In Egypt, Islamic scholar casts a skeptical eye toward the future
Wrapped in a shawl on a cold morning, Gamal Banna shuffled over a dusty carpet amid fraying books on old civilizations. He knows well the intricacies of Arab history, but is far less certain where the upheavals of the last year will lead.
Like the balustrade winding to his library door, the known ways are crumbling. Moments of wonder are giving way to months of bewilderment. These days, he said, are likely to prove as seminal as those after World War I, when Western powers drew the borders that shaped the Middle East for nearly a century. Islamists, who have endured decades of oppression, appear to have their chance to redefine the region’s politics.
“One era has ended,” said Banna, one of Islam’s leading liberal thinkers. “But of the new era, we don’t know exactly what is taking shape.”
Lacking an ideology and charismatic leaders to channel the aspirations of the street, the “Arab Spring” has been thwarted by more powerful forces and fallen short of complete revolution. The challenge for Islamists, Banna said, is tempering their religious fervor with a pragmatism that can fix their countries before anger and despair is turned against them.
Banna is intimate with the Islamists’ strengths and failings. His older brother, Hassan, who was a schoolteacher, founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. The younger Banna has often angered the group with his progressive interpretation of Islam. He has watched his brother’s conservative vision evolve in the decades since his death in 1949. Grass-roots activism gave way to periods of radicalism and today’s often ill-defined mix of politics and social consciousnes