Tariq Ramadan, Author at 51�Թ�

Beyond Islamism (Part 2/2)

Tariq Ramadan — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 20:31:29 +0000

Muslim-majority societies are crying out for an intellectual revolution. This is the last of a two part series. Read part one .

Perhaps it is time to review priorities, to shift the paradigm; perhaps it is time for political Islam to cease being intrinsically political. After a century of opposition to the power structure and a few decades of actually wielding power, Islamism has become an ideology of means and of management. It has nothing to offer in terms of broader significance except by way of reaction to “Western aggression” or to the “enemy within.”

Muslim majority societies will never be able to emancipate themselves as long as they are chained to such a restrictive, reactive vision. The peoples’ need for meaning, for dignity and for spirituality, far removed from an ethereal concept of faith, religion and rules, must be heard. The task before us is to rethink the ultimate goals of human action, and to develop the contours of an individual and social ethics as a true alternative to the unjust and inhuman world order.

The need for meaning, for freedom, for justice and dignity has never been greater; today’s Muslims need a holistic philosophy of ends; they need to escape from the chaotic management of means that political Islam has been reduced to. Muslim majority societies are crying out for an intellectual revolution, a revolution that is as radical in its essence as it is courageous in its objectives.

Far from the wielders of power, remote from petty politics and politicians, the time has come to reconcile ourselves with the depth and breadth of the Islamic civilizational tradition and its wealth of meaning that establishes rules in the light of the objectives of dignity, freedom, justice and peace. The Muslim peoples of today urgently need to reassert themselves.

Crucial to the process are spirituality and mysticism: not those of a certain form of Sufism that, not wishing to “take part in politics,” ends up by playing the game of powers (and colonisers), but of the quest for self an authentic Sufism never separated from human, social and political (by way of wise and just government) considerations. It is not enough to affirm that freedom must come before the “��󲹰��’a.”

In Need of a Philosophy of Liberty

What is lacking is a thoroughgoing reflection on freedom in the modern age, and the superior objectives (maqasid) of the Path (ash-��󲹰��’a) that supercede its reduction to a body of regulations presented as God’s intangible laws. What ash-Shatibi provided us with, in his synthesis of the “objectives of the ��󲹰��’a — which is actually a “philosophy of law — must be thought for the notion of freedom: We need a “philosophy of liberty” that cannot be constricting, reactive or dogmatic but must be broad, holistic and liberating, valid for women and men alike.

There is a sore need of young scholars (ulama) of both sexes, of intellectuals who will show a modicum of courage. While respectful of the message and the immutable rules of practice, they must imperatively seek reconciliation with the intellectual audacity of those who have given the age-old Islamic tradition its strength.

Against the institutions that have often shaped them, that are under state control and intellectually enfeebled (such as al-Azhar or Umm al-Qura today), the young Muslim generations must free themselves, make their presence felt and give new meaning to the dynamics of a civil society that is no longer a passive onlooker, or simply complain, and display their indignation, or explore new ways of acting, new and alternative visions. Yet, they must remain faithful to themselves, while resisting the established order.

The challenges are huge, but in freeing itself from the obsession with “politics,” a thought-based movement must elucidate the terms of a counter-power that sees the liberation of peoples through education, social involvement, alternatives to the dominant economy, through cultural and artistic creativity. Internally, I have mentioned the intellectual challenges of propounding general ultimate goals, and of developing a global vision that can guarantee autonomy and justice.

The question of internal divisions, between Sunni and Shi’a and between conflicting schools of thought (even between religious and secular), must take priority. The issues that fuel this division are often serious, but just as often patently ridiculous. It is the obligation of the scholars, of free intellectuals and activists to release themselves from the trap (which today’s Islamists sometimes maintain at the cost of snaring themselves and drowning).

Muslims are not alone in their resistance. Not only is it urgent to establish relations between the North and the Global South, and leave behind the biased “Islam-West” nexus; it is vital that we explore the potential of new educational, scientific and cultural partnerships with the peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia. Muslim thought, which drew its sustenance from the idea that it should make all wisdom its own, regardless of its source, has become isolated, has turned inward upon itself and has become desiccated by its inability to study, to promote exchange with and to draw profit from other civilizations, cultures and societies.

The Islamists are no exception: obsessed by the north, they have lost their bearings, and the South — does the Qibla, which focuses the gaze on the center and gives it meaning, not accord the same value and the same dignity to the entire periphery?

The Islamists of today have developed a conservative message, one that seeks only to adapt. The contemporary Muslim conscience must free itself from this message, and renew its commitment to the reformative and near-revolutionary power of the human and spiritual content of its tradition, which calls equally for reconciliation with self and openness to others.

A cycle is ending; renewal beckons. By becoming better acquainted with our heritage, by determining our priorities, and making better use of the new tools at our disposal, we will be able to attain our goals: freedom, dignity and liberation. The paradox lies in the fact that today’s Muslims, lacking self-confidence, are the wardens who hold in their trembling hands the keys of their own prison.

*[This article was originally published on Tariq Ramadan’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Beyond Islamism (Part 2/2) appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Beyond Islamism (Part 1/2)

Tariq Ramadan — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 23:43:33 +0000

Muslim-majority societies are crying out for an intellectual revolution. This is the first of a .

Islamism — or “political Islam” — is not dead. Those who have proclaimed its demise, or trumpeted the advent of a “post-Islamist” era, are wrong, as events in Africa, the Middle East and Asia clearly show. Islamism is not about to disappear, or even to fundamentally mutate. My thesis — my ideological stance, my hope — is that we must go beyond political Islam, and develop a critique of Islamism in all its forms.

Before explaining why I am taking this position, there are three points to bear in mind. Such is the confusion today, so tendentious and often so grotesque are the arguments that our first duty is to clarity.

Democracy

First: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Ennadha in Tunisia enjoy popular and electoral legitimacy in their respective countries; all democrats must respect the verdict of the ballot box. One may well disagree with the decisions and positions of the Islamists in power, but nothing can justify a military ��ǳܱ��’é�ٲ�� as in Egypt — meaning that the non-violent demonstrators who are calling for the military to withdraw are right to reject manipulation by the generals.

The crucial question is not whether democracy is possible with Islamists in power — assuming that democratic norms are respected — but whether even a semblance of democracy can exist under a military establishment that has never once in more than 60 years respected those norms. In Tunisia, internal destabilization, whether through harmful maneuvering by Islamists of the extreme literalist persuasion, or by their fundamentalist secularist counterparts, must not be allowed to undermine the legitimacy of the country’s institutions. The unjustifiable cannot be justified in the name of ideological differences with the people’s elected representatives.

Terminology

Second: the problem of terminology. Confusion is rampant; no one knows exactly who or what “Islamism” means. The term, which has now become powerfully pejorative, can be applied to movements ranging from al-Qaeda (worldwide, and most recently in northern Mali) to the legalists of Ennadha and the Muslim Brotherhood by way of the Justice and Development parties in Turkey and Morocco (with certain reservations), and up to and including the Iranian regime. It is hard to believe that the confusion is being maintained, and the terminology being utilized purely by chance.

Meanwhile the petro-monarchies of the Gulf, those wealthy allies of the West, whose authorities affirm that democracy is un-Islamic, regimes that apply the ��󲹰��’a in its most legalistic and repressive form and that forbid women from social and political participation, are never described as “Islamists” even though their policies and practices form the essence of political Islam.

Furthermore, the various Islamist parties or organizations must be described accurately: some are non-violent, reformist and legalist; others are literalist and dogmatic, while others are still violent and extremist. Without such an understanding, no serious scientific or political analysis is possible. While the focus of this article is on the reformist and legalist movements, it will touch on all Islamist trends (based on the assumption that the proponents of political Islam seek state power).

Finally, it should be perfectly clear that my critique of Islamism is in no way an endorsement of the positions and political programs of its opponents. For more than 60 years, self-styled “liberal,” “progressive,” “secular” or even “leftist” (each term positively connoted) forces have been unable to put forward serious alternatives for extracting their countries from crisis. Opposition to the “retrograde Islamists” is not enough to ensure ideological or practical credibility.

In fact, some of the “liberal” factions have in the past proved friendly to dictators, and enjoyed close contact with the West, all the while unable to understand their own fellow citizens; often they have glossed over their divisions and their lack of political influence by simply claiming to be united against the “Islamists.” These factions lack a mass base, a fact their leaders are all too aware of. Thus, our critique of the former cannot be seen as acceptance of the views of the latter. No, our aim is to describe the deep crisis of political consciousness in Muslim majority societies, spanning all ideological horizons.

Time To Go Beyond Islamism

The time has come go beyond Islamism. When, in the early 20th century, the first manifestations of Islamism took root and organized form in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, most of them shared a triple objective: to free their societies from colonialism; to return to Islam in order to resist cultural Westernization; and to expound theses and principles similar to those of Latin American liberation theology, that is, social justice with priority to the poor and the downtrodden.

They were religiously conservative, socially and economically close to their peoples, and believed as a matter of course that the nation-state was the best vehicle for liberating their countries from the multi-faceted yoke of colonialism. Whether or not one agreed with these movements, it was at least possible to understand their ideological and political orientation.

The world has changed, and everything suggests that Islamist organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and other legalist and reformist groups, have not kept pace with world-historical developments, with shifts in international relations and, most of all, with the new paradigm of globalization. In addition, state power, which in the beginning was understood as a means to social, political, economic and cultural reform, emerged as an end in itself, perverting both the intentions and the actions of a significant number of Islamist movements.

These factors have combined to create, over time, a disconnect between the oft-repeated claims of the Islamist movements, which have maintained substantial popular support, and their inability to respond to the challenges of the new era. Having become nationalist Islamist movements, their obsession with the state eventually led to them neglecting fundamental economic issues, major cultural concerns, and even failing to address the basic questions of freedom, citizenship and individual autonomy.

Driven into opposition, totally committed to (and imprisoned by) the desire to legitimize their participation in the democratic process as credible, open and dependable in the eyes of the West, the Islamists have become a reactionary force that, in the name of pragmatism, with one compromise after another, have preserved their religious references while voiding them of their potential for social, economic and cultural liberation.

Islamists: No Credible or Viable Economic Alternatives

How remote we are from a new interpretation of our scriptural sources, or from a peoples’ liberation “theology” that would give absolute priority to the poor and the oppressed; that would, finally, see social and political relations in economic and cultural terms. The Islamists, today, have no credible or viable economic alternatives to offer. In the name of their obsession with international recognition, they have bowed down before the imperatives of the dominant capitalist economy.

The religious reference has become a strictly reactive and a strictly protective one, directed primarily against the permissive excesses of the West and Westernizers. It has forfeited its ability to offer an ethical approach to education, social justice, the environment, culture and communication. There have been frequent populist attempts to enlist religion for emotional, identity-related or electoral ends.

It is all well and good to celebrate Turkey’s economic success, not to mention its leaders’ demonstrated competence and pragmatism (while not forgetting to criticize the absence of some basic freedoms, and the tendency to monopolize power). It is fine to hail the development of Islamist thinking in Egypt and Tunisia, or the emergence of a civil state with Islamic references rather than a theocratic “Islamic state.”

But their words remain predominantly slogans, reactions to attacks upon the assumption of power, and not the basis of a clear, original, truly imaginative political project. The programs of the legalist and conservative Islamists have little to show for themselves except by way of proving that they too are capable of doing quite as well — or, as badly — as their opponents with regard to their widespread inability to bring about substantial change.

*[Note: Read the on September 27. This article was originally published on Tariq Ramadan’s .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Beyond Islamism (Part 1/2) appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Tariq Ramadan and the Arab Uprisings (Part 2/2)

Tariq Ramadan — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:50:15 +0000

Tariq Ramadan, Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, speaks to Heather McRobie and Rosemary Bechler about the political and economic dynamics of the Arab Uprisings. Read part one .

Heather McRobie: Many of the developments this summer in the countries of the Arab Awakening spoke to the concerns raised in your book. Take developments in Tunisia, such as the set-backs and delays in constitution-drafting. Do you see this as a reversal, the sign that the revolutions are derailing? Who will the constitutions of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya speak to and who will they speak for?

Tariq Ramadan: Yes, the drafting of the constitutions is interesting and the discussions around them revealing in many ways. I take it as a discussion of very important symbols revealing many different problems. My take at the beginning was to warn that Tunisia might be the only successful country, the only one to justify us in talking about the spring, while all the other countries were less successful, if not failing. Now the point is that even in Tunisia it is not going to be easy, and this is where we have a problem. The problem is that the constitution should have been and was an opportunity, exactly as tried to do, to bring together the secularists and Islamists with so many of the same views. What was clear was that they would have been able to find agreement, because Rachid Ghannouchi and En-Nahda went so far as to say that they were not going to insist on putting shari'a into the constitution. They accepted that this wouldn’t happen, but that instead it would have been couched in terms which had an Islamic point of reference.

Now the problem is that you have two trends that are in fact objective allies in destabilising the whole process of this discussion: on the one side the very secularist elite that is doing everything to paint a picture that they are in danger from ‘the other side’ and on the other hand, the Salafis, who are constantly putting En-Nahda on the spot by questioning their religious credentials – ‘who are you? What are you doing? You are just compromising everything.’ And the secularists are saying about En-Nahda, ‘they are not clear because they want to please us and they want to please them.’

The secularists are playing a dirty game. You can be tough on En-Nahda’s policy and critical of some unclear statements which have been made, but they are playing games with this and pushing in such a direction is not helping the country to stabilise in such an important year. The constitution is after all talking about the vision for the future of the country. It is the opportunity to create a democracy. And in fact all the Islamists, that is the reformists not the Salafis, now they all say that they want a civil state, a civil state with Islamic reference points. They are not talking about an Islamic state, or shari'a in the way this was once understood in the fight against the colonisers, or just afterwards in the 70s, 80s and 90s. They have changed on this. Now, this meant that there was room for agreement between the different trends.

But not anymore. It’s very difficult now because we have this new integration of the Salafis into the political landscape. We have to ask questions – who is pushing them and who are these people, who in eight months in Egypt can say ‘democracy is against Islam’, and get 24% in the election. If you read the Rand Corporation on who supported the Salafis in Egypt, what you learn is that up to 80 million dollars’ worth of support was poured into Egypt before the elections by organisations that are not state, they are very precise on this, but Qatari and Saudi organisations. So it’s very worrying to see that they are getting the money and they are playing on all the symbols now – religious symbols pitted against your credentials for power, and the Islamists are being put into a situation where they can lose everything. I wrote a piece in the New York Times which said, , because you might win but you are losing your credibility by being put in this situation of being constantly challenged on religious terms, where you are not improving anything, and of course it takes time to reform a society.

So the question about the Salafi is an important question as I say in Arab Awakening, and have often repeated since. Now I am really underlining the importance of this, because we really don’t have very good memories. Remember, the Taliban in Afghanistan were not at all politicised in the beginning. They were just on about education. And then they were pushed by the Saudi and the Americans to be against the Russian colonisation, and as a result they came to be politicised. (They are not exactly like the Salafi because the Salafi think that they need to be re-educated, Islamically-speaking, convinced that they have to follow the prophet in a very literalist way.) But they too were pushed, so that it’s very strange now to see the Salafis being very vocal, sometimes violent, and developing this element now of Salafi jihadists. In fact, these jihadists are acting against the interests of every single country – in Tunisia, in Egypt, now all of a sudden in north Mali.

So I would say that it is strange to see the allies of the west pushing such trends that are against the interests of the country, and at the same time, here we all are, celebrating democracy. The problem with Salafis is that they are religiously sincere and politically naive. And they allow themselves to be supported by people who have no religious sincerity but who are politically very smart, especially when it comes to their economic interests.

Rosemary Bechler: Can we return to our opening question about ‘Islamic democratic secularism’ – a concept that I first heard about from Egyptian thinker and activist, Heba Raouf Ezzat, who you cite in your book. What she was promoting was very much an anticipation of the combination of non-violence and pluralism and its unforgettable impact on the movement in Tahrir Square. Is there any chance of that impulse of unity across divisions surviving and being strengthened in this crisis?

Ramadan: The way it was expressed in terms of solidarity in the first phase of the massive demonstrations is not going to survive for long: the people who were thinking this way got perhaps 2, 3, 5% of the votes. They were marginalised. But still, I think many thinkers and activists, even in the Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the people who left the Muslim Brotherhood to follow Abou el-Fatouh, these people do have an understanding that the relationship between religion and the state must be re-thought and re-assessed. They’re not going to use the concept of secularism in any straightforward way, because the concept of secularism is still far too loaded in that part of the world. When Erdogan went there and said ‘don’t be scared of secularists’ the Muslim Brotherhood rejected that outright.

But in fact without using the term, this is exactly what they are doing. They are moving towards the very essence of talking about the ‘civil state’ and that is exactly what we are talking about here. For years they have been talking about civil society, now they have progressed as far as thinking about the civil state. The ‘civil state’ is what I speak about in the book when I speak about ‘ethics in politics’, which is acknowledging the fact there are two authorities, two powers, two ways of influencing power, and that ethics should inspire the political vision of what is good governance, but that you cannot have an imposition of religion. I think politics is evolving in that direction, even within segments of Islamism.

Bechler: Is the dialogue across national borders also important, between Muslims in Europe and in the Middle East, for example?

Ramadan: Yes, there are ongoing discussions about this too. The problem with what we call the ‘Arab Spring’ is that these are very nationalistic experiences. Tunisians are concerned with Tunisia, Egyptians concerned with Egypt and so on.

But still I have been invited I don’t know how many times to Turkey, where Turkey has been following very quickly in the footsteps of what is sometimes referred to as the movement of cyber-dissidents. They have been training young people and also encouraging them to come into contact with western Muslims. What they ask me to talk about is precisely secular democracy and Muslim democracy – this, of course, is what the Turkish government also needs to be selling to the young Islamists in the Arab countries. It is this kind of understanding that they also share with someone like Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia. So you can see the connections beginning to form. If in the very near future Anwar Ibrahim succeeds in Malaysia, he is positioned as very close to the Turkish experience, and many in the Muslim Brotherhood and En-Nahda have a similar perspective. So there are important relationships across national boundaries.

Remember, after all, that the name of the AKP in Turkey came from Morocco: after a meeting with the they started using the same name. So there are deep connections, and also a great interest in our experience in the west. This is something that they are listening to – very much so – you cannot imagine how much the books that I am writing are sought after by people in Turkey, who are eager to hear what I am saying about our experience of authority, power and the secular system. So this is very important, and it works especially well because I am coming from this background – that is also important.

*[This article was originally published in the independent online magazine ].

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Tariq Ramadan and the Arab Uprisings (Part 2/2) appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Tariq Ramadan and the Arab Uprisings (Part 1/2)

Tariq Ramadan — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 08:36:19 +0000

Heather McRobie: I’d like to begin with the concept of Islamic democratic secularism and the statement in your book, , that, “at this precise moment Muslims will only have proven the singularity of Islam when they demonstrate its universality.” Could you explain what you mean by this, and the concept of Islamic democratic secularism?

Tariq Ramadan: It’s part of a whole discussion about ethics in my work. I focus on Islamic applied ethics in many fields, and here I am saying that coming back to the Qu’ran and the Sunnah as our reference point does not mean that we depend for our ethics on ‘Islam as opposed to the others’. I look to Islamic ethics to find something that can provide the basis for shared values with other traditions, and ultimately universal values. This ties into the point I made in another book, The Quest for Meaning, that the only way for values to be universal is if they are shared universal values. My main point is, in this quest for value the aim is not to express your distinctness from others, but about being able to contribute to the discussion of universal value. What I’m advocating is an intellectual revolution – it’s a different mindset concerning the ethical benchmarks by which we live.

Rosemary Bechler: In the book, those Islamic values are deployed both as a critique of western values and the Arab world’s in their present state. Together they amount to a comprehensive critique of capitalism as a system, a critique which you also find reflected in the Arab Awakening which is the subject of the book. Do you think these seismic processes will take that path and build on that critique?

Ramadan: Unfortunately, some of the theses I put forward in those pages have now been proved all too correct. For example, in the concerns I voiced at the beginning of the book, when I said that I was cautiously optimistic, but that there could be a polarisation with secularism, and that in that polarisation, Islam was avoiding the main questions. The nature of the state is one thing, but there are other major challenges — what it will take to tackle the issues of social corruption, for example, social justice, and the economic system — and what are the future challenges when it comes to equality between the citizens, in particular in the field of the job market and equal opportunity for men and for women? This is at the centre of the question that is the Arab Awakening.

What I see now is that even with the Islamists, who have been portraying themselves as the alternative to corruption and dictatorship and in defence of more transparency, there is one respect in which they have now changed completely. Since the beginning of the 1920s, Islamism was very close in positioning in some respects to ‘liberation theology’. But that is no longer the case. Now the most important example of the last fifteen years is the move from Erbakan to Erdoğan, creating the Turkish model that has been highly successful in economic terms, but only in fact by buying into and succeeding in being integrated into the global economic system.

I don’t see anyone today, whether you look at the Muslim Brotherhood or En-Nahda in Tunisia or people working in Libya, or even the Salafi, who have a different position on the economy. The Salafis are now very much involved in politics, having changed their strategies over the last five years. As we know, though they have their own very particular take on the whole political discussion — they are obsessed with the political structure — they don’t talk about economic dynamics either. So this is why in Saudi Arabia and Qatar they can be very very powerful at the grassroots level, by being very strict about what is lawful and unlawful in ethical and political and cultural terms. But they are not talking about the economy either.

Bechler: Don’t they talk about the need for redistribution? One gets the impressions that the Salafi argument is often more concerned about looking after the poor?

Ramadan: Yes, but within the system. You can be a very charitable capitalist. Like Sarkozy was saying, we have to ‘moralise capitalism’, which for me is a contradiction in terms.

But this is my position and my position is that these questions are not answered or addressed by the movement now. I think we are making a mistake, a very big mistake if we look at what we call the Arab Awakening only by looking at the whole dynamics in political and not in economic terms. This brings me back to what George W. Bush said in 2003, when they were talking about democratisation. He said that it might be the major challenge for them, not to deal with democracies per se but the challenge of a new economic balance in the region. I think that this is very important, when you look at the influence of China and India in the region. These are new players here, and they are very efficient. They can compete with the US.

Bechler: Do you see anyone who is talking about this in the Arab world?

Ramadan: They are talking, in a way they are trying to find a way to get new partners in the region. For example, one of the first visits of President Morsi after he was elected was to China. They are looking at the new relationship between Turkey and Egypt which is also important. So does this just amount to being integrated into the economic order, to stabilise the Egyptian economy? It could be. Or might it be about something deeper than that? I think we have to consider that it is about a deeper challenge. When I wrote the book I said that for some young Islamists in Tunisia and Morocco and Egypt — the model is Turkey much more than Iran. When I visited Turkey people were so happy: they were so pleased that I had chosen them as the model. So I had to say, “No, you are not my model: what I was saying was that you are the model for some young Islamists.”

“The Turkish road is not my model because I am critical of the way you are dealing with freedom of expression, of how you are dealing with the treatment of minorities, and your economic vision.” But at the same time, I say, I’m watching what you are trying to do and I think there are things that are interesting in the Turkish approach, which for the first time in the last decade has started to shift towards the south and the east, opening almost fifty embassies in Africa, and having a new relationship with China. That is just huge.

So it might be that they are accepting the rules, and understanding that there is a shift towards the east. There’s a change in Turkey’s positioning vis-a-vis the EU — and now we understand that this was very smart — they used the EU against their own army. But that doesn’t mean that they were obsessed with the west. They were trying to find a way to confront the Turkish army with their own contradictions – “you are talking about a secular state but then you want a secular military state, and we want a secular state which is in tune with the requirements of the EU.” So they simultaneously use the EU against the army and meanwhile, they shift towards the south and the east. That’s interesting.

I don’t like this vision that Turkey is successful because it is as successful as the western powers in economic terms. But I do think they are trying to find a new space in the multi-polar world, and this is what I am advocating. I don’t think that Muslims have an alternative model. An ‘Islamic economy’ or ‘Islamic finance’ doesn’t mean anything to me. But I do think that in the multi-polar world, it is time to find new partners, to find a new balance in the economic order. And this could help you to find an alternative way forward. The way that Turkey, for example, is now very close to Egypt, and they are dealing with Malaysia and Indonesia on new terms. We don’t talk a lot about Indonesia but they are a very important power in the region. So I think we still have to assess and analyse these dynamics.

Read the on December 16.

*[This article was originally published in the independent online magazine ].

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Tariq Ramadan and the Arab Uprisings (Part 1/2) appeared first on 51�Թ�.