaged community relations. But the abbot and the imam hope their conversations can at least offer a starting point.

Srimahapo Temple (Photo: Andrea Wenzel)

Eid feast in Osh, Kyrgyzstan (Photo: Aibek Abdyldaev)

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Lisa Mullins: The man who’s admitted carrying out the attacks is Anders Behring Breivik. He’s released a manifesto. He did so just before the bombing of the government building in Oslo and the mass shootings in the island of Utoya. The fifteen hundred page document calls for the expulsion of Muslims from Europe and the elimination of what Breivic calls ‘the multiculturalist politics’ that he says facilitated the immigration of Muslims to European countries. Usman Rana is a columnist for the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten in Oslo. He is also a Muslim.

Usman Rana: At the moment Muslims and myself are taking part in the grief of the terror attacks against Norway as Norwegians. On the other hand, I think it’s also important to understand and reflect upon how this terror attack could hit Norway and that kind of makes some Norwegian Muslims scared because the terrorists wanted to attack the multicultural society and indirectly the Muslims in Norway.

Mullins: Well I wonder if since, as you say, Muslims were not the target of Anders Breivik’s weapons, they are the target of his hatred, so in the week since the attack has the climate changed there for you? For others in the Muslim community?

Rana: I think the Norwegian discussion and I think also the European discussion on Islam and multiculturalism will change and hopefully we’ll get more unity across religious lines and also that the debate will not be based on conspiracy theories about so called Muslim takeover of Europe. These conspiracy theories and the rest of it about Muslim takeovers and that Muslims pose a danger to the west, I think that is what makes some of the Norwegian Muslims scared and afraid. Because even though the terrorists’ actions were unique and no one wants to support his actions obviously, there are, all across the west, thinkers, intellectuals who have such opinions and these opinions are growing, so I think that they should think about whether their demonization of Muslims, their conspiracy theories have the potential of radicalizing youngsters in the west.

Mullins: Doctor Rana, when I ask about the climate I’m wondering if in either direction you felt anything over the past week. Anything you can point to that feels different for you and other Muslims. I mean, in part we’re seeing from the outside Norway, looking like it’s in this enormous national embrace and I wonder if you feel as though Muslims in Norway feel that they’re included in that.

Rana: Definitely. I think we as Norwegians stand even more united after this terrorist attack and actually on Tuesday the prince and the foreign minister went to one of the largest mosques in Oslo, to include the Muslims in the grief and I think four or five Muslims, Norwegian Muslims were also killed in this terrorist attack, so I think that Muslims feel included in Norway and even more so now and we stand very united after this terrorist and I think the terrorist has lost because of united.

Mullins: One of the things you’ve written is in the capital Oslo, somewhere around twenty to twenty five percent of the population has a non Norwegian background. You say most of them are Muslims. To what extent are they assimilated in the broader culture in Oslo?

Rana: I think it’s important to know that Norway is a very well functioning multicultural society. We don’t have any ghetto like neighborhoods like you have in London and Bradford in the UK and because of that I think it’s very disturbing that Norway is the first country to be attacked by a right wing terrorist who is against multiculturalism because you have other countries like Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and France where anti multiculturalism has gained more political power and where there are more tensions between minorities and majorities.

Mullins: So I wonder if there’s any reason for you to feel as though you have more to worry about now after this attack.

Rana: I think we all have to worry about whether our society is becoming filled with hatred multiculturalism and hatred against the liberal state because this is actually an attack on the liberal Norwegian state on the liberal and open Norwegian democracy and we also have to that this is not a Norwegian issue, this is a pan European issue actually and should carefully examine how our debate on Islam is.

Mullins: Doctor Usman Rana is columnist for Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper. Very good to talk to you.

Rana: Great. Thank you very much.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

But in Kosovo, a group of devout Muslims is increasingly fed up because it says authorities aren’t moving fast enough let to it build a new place of worship.

The group’s tactics, which have included holding outdoor prayers and blocking city streets, are drawing condemnation from even a top Muslim leader. The movement also is stirring fears that radical Islam is trying to gain a foothold in Kosovo.

At Friday afternoon prayers on the edge of Pristina’s old Ottoman quarter, several hundred men and boys bow in devotion to God. But they’re not inside a mosque. They’re across the street from one, assembled in a square, with dozens of TV cameras trained on them. While the prayers and rituals are nothing out of the ordinary, their message is decidedly political.

Fatos Rexhepi told the crowd that Pristina’s observant Muslims are being neglected.

“We deserve a place to pray and do our obligations, which God has given us,” Rexhepi said. “We will never stop praying just so people stop calling us radicals or terrorists.”

Rexhepi heads a group of devout Muslims called Bashkohu, or “Come Together.” He and his supporters say Pristina’s 22 mosques cannot accommodate everyone who wants to pray on Fridays and holidays.

Armend Bajrami is a university of Prishtina student. “Most of the population of Kosovo is Muslim, and there’s not enough space for us,” he said.

Bajrami, like other protesters, is asking the city government to allocate a parcel of land for a large central mosque. People are also frustrated that Pristina’s religious Muslims are without a prominent central place of worship, while a large Catholic cathedral is being built in downtown.

Protester Samir Rexhepi said that’s unfair.

“We as Muslim people feel discriminated against,” Rexhepi said, “because Catholics make up an estimated 3 percent of Kosovo’s population, whereas about 90 percent are Muslim.”

What Bashkohu wants isn’t especially controversial. Kosovo is, after all, a largely Muslim country. But the group’s methods haven’t gone over well. Protesters have blocked major intersections and some supporters have scuffled with police, drawing widespread condemnation.

“They do not officially represent the Islam here — this is one of the most important things,” said Xhabar Haliti, a professor of religion at the University of Prishtina. “We should not let them lead the Islamic issues here in our country.”

Haliti said Kosovo’s capital does need a new mosque for growing numbers of worshippers. In fact, it was the general Islamic community that requested the land for the building in the first place, and city officials have agreed to it in principle.

But Haliti said the protesters are manufacturing confrontation to increase the footprint of a more radical form of Islam. He said they’re being goaded on by foreign-based organizations.

“We have had a problem and we are having a problem with these kind of NGOs, with some of the leaders of these NGOs, who want to make the way of the interpretation as it was previous in our country,” he said.

Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, flooded Kosovo to help rebuild after the war ended in 1999. They included Muslim charities, some of them suspect. Just last year, Kosovo police arrested members of a Muslim aid group and seized guns and body armor. The suspects reportedly were Wahhabis, followers of a devout Muslim sect with origins in Saudi Arabia.

Haliti said if Bashkohu and its supporters were out of the picture, the new mosque could be a shining symbol of a tolerant Islam that he said has thrived in Kosovo for the past 600 years.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman : Next door to Gaza in Egypt there were big protests all over the country today, in fact, these were some of the biggest protests since February.  That was when President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down after 18 straight days of massive protests against his rule.  Five months later Egyptians are increasingly frustrated by how little anything else seems to have changed.  You remember that the hub for the anti-Mubarak protest was Tahrir square in Cairo.  Well today the square was once again filled with protestors.  Reporter Thanassis Cambanis was there.

Thanassis Cambanis:  Well this was probably the biggest crowd we’ve seen in Tahrir since Mubarak resigned.  There was a relatively large protest in May, but this one, I’d say was about half a million people and it really closed up the square since almost ten o’clock this morning which is unheard of especially in this kind of summer heat.  And it also featured for the first time since the revolution the entire coalition of groups that made the initial movement happen.  So we saw Muslim brothers, we saw older people, we saw Salafi Fundamentalist Muslims, we saw Muslims, we saw liberals, we saw bourgeois rich kids.  The whole sort of panoply that made the Egyptian revolution what it was, and which had largely gone into abeyance in the last couple of months.

Werman :  So why are they protesting?

Cambanis:  Really there was one demand that everyone in Tahrir expressed today, and that was to see the leaders of the old regime brought to justice.  And that’s really been the issue that’s enraged people the most. In the last couple of months we’ve seen delays in the prosecution of Mubarak and of his Minister of the Interior, we’ve seen police who were accused of shooting demonstrators acquitted just this past week.  And this really strikes the hearts of even the moderate Egyptians who had been kind of satisfied in the initial months after Mubarak stepped down.

Werman :  Well, politically, what has evolved in Egypt.  I mean, in advance of elections in early fall.  How many parties have evolved who are the front runners and who are the main candidates, any names pop out?

Cambanis:  There are a couple of front running presidential candidates including Amr Moussa, the former head of the Arab League, and Mohamed ElBaradei, and there are a lot of political parties that have formerly registered including three major liberal parties, more than 5 Islamist parties, and at least 3 major socialist parties.  What we’ve seen in the political scene is a lot of fragmentation so within each ideological current instead of one major party emerging we’ve had three or four or five.  The other problem we’ve seen is a very vague time table for the transition to democracy.  The generals who run Egypt have set a timeline:  Parliamentary elections in September, presidential elections in November.  But they’ve neither set a date, nor published the actual rules of the process.  So, all the political players are in limbo.  Political parties haven’t been able to come up with candidate lists because they don’t even know how the Parliamentary elections will be organized.  And that, seemingly intentional murkiness has kept the transformation from feeling like it’s real, but there have been these concrete steps to form a real political life in Egypt.

Werman :  Why the vague dates from the government on this election.  You’d think that putting some hard and fast dates might make the public feel like democracy really is in the government’s interest.

Cambanis:  There’s two competing theories on this:  One holds that the generals, frankly, want to keep their firm grip on power and they’re looking for a way to make a nominal transition to democracy while retaining all the authority for themselves, hence the ambiguity in which no real serious contenders could emerge.  The other theory holds that these generals really just don’t know what they’re doing, and are bumbling forward looking for some way to hand off the hot potato of governance to something else, and as a result, this confusion is simply the result of incompetence.  Frankly, I’m not sure where I come down on that debate, but I think there’s a lot of evidence for both, that the military likes having power, and that it has no idea what it’s doing.

Werman : Journalist Thanassis Cambanis in Cairo speaking with us about today’s protest at Tahrir square and the future of Egypt.  His book, A Privilege to Die, has just come out in paperback.  Thanassis, thank you so much.

Cambanis:  A pleasure to be with you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Protester in Bahrain on March 11 (Photo: Susan Schulman)

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By Matthew Bell

Pentagon chief Robert Gates traveled to Israel this week. And the secretary of defense urged Israeli leaders to take “bold action” on the stalled peace process. But from Israel’s perspective, taking risks at this time of uncertainty in the region is a non-starter; though the Israelis got some reassurance Thursday from an important neighbor that’s going through tumultuous change.

For the first time, Egypt’s post-Mubarak military rulers formally hosted an Israel diplomat in Cairo. The Egyptians said they intend to uphold their peace treaty obligations with Israel. Such developments aside, the so-called Arab Spring sweeping the region leaves many Israelis overcome with one feeling.

“Deep anxiety,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a scholar at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

Americans, he said, might look at the Middle East and see a replay of the fall of communism. But “Israelis sense between what is happening today in the Arab world and what happened in 1989 in Eastern Europe is that in Eastern Europe when communism fell, there was nowhere for Eastern Europe to go but toward democracy. In the Arab world, there is a potent alternative. And that is, Islamist fundamentalism.”

When it comes to Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Halevi said westerners are choosing to bury their heads in the sand.

“The Muslim Brotherhood has learned that it’s not healthy for Islamists in Egypt to declare their intention to govern. And it’s far safe to say that we buy into the democratic process. The problem is that the only real political movement that is organized today is the Brotherhood.”

From Israel’s standpoint, the worst-case outcome in Egypt would be a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood and the end of the peace treaty. Experts believe that’s unlikely, but they don’t foresee a warm and fuzzy relationship either.

The devil they know

To Israel’s north, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad is being challenged by demonstrations. Bradley Burston is an Israeli editor and columnist with the Ha’aretz newspaper. He said as bad as things may seem between the two countries, Israelis might prefer the devil they know.

“Even though Syria does support the Hezbollah armed force, in southern Lebanon,” he said. “And even though Syria has become increasingly close to Iran, they have absolutely stuck to the agreements that they signed and that Israel signed in 1974. And at this point, no one knows what will happen if the Assad government falls.”

With all the regional uncertainties, many in Israel are arguing for a wait and see approach. But David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy isn’t convinced, especially when it comes to Israel’s relationship with its closest Arab neighbors, the Palestinians.

“I think it’s wrong to say that all the risks are on the side of action and all the safety is on the side of inaction. There are security arrangements, border arrangements and there Israel needs to be cautious how that is done,” Makovsky said. “But I think just being paralyzed by events could have its own dangers.”

If Israel waits before trying to reach a political compromise with the Palestinians, Makovsky said, it might be faced with a more radical Palestinian leadership down the road. But there’s another dynamic at work.

“The problem is that in the Middle East too often, it’s when it’s quiet, there’s no need to compromise,” Makovsky said. “And when there’s violence, you can’t afford to compromise. And you somehow have to cut through that.”

In recent days, violence has been on the rise. Jerusalem suffered its first major terrorist bombing in seven years. There’s been an escalation in rocket and mortar fire from Gaza, and Israeli air strikes in response. The big question the Israeli news media is asking now, is if — and when – it’s time for another large Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

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By Matthew Bell

Egypt’s military rulers announced today – on their Facebook page, naturally – that the Egyptian prime minister had resigned. Anti-government demonstrators can chalk this up as yet another victory. But protest leaders say the Egyptian revolution is not over.

Young people at the Egyptian Democratic Institute lingered in a no-frills office space in downtown Cairo. They had just finished a workshop on how to start up new political parties. No one here looked to be over the age of 30. Everyone here, according to political activist Karrem Jidda, was happy about today’s news.

“It was a wise decision for Shafiq to resign,” said political activist Kareem Jidda. “If he hadn’t resigned, tomorrow’s demonstrations after Friday prayers would have been angry and possibly even messy.”

Protest leaders today said they decided to scale back on some of their plans for Friday’s demonstrations. Big numbers of demonstrators are expected to show up again. But there won’t be any marches through downtown. Nor an attempt to take and hold Tahrir Square overnight, as demonstrators have done before. The plan is for tomorrow to be a day of celebration, rather than confrontation.

Hayat Guergues is a 27 year-old activist from Cairo. She says demonstrators need to keep the pressure on the military to dissolve the cabinet and sweep away all of the remnants of the old Mubarak regime.

“You cannot tell a woman in labor, ‘Enough. You’re making too much noise. You need to go home.’ We deserve our country back. It’s our country and we are getting it back,” Guergues said.

Guergues and other demonstrators say most of their demands have not been met by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. They want genuine democracy. They want Mubarak to be prosecuted. They want every one of his old associates thrown out of government and brought to justice.

The Egytian military is moving too slowly, Guergues contends, and that’s only playing into the hands of the former regime. “They’re giving them the time to [destroy] documents, to transfer their money,” she said.

“The Army has been used by the regime to scare us, because they thought if the army goes into the street people will get scared because of the martial laws and we’ll have go home. But what they don’t get is we’re not scared anymore.” Guergues said anti-government activists continue to be detained, attacked and threatened. “But we’re serious and the soldiers in the square know it,” she added.

Egypt’s new tourism minister, however, has a different take on the state of the revolution. Munir Abdel-Noor said what is needed now is patience.

“If you look at any revolution, be it the French revolution back in 1798, the Soviet revolution in 1917, or be it even the Egyptian revolution back in 1952, I mean the cut is never sudden. There’s always a transition period. You cannot change completely, immediately, it is impossible.”

Mahmoud Adelhatta is a 23 year-old political activist who works on the campaign for reformist politician, Mohamed El-Baradei. Adelhatta said he was out in the streets protesting right up until the day Mubarak resigned and he hasn’t been back since.

“People should think about how the protests and labor strikes are harming Egypt’s economy,” he said.

Raouf Roshdy says Egyptians are rightly proud of the revolution. (Photo: Matthew Bell)

“It’s not enough to remove the head of the system,” he said. “As a doctor, I see the nation like human body. If you just remove the tumor, you still have metastasis everywhere. It reach the bone, it reach the surround organs, it reach the lungs. So, it will take time.”

Abou Elela Mady knows about time and patience. He is the chairman of the Al-Wasat Party, which finally got government permission to operate last month after 15 years of waiting. He thinks the military’s choice for the new prime minister, Essam Sharaf, is a good one.

“He is independent and he is fair, and he is a technocrat, not a politician,” Elala Mady said. “We need a technocrat to make this transition period, we need neutral man, not one who came from regime Mubarak, like Ahmed Shafiq.”

By sacking Shafiq as prime minister, the Egyptian military appears to be trying to show some goodwill toward anti-government demonstrators.

Sharaf, the new prime minister, has been critical of Mubarak in the past. He has even joined recent demonstrations in Tahrir Square.

Matthew Bell’s blog posts from Egypt:
• Lock’em up
• What’s happening in Egypt

Egypt coverage on The World

by Ben Gilbert

Sameh Abdelazziz had finally produced a rough cut of his seventh film, “The Ant’s Scream.” He was waiting for approval from the Egyptian censors. “They had their reservations and had made 21 objections to the film,” he says

“Live like an ant”

It’s no wonder. ‘The Ant’s Scream’ details the trials and tribulations of daily life in Egypt. They include lowing paying jobs, humiliation by government bureaucrats ad to torture and detention by the police. The film follows a man named Gouda Al Masri. He believes that Egypt is a good country but he is sickened by the corruption and poverty. Gouda begins to protest against the government but state security forces take him into custody and torture him. A government thug tells Gouda that he is little more than an ant, and he gives Gouda some advice.

“If an ant wants want to live in security, what should it do? Walk near the wall. in order not to get trampled on. It should make a hole in the wall and go and hide in it. Then you can live peacefully. Live like an ant and eat sugar”.

Gouda responds : “If I knew that if I lived like an ant that I would live in peace, I would go into hiding. But I still wouldn’t be left alone. There are people who want to tread over ants everyday.”

The thug replies, by saying “I don’t want to hear from you again. Live like an ant. Eat sugar.”

The thug then stuffs cake into Gouda’s mouth. The prisoner is released, and returns to Cairo’s streets, despondent. Still, Gouda believes there must be someone he can take his grievances to. So he attempts to speak with President Mubarak. The film’s planned final scene shows Gouda running up to the president’s car. He is shot in the process. Gouda staggers to the presidential limousine, opens the door, and looks inside to find no one there. It’s the last thing Gouda sees before he dies.

Screenwriter Tariq Abdigaleel says the ending was symbolic: “I was trying to show that the president has been absent for ten years and that his son was running the country”.

New Ending

Then history intervened. Pro democracy demonstrations erupted in late January and Abdelazziz spliced real protest footage into the final moments of the film. Then, Mubarakk stepped down, and Abdeilazeez changed the ending. Again, Gouda runs toward the president’s car. But this time, we see news footage of protestors beating back police from Tahrir square. Gouda still dies in the end, and the screen goes black. But before the credits, a poem begins.

“The fear is over, People were on the streets. And the streets were cold. And the people kept each other warm.”

The poem is read over photos of the celebrations that erupted around Egypt after Mubarak stepped down. Now, the film is optimistic about Egypt’s future. So is the director. Sameh Abdelazeez sees the “Ant’s Scream” as a testament to all those who endured the brutality of the Mubark regime. “I put myself in the shoes of someone suffering injustice”, he says. “I studied what these people were suffering and what they were living, and that’s what came out in the film.”

Essam el-Arian is a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood and its unofficial spokesman (Photo: Al Jazeera)

The night before the massive protests began in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood spokesman and executive committee member Mohammmad Al Morsi was detained in the middle of the night by Egypt’s police.

He and 34 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders were taken to a prison in the desert. It wasn’t the first time leaders of the banned group had been thrown in jail.

A day later, as Egypt fell into chaos, the prison was attacked. The guards fled. The building was on fire. And as prisoners escaped, some pried open the doors to Al Morsi’s cell.

“They somehow attacked the door, opened it, and gave us a telephone,” Al Morsi said.

Al Jazeera was on the line.

And a few days later, the brotherhood had a representative at the table, meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s right hand man, Omar Suleiman. It was the first time a regime official had met with the brotherhood, ever.

The group has often played it cautious. It was late in coming to the protests, for example. But Brotherhood members were eventually a powerful force in calling for Mubarak to step down.

Brotherhood goals

Al Morsi is a US trained engineer who spent seven years in Los Angeles. When asked what he wants for Egypt, he Al hammered home these points:

“Freedom. Democracy. Equal rights. Social work. Development. Human rights. For everyone, not just for Muslim Brotherhood, for all the Egyptians,” Al Morsi said.

But the group also calls for the implementation of Sharia, or Islamic law, in Egypt. The group’s 2007 political platform is staunchly conservative. It says a president cannot be a woman or a Christian. And when asked about some of the more extreme aspects of Sharia law, like banning alcohol, stoning adulterers or cutting off the hands of thieves, Al Morsi is ambiguous.

“Personal behavior in a closed place no one can knock his door and say what are you doing,” Al Morsi said. “This is forbidden. If it becomes threat to society then law will interfere.”

But even that isn’t a universal belief these days in the Brotherhood. The movement encompasses a great number of political views, some liberal, some conservative. Much of the difference is generational.

A new generation

Islam Al Lutfi is an international human rights lawyer and young member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He doesn’t think Egypt should be governed by Sharia law, and said many members of his generation are more progressive than the “old guard.”

“The new generation of Muslim brothers have tools that were not available to the previous generation,” Lutfi said. “They have internet, new media like Facebook and Twitter, and blah blah. And this makes them more connected with the world. They exchange ideas, they exchange dreams, so I think they are different.”

Others pointed to the brotherhood’s time in parliament as a guide to how they would behave as a political party. Its members, running as independents since the group was banned, often supported democratic reforms.

When to hold elections

But some secular politicians and activists worry new elections could hand the Muslim Brotherhood a lopsided number of seats.

“If you have free elections right now, the Muslim brothers could win more than 40 or 50 percent because the regime destroyed any other political power; liberal and the secular,” said Imad Ghad, political scientist at Cairo’s Al Ahram Center for Political Studies. “The only power who was allowed to be in Egypt is the Muslim Brothers. (That was) in order to send message to the west and the Copts you have to choose between me and the Muslim brothers.”

The Muslim Brothers themselves, don’t think the group would win much more than 30 percent, whether elections were held in six months or a year. Even so, Ghad said it would be better to hold elections a year from now, so secular liberal parties can build organizations. That way, he said, other parties would have time to build themselves up.

Many Egyptians don’t seem very concerned about the numbers one way or another. Sahar Mustafa, a 22 year old engineer, was walking along the Nile earlier this week. Sporting a veil in the colors of the Egyptian flag, she said she wouldn’t support a government that pledged to impose Sharia law.

“I want to see a democratic government that listens. Where there’s freedom of expression, and dialogue with the people,” Mustafa said.

At the moment, Egyptians seem to think that they need more freedom, and fewer rigid rules, in their new government.

Egypt coverage on The World

Ben Gilbert on The World:
• Tough job for Egypt’s finance minister
• New role for Egypt’s military
• More of Ben Gilbert’s stories

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by Matthew Bell

The Western Wall is considered one of Judaism's holiest sites (Photo: Matthew Bell)

Last week, a Palestinian official put up an article on an official website of the Palestinian Authority that claimed the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem was neither holy to Jews, nor did it belong to the Jewish State, but to Muslims.

The Israeli government quickly condemned the article. On Tuesday, the US State Department followed suit, saying it amounted to “denying historic Jewish connections to the land.”

The offending five-page article has been removed from the website. But the incident highlights a daunting obstacle to any leader who would seek a final status peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Who will control Jerusalem’s holiest site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary?

Jews pray at the Western Wall, or “Wailing Wall,” because it’s the holiest place on earth where they are allowed to pray.

The huge stone wall, which happens to be the most popular tourist destination in Israel, is part of what remains of four ancient retaining walls built to support what Jews call the
Temple Mount.

Judaism teaches that the Temple Mount is the dwelling place chosen by God for his divine presence. It’s where God gathered dust to create Adam. It’s where the “holy of holies,” which contained the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses, was stored. It’s the spot where the first and second temples built by Jewish kings once stood, and some believe, it’s where the third Jewish temple will one day be constructed.

“It’s our heart,” Shmuel Rabinowitz told me. He’s the rabbi of the Western Wall.

“I don’t believe Jews need to show anyone that Jerusalem or the Temple Mount is ours.”

But what about sharing this place known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, because it is also where the al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock were built centuries ago?

Rabinowitz said he has a difficult time fathoming any Israeli prime minister agreeing to give up Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

“It’s irrelevant to talk about that,” he said. “Why talk about changing the status quo?”

Here’s how the status quo at the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount works.

Israeli law – though not the international community – considers all of the city of Jerusalem as sovereign territory of the Jewish state, including the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary. Israeli police and security forces control the entire Old City, which includes many of the most important holy sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Israel security forces also control access to the to the al-Aqsa mosque compound, which includes the entire Temple Mount complex. During Muslim holy days, for example, men under the age of 50 have been prevented from entering.

But here’s where things get complicated. It is the Islamic authorities of the Wakf foundation who are responsible for the religious affairs and administration of the Noble Sanctuary, including the mosques there.

Yusuf Natsheh is an archeologist and historian with the Wakf. He says the status quo with regard to the Haram al-Sharif, as the Noble Sanctuary is known is Arabic, is fundamentally flawed, starting with the way Israelis refer to the site.

“The Haram al-Sharif, it’s not the Temple Mount, because using the Temple Mount in our point of view, it’s a replacement, an eradication,” Natsheh said. “This area is called the Aqsa mosque for 1400 years. By emphasizing or repeating the Temple Mount, this is like calling someone whose name is Muhammad by calling him John.”

Natsheh said the biggest problem with the status quo is the way Israel maintains sovereignty over the third most important holy site for Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

“It is by force,” he said. “It is not by the Palestinian will. It is not by agreement, it is by might. People are under occupation. If you ask a Palestinian, he will say that the Western Wall is a property of Muslims.”

Israelis often point out, however, that while they have allowed Palestinians to keep some control over the Noble Sanctuary, Jews were not even allowed to visit their most important holy site under the previous authority.

Jordan controlled the Old City of Jerusalem after 1948 and it prevented Israeli Jews from praying at the Western Wall for 19 years. That changed in 1967, when Israeli paratroopers took control of Jerusalem’s Old City during the Six Day War. Within hours of the doing so, however, defense minister Moshe Dayan made a historic decision: to give the Islamic Wakf authority over the Temple Mount.

Muslims would have access to the place from which they believe the prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven. Non-Muslims would be forbidden from praying anywhere in the mosque compound.

Former Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin was a soldier at the time, who visited the Western Wall a few days after Israel’s victory.

“We the soldiers went to the Wailing Wall. We were not interested at all in the mosques on the other side. It was a Muslim place,” Beilin said.

“Now, historically, it is more than reasonable to believe that it is the Jewish holiest place. And for the Arabs it is very difficult to admit it, because if this is true, it means that their holy place is built on Jewish ruins.”

Politically, Beilin is an important figure in the Israeli peace camp. He was part of an independent effort between Israelis and Palestianians to map out a workable Middle East peace plan, called the Geneva Initiative.

What about the fact that some Palestinians deny there was ever a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount? The late Yassir Arafat reportedly said as much. Palestinian officials also continue to say that they see no solid archeological evidence that proves the existence of any Jewish temple on the Temple Mount. I asked Beilin how he feels about such claims.

“You know it’s not very pleasant, but if you ask me whether it destroys my day, the answer is negative,” he said.

“I am living with my truth and I don’t need them to verify it. In any peace treaty, those who would like to go there will be allowed to go there. There is no peace agreement which will prevent Jews from going to the Temple Mount and this is why I believe the problem is more artificial than we think.”

Nonetheless, the problem has never been resolved.

In the summer of 2000, president Clinton sequestered Israeli and Palestinians leaders and they finally started negotiating many of the toughest issues at stake. Control over the Temple Mount proved to be one of the toughest hurdles of all.

According to Clinton’s memoir, the Israelis offered the Palestinians “custodianship” over the Temple Mount and “sovereignty” over the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City. But Arafat, Clinton wrote, wanted full sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary and nothing less. The talks ended without a peace deal. And several weeks later, the second intifada broke out.

During a speech in September 2010, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert detailed a proposal he’d made to the Palestinians two years earlier. Olmert’s offer was to create an arrangement where the Temple Mount and Western Wall would be administered by an international trusteeship of Israelis, Palestinians, Saudis, Jordanians and Americans. Olmert says he never got a response to the offer from the Palestinians.

Still, he told an audience in Tel Aviv, there is no other alternative.

“We cannot reach an agreement if any of the sides claim exclusive sovereignty on the Holy Basin,” Olmert said, referring to the Old City and its immediate surroundings.

“About this question of the sovereignty of Holy Basin of Jerusalem. It won’t be ours and it won’t be the Palestinians’,” he said.

Still, even if Palestinians were to buy into such a deal, it’s hard to imagine that Israel’s current right-wing governing coalition would go along with it.

President Obama traveled to Indonesia today for a long -awaited visit to his childhood home. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country. Tomorrow, President Obama plans to give a speech at the University of Indonesia, reaching out to the Muslim world. It’s a follow-up of sorts to the speech he made in Cairo in 2009.

Students at the Indonesian Al-Azhar University will be among those watching tomorrow when the President delivers his address. Indri Hastari, a university student, said that Indonesians welcome his visit. “President Obama he is friendly to all of the countries so yeah, I’m happy.”

Indonesian scholars said they expect the President’s speech tomorrow will cover some of the same territory as the speech he gave in Cairo, themes of tolerance, partnerships, and dialogue. Ahmed Lubis, vice rector of the Indonesian Al-Azhar University, said that he thinks that Muslims around the world are expecting the president to say something “that will really cure them and make them feel better about the United States.”

For instance, Lubis says Indonesians are hoping the president will speak about a Palestinian state, as he did in his first speech in Cairo.

But there will be a key difference – Indonesia is not Egypt, said Ulil Abdulla of the Indonesian Freedom Institute. He pointed out that while Egypt is a dictatorship, Indonesia is a democracy. “The message that President Obama will sending to the Muslim world is much stronger than his speech sent from Cairo because Indonesia is a democratic country.” He added that he thinks it’s a good move by President Obama to send this message from Indonesia because Islam and democracy go hand-in-hand here.

Ulil expects the speech will be well received in Indonesia. Barack Obama is very popular. He lived there for four years as a child and the elementary school he attended has a large statue of him. Some here even think he is Indonesian.

Still, the president has his critics.

Many Indonesians are annoyed that he postponed his first presidential trip here,twice. Muhammad Suhadi of the Al-Azhar Mosque Foundation said the first time, people were ready for the president to come. The second time they were ready as well. “Maybe now there are some people among us who don’t like him coming.”

Suhadi noted that it has been a difficult few weeks for Indonesia, with a tsunami and deadly volcanic eruptions. But he said the fact that President Obama has finally arrived may go a long way toward soothing hurt feelings – even if volcanic ash forces the president to leave earlier than scheduled.
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