“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” –Edmund Burke (1770)
By Barry Rubin
On the eve of the Egyptian election, I’m really disgusted with the collapse of the moderate forces. While the Muslim Brotherhood is disciplined, united, working hard, and on message, the moderates are running around in circles. There is not the slightest sign of unity among the three main moderate parties (Wafd, Justice, and Free Egyptians) and the dozens of smaller ones.
Consider that instead of putting their energy into organizing, uniting, and getting out the vote, they are engaged in thoroughly useless demonstrations in Tahrir Square. What is the goal of these demonstrations? On one hand, they demand that the turnover of power be moved up; on the other hand, moderate politicians speak of postponing the balloting. Muhammad ElBaradei, once the Americans’ favorite candidate (before the Obama Administration switched to backing the anti-American, antisemitic Muslim Brotherhood) is actually creating his own virtual government! What a putz!
Think about it. How can the moderates demand an immediate turnover of power? Turnover to whom? There is no executive authority. Clearly, no serious thought has gone into this campaign. If anything they should be demanding that the military stays in power longer since it is the only thing standing between them and the Muslim Brotherhood.
And yet while the moderates are doing their Three Stooges routine over the turnover of power, the issue has already been resolved! The Brotherhood made a deal with the army junta and moved up the presidential elections by a full year. Instead of June 2013, presidential elections will be held around June 2012. That’s only seven months from now. And unless the moderate leaders drop their own candidacy and get behind Amr Moussa, the Brotherhood will win that one, too.
If it weren’t such a horrible tragedy it would all be a farce.
These are people who think that organizing a demonstration is a great accomplishment; the Brotherhood knows that organizing a mass movement is what’s needed.
But that’s not all! While the Brotherhood successfully courts the armed forces, the moderates are fighting against the soldiers. The moderates view the military as their main enemy when they should understand that the Muslim Brotherhood plays that part.
The moderates are playing “occupy Wall Street” while the Brotherhood is playing “seize state power.”
What do you think the result of the moderates strategy is going to be? Why, to push the military and the Islamists together of course! In other words, the moderates’ strategy of dealing with the army as if it were some evil dictatorship from which freedom is demanded might feel good but it is a total disaster.
I’ve always maintained that the generals don’t want political power and I feel more certain of that than ever. They just don’t want anarchy and they don’t want a government that will take their money. The Brotherhood will be happy to implement a deal on both of those points. And don’t forget that there are a lot of officers who are pious Muslims quite willing to live with the Brotherhood.
It’s the same picture we saw in Tunisia (four bickering left and liberal parties throw the election to the Islamists) and Turkey (incredible incompetence among opposition politicians), where the anti-Islamist forces committed suicide.
Yes, we would like moderates to win and create a stable and democratic Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey, with a prosperous mixed economy, plus equal rights for women and minorities. But it isn’t happening. In some places, repression—notably Iran and Syria, where the outcome is far from clear–is the main problem. In others, though it is the lack of leadership, ideology, skills, and unity among the moderates.
Am I being too harsh on the moderates? Certainly, they had a difficult task and it is their lives that are ultimately at stake. But this experience is like watching a stupid character in a horror movie who practically asks to be eaten by the zombies, axed by the escaped lunatic, or lasered by the space aliens. You want to cheer for the potential hero but quickly end up being dismayed by his acting like a hapless victim. Against your will you start thinking that he had it coming.
I’m simultaneously crying and booing.
Here arises an interesting question. Western interests, even though Obama and many others don’t understand this, require that the moderates win. Supposedly, the Western democracies have some notion of how to operate in a democracy. In theory, they should have been working with the moderates behind the scenes, providing advice, money, training, and even pressure for them to work together. Only so much influence can be attributed to the West but that margin of power has not been used.
Instead, Western states have been courting the Islamists or doing nothing. If there’s any conscious reason for this, the excuse is that if the West helps the moderates this assistance would be used to discredit them.
Guess what, the worst-case scenario is happening anyway.
Some of these people will cut their own deals with the Islamists as we are starting to see with the coalition government in Tunisia. That will give the Brotherhood the illusion of cooperation and moderation for the time it needs to consolidate control and transform national institutions. Those who collaborate in this manner will have the advantage of getting eaten last.
One day, people will be amazed and disgusted at how the Western democracies stood by—and at times cheered—while Middle East countries were taken over by their worst enemies. They will be amazed and disgusted at how the moderate forces committed suicide. I already feel that way and so do lots of horrified Egyptians.
The non Moslem Brotherhood forces are in chaos, the Egyptian military believes that it can govern side by side with the Brotherhood, and rather than face anarchy, the Egyptian military will throw in with the only disciplined and really united popular force available, the Moslem Brotherhood.
And no the Egyptian military nor the Brotherhood will be able to adequately or effectively deal with the severe and destructive economic reality that is Egypt. Just like Mubarak, they will not be able to subsidize the food supply, they will not be able to produce the jobs so demanded by the huge and growing youth population of Egypt, and they will not be able to govern Egypt.
The usual Arab answer to all these problems has been to incite violence against Israel but I am a cynic and maybe this time around they will use the Sadat paradigm and not the Nasser one.
Ha, ha, I was just kidding, of course they’ll resurrect good ‘ol Gamal Abdel Nasser!
Try reading at least one Egyptian newspaper instead of the sheer power of your intellect and you’ll find that the opposite of virtually every one of your statements in actually the case.
Another keyboard warrior who doesn’t need actual facts to disturb the placidity of his “analysis.”
Ah yes, DeNial, the great Egyptian river! Just keep telling yourself that everything’s okay, Nizam, and chant “Kumbaya!”
It’s not a question of anything being “okay” or not but of accuracy.
It is encouraging to know that the secularists at least exist. No, their chances at unseating MB look bad, but perhaps they will take the edge off the worst of what MB might be planning.
Mark you, I don’t how liberal any Egyptian is on Israel.
Just read in the Financial Times that Thomas Cook, the travel company, is facing problems in part due to the collapse of the tourist trade to Egypt (one of its specialties). Think about what that means for Egypt. Big economic problem indeed.
Barry Rubin did not mention it but I bet the picture is strikingly similar in Morocco, where Islamists ran away with the election this weekend and will be the dominant element in a coalition government in that country. Given the weakness of liberal and democratic parties in the Arab World, the Islamist Arab Winter comes as no real surprise. The Arabs have exchanged one form of despotism, secular radical Arab nationalism for the far more ruthless one of Islamist tyranny. And it will be a long time before it wears out its welcome.
It would be hard to imagine a more thorough mischaracterization of what’s happening in Egypt than this article. If one were simply to believe the opposite of most of the points it would be closer to the truth.
“…useless demonstrations in Tahrir Square. What is the goal of these demonstrations?”
“Useless?” The goal of these demonstrations is to finish the job started with the fall of Mubarak and that is to oust the army. Since it was demonstrations that started the job how can they be said to be useless? These demonstrations do in fact have the army on the run and the MB on the outside looking in. That could change tomorrow but that’s what’s happening now.
And what’s this about a “virtual” gov’t. Isn’t that what SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) is? Either El Baradei’s possible transitional council is virtual the same as SCAF or neither are.
The moderates are not demanding an immediate turnover of power: they are demanding a civilian version of SCAF to oversee that turnover, one they can trust. The protesters feel the military will in fact never give up power and are simply maneuvering to salvage what they’ve had for decades.
And the MB is not the protesters main enemy, the army is. The MB has no power over Egypt – how could they be the main enemy? The army is calling shots up and down the line.
I do agree that there is a danger in pushing the army too hard but on the other hand, considering the deaths involved, many in the upper echelons of the security and army forces are frightened they’ll be put up on charges both within Egypt and from the West, the ICC.
This could cause intransigence and sabotaging everything the army can throw a wrench in and it is far from clear what will happen. But the people in Tahrir Square electing El Baradei, not El Baradei electing himself, is huge news in Egypt, the difference perhaps between an army or Islamist gov’t, and a civil/secular one coming about and critical as regards Article 2 of the old constitution that stipulates sharia as the basis of law.
As for Moussa, an army clone, he probably would’ve been the next President of Egypt had these current demonstrations not occurred. In my own opinion, El Baradei will be assassinated before he is ever allowed to lead Egypt.
Don’t get me wrong: this is a long ways from over; generally you have the military, Islamists and revolutionaries all jockeying for power and with different goals and who knows who will win. Right now the civil/secularists have the upper hand.
The problem is that the coming elections had little chance of being honest in the first place and now with this chaos virtually none. This is why the revolutionaries want the elections postponed. The army and MB want them to go ahead because chaos suits their purposes.
Characterizing these demonstrations as some faux rebel stuff like OWS in entirely wrong. There are people dying out there and because of that the people in Egypt see the army in a totally different light than a few weeks or months ago and by extension the MB because the MB is a no-show. Egyptians were fooled into thinking the army was going to protect the revolution but they know better now and have seized the day by taking over the streets.
This stuff about the MB taking power is nonsense. Even if they win half the seats in Parliament that’s still a democracy last time I checked. Just because you don’t like the outcome doesn’t make it anything else and slapping Gaza and Iran on this one is simplistic. No doubt the losers of Parliamentary elections will be chagrined as well.
If the only Democracies that qualify as such are one’s that share your world view then you’re not in favor of democracy and siding with Mubarak and the army just because that suits Israel and little else is what qualifies as being as opportunistic as the MB.
You have contrived to obscure a central issue. Are the demonstrations in Tahrir Square at all puissant and therefore significant? The answer is most probably no. Absent any larger real world ramifications of these demonstrations, Mr. Rubin’s analyses are astute and, I might add, his predictions will probably prove to have been prescient. Furthermore, the assertion that the Moslem Brotherhood wields no power is laughable in and of itself, but it ignores Mr. Rubin’s concern with the intentions and the probably success of the Brotherhood.
First off, I said straight out that the demonstrations are very important and changing the whole game. That would be the opposite of contriving to obscure such a thing – why would I contrive to do that?
What power does the MB have? State it.
What do you mean “absent any real world ramifications?” There have clearly been quite telling ramifications. Ignoring them doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.
Thanks for the critical and useful comment, but I’m not yet convinced you got it better than Rubin.
“they are demanding a civilian version of SCAF to oversee that turnover, one they can trust.”
And who would that be? Isn’t everyone with qualifications tainted by association with the Mubarak regime or the army? The Free Officers have been ruling since 1952…
“Right now the civil/secularists have the upper hand.”
I’d hope so, but I’m not so convinced. Opinion polls give the MB a huge support esp. in the countryside. And the army still controls the guns and (much of the) economy. Together, it seems they should be able to overpower the secularists, and isn’t that the alliance the protesters are de facto cementing?
“This stuff about the MB taking power is nonsense. Even if they win half the seats in Parliament that’s still a democracy last time I checked.”
The problem isn’t exactly the MB winning per se**. It’s more with them writing the rules*** and counting the votes, and possibly making sure the other parties are excluded. To put it this way: if the MB wins these elections, would there be a true election next time? And if next time the MB loses, would it give up power?
** Though I suspect the collapse of the Camp David followed by war and the political death of anything even approaching a “peace camp” in Israel _should_ bother you, and not just a supporter of Israel like Rubin. How would a closed Suez Canal and oil at $150 feel like?
*** The next Parliament is supposed to write the new constitution, right?
El Baradei isn’t tainted by any association with Mubarak and he is the one the protesters in the square have put forward to head up a transitional council. It should be made clear Baradei had nothing to do with this.
I am not a fan of the MB. Hamas is a wing of the MB and Hamas is nuts. The MB is nuts.
Let’s say the MB is in a position to not give up power, something that will never occur but for the sake of argument let’s agree on this. You think Tahrir won’t fill up again? In case you haven’t noticed it, Egyptians aren’t afraid any more.
El Baradei? Hmm.. Maybe.
And maybe Tahrir would fill up again if MB take power, but this tactic doesn’t always work. Just look at the Soviet sailors in 1921 Kronstadt or Iranian liberals post 1979 revolution. As a rule giving power to a radical authoritarian group hoping they’d act nice and maintain democracy doesn’t work.
Inane-way off base. Rubin’s analysis right on target. Time will demonstrate the truth
Without a rebuttal from you with some actual points to make, time is all that’s left to us.
Thanks for laying those facts on the table David; you’ve totally changed my mind.
@Joe Context – Not only you are misreading the facts on the ground through your ideological socialist, anti-market and ant-west lens, but you are making things up.
In case you have missed it, SCAF has proposed a series of elections and more importantly a charter of “basic rights and principles”.
If you don’t understand what these historic steps mean, then I have no sympathy for you and the mass of other half-wit lefties who are happily marching towards the precipice. You deserve that and your future rulers the Islamists. Now start forcing a hijab on your wife and daughter, while you go to quran school.
I despise socialists, despise people who are anti-Western since I am a Western guy and I am not anti-market.
As for SCAF, they are doing the same thing Mubarak did, having a Constitution and crooked elections they will ignore. What you are ignoring is that the army has declared they will be an integral part of the gov’t, elections or no and that is the giveaway.
Here is the headline of an Al Ahram article, the biggest daily in Cairo: “Egypt army position won’t change in new constitution, says Tantawi” And the article itself states: “The articles exempt the army from parliamentary oversight, stipulating that it would be solely responsible for administering its own matters, including national security and budgetary issues.”
You simply don’t know what you’re talking about and the protesters agree with me. These are not secondary or tertiary things but a blueprint for the army to remain in power, ignoring parliament. No moderate is parroting the MB and I have no idea what that even means.
Ironically, let’s hope the army is one counting the ballots.
Rubin is right.
Just after the fall of mubarack, the french party of sarkozy: the UMP, wanted to show their support to the new democracy coming alive.
They took contact with some moderates, democrates, youngs that have trigger the revolution.
The UMP, sent some specialist to advise them on how to build up a party.
They have been badly rebuke.
Nobody came at the appointments, it was a total failure.
The french leftwing anti-sarkozy newspapers where so happy to report the news: young egyptians democrates through out the sakozy concelors…
The sadness of the news was not perceive…
The end of the experiiment start there: no advice, no party no democracy…. And the french leftwing rejoyce.
The democrates where amateurs, and stayed amateurs.
They had, they have no chance.
Party is over
No islamic “moderate” elected governement EVER gave back the power…
The sadness is that the democratic process give a legitimity that dictators don’t have….
Will isalmocracy be more stable then dictaroship?
And stay in power for the next 40 years?
That was great: you say Rubin is right and then mention a bunch of stuff he doesn’t talk about. Who freakin’ cares about the French? You’re not in France by any chance are you? Thought so. All roads don’t lead there – never did really.
Egypt is moving lockstep, albeit 33 years removed, with the Islamic revolution in Iran.
The MB is playing this complex chessboard like a virtuoso, and is paving the way for the moderates to commit suicide.
The moderates (actually mostly leftists and center leftists) are misreading the scenario in a truely historic and expected manner.
The army offered a framework of “basic rights and principles”. The moderates inexplicably denigrated that, and obediently parotted the MB and honed in on a couple of secondary and tertiary demands by the military that they be left alone by the new state.
This leftist dominated moderate movement hates the west market system and it’s agents (SCAF and Israel) more than they love liberal democracy.
I have written the moderates off. I can see Iran and 33 years into the future of Egypt. The Egyptians truly will deserve their bastard future rulers. It’ll take another 30 years in the wilderness for them to understand why they are wrong.
The level of idiocy in this lefty crowd is directly proportional to their self-congratulating self-absorbed level of “higher consciousness”.
As far as I can tell, you simply made every word of that up out of your head and are passing it off as analysis. It bears no relation to anything I recognize as anything happening in Egypt.
You couldn’t source a single one of those points if I gave you an army of researchers.
Sorry – that should have been in previous post:
This leftist dominated moderate movement hates the western market system and its “agents” (SCAF and Israel) more than they love liberal democracy.
@Joe Context says: “Right now the civil/secularists have the upper hand.
This stuff about the MB taking power is nonsense. Even if they win half the seats in Parliament that’s still a democracy last time I checked. Just because you don’t like the outcome doesn’t make it anything else and slapping Gaza and Iran on this one is simplistic.”
LOL – secularists have the upper hand? Evidence you provide – none. And the pre-constitution vote in June showed that MB & Islamists got 75% of the vote while leftists & liberals got 25% of the vote. Typically counter-factual leftist.
MB will use the state power that they dominate to transform the security forces into death squads and there are already large segments of the army that sympathize with them. That happened in Iran, and is happening in Turkey with the Ergonoken. Half of the seats in the parliment means that they will in the minimum dominate the electoral system, and you are toast, next eletion.
“Simplistic to talk about Gaza and Iran” ??? LOL – what is simplistic is your confidence and world view of Islam, despite the historical facts that Islam will not tolerate you, western bleeding heart socialists, and the moderates of Egypt. You don’t seem to understand that Islam is an ultra-rightwing and fascistic movement that will make SCAF look like a theme park bogeyman. What is happening to the Copts is about to happen on the secular, liberal, left, and moderates of Egypt in a larger scale.
When the Islamic death squads come knocking on your door, don’t expect symapthy from this quarter.
Their is evidence supplied. If the protesters in Tahrir at this point are non-Islamists, and they are, the MB has announced it in the papers they will not go to Tahrir, and if those secular/civil protesters are shaking things up then that is something true and real. Those protesters this week caused the Prime Minister to resign and a new one has been appointed. That is the upper hand.
As for your total mischaracterization of the 75% 25% vote some months back, you obviously don’t know what happened. That is no surprise since the Egyptians themselves were confused at the nature of that referendum.
“MB will use the state power that they dominate to transform the security forces into death squads and there are already large segments of the army that sympathize with them.”
That is nonsense. Having sitting members of parliament will give the MB no such “state power” and there is not a hint of evidence that the army sympathizes with the MB.
Your post has no evidence that you understand anything about Egypt other than the usual mindless stereotypes a person with a superior intellect and keyboard sees as reality.
“To name a Mahomedan government is to name a government by law. It is a law enforced by stronger sanctions than any law that can bind a Christian sovereign. Their law is believed to be given by God; and it has the double sanction of law and of religion, with which the prince is no more authorized to dispense than any one else. And if any man will produce the Koran to me, and will but show me one text in it that authorizes in any degree an arbitrary power in the government, I will confess that I have read that book, and been conversant in the affairs of Asia, in vain. There is not such a syllable in it; but, on the contrary, against oppressors by name every letter of that law is fulminated. There are interpreters established throughout all Asia to explain that law, an order of priesthood, whom they call men of the law. These men are conservators of the law; and to enable them to preserve it in its perfection, they are secured from the resentment of the sovereign: for he cannot touch them. Even their kings are not always vested with a real supreme power, but the government is in some degree republican.”
Edmund Burke
What nonsense. Looks like we have some brainless lefties (Mary) infecting this thread.
I am an Iranian who has lived under Sharia Law. So please dont give me this piece of nonsense by Burke. He is certainly wrong here. There is nothing legal, democratic, egalitarian about Sharia law. It is the rule of the thug, masquerading as god’s representative to fool a bunch of unwashed illiterates.
Funny how some ignorant lefties have a despicable romantic relationship with Islamic misogyny, slavery, oppression, and racism.
Arbitrary power in government? You don’t mean when the Islamic committees pick you up at night for “fighting with god”? Nah, that is sooooo civilized.
I advise Mary Gerund to travel to Iran or Gaza and refuse to wear the hijab or try to listen to music in public. She will quickly bounce out of her stuper when she is arrested and whipped. Fast way to learn about and experience Islamic oppression!
More weird strawman arguments: who said anything about these topics? Not me. And the Burke quote is a riposte to the Burke quote at the beginning of the article. How did you miss that?
“It is a law enforced by stronger sanctions than any law that can bind a Christian sovereign.”
Even if Burke’s idealic description was correct, the important question is what does this law, “believed to be given by God”, dictate. And what are the sanctions – “stronger than any law that can bind a Christian sovereign” – against those who break the law.
And even as a response to the Burke quote at the beginning of the article, it’s not quite clear what you wanted to say by quoting it, so you can’t blame the responders for responding to what the quote actually said.
The point is that quotes can be used in such a way to take advantage of a man’s “wise” reputation on the one hand and that same reputation used to contradict as well.
I thought that was fairly obvious. I don’t care one way or the other about Burke’s views.
Funny that the Arab world is moving backwards. It is even becoming more of a laughingstock.
“(before the Obama Administration switched to backing the anti-American, antisemitic Muslim Brotherhood)”
How many times do I have to demand that Mr Rubin show some proof of this?
He has probably claimed it a dozen times and like every other claim to read the Administration’s mind, he hasn’t supported it in the least.
come on, you either have a source or you made it up. Which is it?
But thank you for admitting, finally, that the opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood is not the army, it’s the protesters out on the street.
One final thing, Mr. Rubin.
What you haven’t done is delineate HOW the western countries are supposed to help the opposition.
I remember when a western paper asked (the extremely sane and liberal) Egyptian democracy activist Ali Salem what western people could do to further the cause of democracy in Egypt. He answered “Nothing. Leave us alone.”
This was long before the revolution, but he knew that Egyptians are near-illiterates who fear outsiders and infidels, and Mubarak could use that. This provincialism is still in play.
And on that note, notice the latest interview by Michael Totten with a Christian begging that the west NOT stand up for Christians in Egypt, it only angers the Muslims who see things in sectarian terms, never human rights terms.
It would appear that you haven’t read Mr. Rubin’s analysis. He does, in fact, indicate what the West could and should do and have done. He even anticipates your objection. Note his statement:
“Supposedly, the Western democracies have some notion of how to operate in a democracy. In theory, they should have been working with the moderates behind the scenes, providing advice, money, training, and even pressure for them to work together. Only so much influence can be attributed to the West but that margin of power has not been used. Instead, Western states have been courting the Islamists or doing nothing. If there’s any conscious reason for this, the excuse is that if the West helps the moderates this assistance would be used to discredit them. Guess what, the worst-case scenario is happening anyway.”
Barry: You’re being to hard on these guys. 1) The nature of radicalism is certainty; moderates necessarily to try act in a concerted manner in the face of constant questioning; plus, people who are unaccustomed to military life shudder at the thought of violence; and 2) they’re afraid for their lives. Fear is a great motivator: it’s responsible for the attraction to socialism we see now in our young people, and the capitulation, by the British, of their exalted body of law, to the barbarities of Islamism. In addition, fear accounts for the reason many Americans are bowed by political correctness. Have a heart.
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FRIENDS OF ISRAEL: LISTEN UP! AMERICANS MUST BE TAUGHT THAT THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IS PROFOUNDLY ANTI-CHRISTIAN AS WELL AS ANTI-ISRAEL. IF YOU
LOVE ISRAEL, FOCUS ON THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AND REACH OUT TO YOUR NATURAL CHRISTIAN ALLIES IN AMERICA FOR SUPPORT!
#5, Perry 1949
I never had any hope for Egypt, nor for Tunisia before it. I won’t say I saw it all coming before the event, as Mr Rubin clearly did, but when Tunisia kicked out Ben Ali, I said to anyone who would listen that it(MENA) was all going to go.
While not an expert, I have lived among Muslims for a large part of my life, and have observed the changes since the Iranian revolution, when Indonesian friends who appeared entirely secular cheered Khomeini.
I was working in Saudi Arabia when Iran went. Many of my coworkers had been to Shiraz: They had beer, discos, cultural monuments. You could even meet girls, albeit with a sister in tow as chaperone who would show you the sights.
So I bought a ticket, and the revolution began. I couldn’t go as Iranair was on strike, and within weeks the discos were gone. Unlike the bars on Saigon’s Tu Do street, they have never come back.(Well, Tu DO is more boutiques and restaurants, but there is plenty of nightlife in today’s Ho Chi Minh City)
For three days, C5s with Iranian tricolor markings landed every 15 minutes at Dharhan Air base, as the CIA/NSA brought out human and technical assets( Iran was major listening post for Soviet Union).
Thee things can happen very quickly: we can hope for an evolutionary process in Egypt, but there is only one end: a hostile, Shariah state.
I wouldn’t put too much hope in the Sunni/Shia split. We certainly don’t appear to have the knowledge or will to exploit it, and in any case the two are united in their hatred for the West and Israel.
Anyone reading the Pew Reports surveys for the past couple of years shouldn’t have been surprised by the Egyptian vote.
If I may digress a bit, this wave of Islamism ( well we all know we mean Islam per se) is not restricted to MENA. Yesterday, at Denpasar Airport, in Bali where I live( to which I have fled, actually), half a planeload of Indonesian Salafis got off( scraggly beards, floodwater pants, turbans, and they carry sticks which as far as I can tell relates to a particular hadith in which Muhammad was doodling in the sad with a stick)
What are they doing in Hindu Bali? Who knows, but nothing good. In 1980, I took a seven year hiatus from Indonesia. A country where I had never seen a hijab or niqab. As I departed I saw boys and girls in Islamic garb boarding Saudia for KSA, to take up scholarships, they told me. What, I wondered, would be in there heads when the returned? I know now.
Seven years later I returned and hijabs were noticeable, and the process of islamization has only accelerated with the years, gathering momentum. Niqabs no longer cause people to stop and stare. In the last two years, in Java,I was called kaffir and najis( unclean) by people who thought I didn’t understand.
Don’t believe the the things you read about “moderate Indonesia.” That Islamist parties have yet to gain traction reflects the lingering influence of power relationships from the old regime, and in any case the secular parties have many leaders who are personally Islamists.
War between Israel and the Arabs could bring a sea change here: Rage at defeat, or joy at victory, either will bring out the Islamists. Read the Pew reports for Indonesia, not that different from Egypt.
My digression is, I think, relevant: A Muslim country with a open electoral process will go Islamist in the end. All of them, anywhere.
Any surprise springs from dissimulation, or willful ignorance.