Iran can’t just gobble up and Shi’ize Egypt

Political analyst Yasser el-Zaatreh, a native of Jericho, has been  freelancing for 27 years. He wrote this think piece in Arabic for Aljazeera.net

File pictures of Morsi and Ahmadinejad

Egyptian leaders are keeping nose to grindstone to mitigate internal disquiet.

They are less focused on recovering Cairo’s Arab and regional clout and role.

So before Egypt overcomes its internal travails, its leadership will find it hard to conjure up a clear Arab and regional vision.

Where events in Syria are concerned, Cairo remains as supportive of the Syrian people as it can be.

President Mohamed Morsi’s Syria statements and Cairo’s backing of the Arab League decision giving Syria’s seat to the Syrian Opposition Coalition corroborate this. The Arab League switch would not have been possible without Egypt’s full backing.

When discussing Egypt’s stance on Syria, we’re talking by implication about the position of Iran, which sees in Bashar al-Assad’s political survival the cornerstone of its strategy in the region.

After all, Iran effectively sacrificed its relations with the best part of the Ummah to preserve this immoral position. And the Islamic Republic’s loss on that matter is immeasurable by strategic standards.

Morsi would not have been supportive of the Syrian opposition had he been anxious to win Iran’s heart and mind.

He is aware that vexing Iran could tempt her to support and fund his opponents, if not tamper with Egypt’s internal security – chiefly in the soft areas of Sinai, where tribal groups and some Islamists are being led to believe they could challenge “Zionists” from that particular frontline.

On his February trip to Egypt for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not meet with Morsi except at Cairo airport, which is where Ahmadinejad offered him oil grants and financial support. Morsi simply ignored the offer.

Likewise, you can’t read much into the bilateral tourism promotion agreement between Egypt and Iran and the normalization of their commercial ties.

By comparison, tourism and commerce links between Turkey and Iran continue to prosper even though the two countries are exchanging blows in Syria and fighting a cold war across the region.

This is not to mention Tehran’s attempts to play the Kurdish card – a no-hoper since Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his historic peace deal with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

While Egypt has yet to resume diplomatic relations with Iran and bilateral tourism and commerce is just beginning, Arab Gulf states and the Islamic Republic share a wide range of diplomatic, tourism and trade links. For instance, hundreds of thousands of Iranians travel to Saudi Arabia annually to perform the Hajj and Umrah. Tens of thousands of Iranians also visit the UAE, Kuwait and Oman.

So can Morsi and his government overlook Egypt’s economic interests and shut out Iran? And is Egypt’s national security so porous as to be easily compromised by Tehran?

This takes us to the preoccupation of many people with Shi’ization (or the “missionary-style” spread of Shiism).

In truth, the obsession with Shi’ization is an insult to the Sunni branch of Islam, depicting it as vulnerable and easily pliable, which is far from being the case.

Inasmuch as Alawites are part of Shiite Islam, did 40-plus years of Alawite rule in Syria convert the country’s Sunni majority to Shiism?

More importantly, was Shiite Iran able to Shi’ize its own Sunni population (of about 10 percent) over the years?

Iran’s occasional dabbling in Shi’ization drives is provocative, featherbrained and futile. But the Arabs’ problem with Iran is far from being sectarian. The problem is political par excellence.

Egypt, it must be said, is a regional heavyweight with an impressive cultural and historical legacy. It is also home to the millennium-old Al-Azhar University, the foremost institution in the Islamic world for the study of Sunni theology and Islamic law, and to Al-Azhar Mosque.

The future will show that whoever thinks Iran can gobble up and Shi’ize Egypt is hallucinating.

Egypt will never fall in Iran’s lap, neither under Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood nor under anyone else. Politics, history and the balance of power won’t let this happen.

Let’s stop portraying Iran as an omnipotent sovereign when it is wobbling under the weight of its problems in Syria, in Iraq and at home.

Iran will revert to its original size once Assad is shown the door. The Arab world will then have no problem building good neighborly relations with Tehran as it now has with Ankara.

Azhar rebuke & Syrian shoe greet Iran’s Egypt foray

From top: Ahmadinejad greeted by Morsi, next to the Grand Sheikh and then gloomy after the upbraiding

It was not exactly “veni, vidi, vici” (ecclesiastical Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered”).

It was more like “I came, I saw, I tried” for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he ended the first visit by a president of Shiite Iran to Egypt since the Khomeini Revolution in 1979.

He arrived in Cairo Tuesday for a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). But his priority was to try and thaw long, frigid ties with the Arab world’s most populous nation following the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as president in June.

Morsi gave Ahmadinejad a red-carpet welcome on the tarmac at Cairo airport, shaking his hand, hugging and exchanging a kiss on each cheek.

In the days he was in Cairo, Ahmadinejad called for a strategic alliance between the two regional heavyweights to counter Western domination and promote unity in the Islamic world. He even offered Egypt a “big credit line.”

But Egypt's presidential spokesman Yasser Ali yesterday said an end to the Syria crisis is a condition to restore Cairo’s diplomatic relations with Tehran.

Additionally, Sunni-Shiite tensions dominated talks between Ahmadinejad and Egypt's most prominent cleric Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar mosque and university, who gave the Iranian leader a dressing down on a string of issues.

Al-Azhar is the highest seat of religious learning in the Sunni-Muslim world.

According to a sum up of the talks posted on al-Azhar’s website, al-Tayeb told Ahmadinejad:

• Al-Azhar mosque and university have over a millennium-long history. Over half a million men and women students from 103 countries are enrolled at the university, which teaches all roots, branches and philosophies of Islam without exception

• Two of our ulema are among those attending this meeting. Their respective specialties are two Shiite philosophers, theologians and scholars, namely Sadr ad-Din Muhammad Shirazi (1572-1640) and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274).    

• “Allow me to say we are extremely disappointed to hear ceaseless insults hurled at the (Prophet’s) Companions and the Believers’ Mothers, God bless them. That’s totally unacceptable.” (Those figures are widely resented among Shiites because they are seen as having pushed aside Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb, the prophet's son-in-law, who Shiites consider his rightful successor. The dispute over succession is at the root of the centuries old split between Islam's Shiite and Sunni denominations.)

• “We absolutely reject the extension of Shiite reach” in Sunni countries and in Egypt.

• “Despite all what al-Azhar sees and hears of the insults hurled at the Companions and Aisha – God bless them – and Imam Bukhari, we don’t want to engage in a dispute we all can do without.”

• Iran must give its Sunni citizens their full rights. Citizenship is indivisible according to modern law and Islamic Sharia.

• A word about (Iran’s) meddling in the affairs of Bahrain and the Arab countries: The loyalty of Bahrainis should be to their homeland. No one should interfere in the Bahrainis’ internal affairs or in the affairs of Gulf Arab states.

• Immediate action is needed to bring a halt to bloodshed in beloved Syria.

As the Iranian president walked past the ancient al-Hussein mosque near al-Azhar, a man believed to be Syrian attempted to hurl a shoe at him.

Ahmadinejad in tears next to Sayyida Zaynab's tomb

Unperturbed, Ahmadinejad later visited the mosque and mausoleum of Sayyida Zaynab in the capital's Old Cairo district, where he cried beside the Muslim matriarch's tomb.

Sayyida Zaynab was the daughter of Imam Ali, the central figure of Shiite Islam and the cousin of Prophet Muhammad.

Ahmadinejad greeted the mosque's superintendents with hugs and kisses. After praying inside the mosque, he headed to the adjacent mausoleum where he shed tears and prayed next to Sayyida Zaynab's tomb.

Editorially, Mohammed bin Abdellatif Aal ash-Shaikh, writing for today’s edition of the Saudi daily newspaper al-Jazirah, says the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar must have “greatly embarrassed” Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

“He is a stumbling block hindering Egypt’s move away from its traditional political positions toward rapprochement with Iran. That’s what the Brotherhood’s Egypt is trying to do.”

Ash-Shaikh recalls, “The Brotherhood was the first Sunni group to applaud Khomeini’s takeover in Iran. It sent a delegation to congratulate him on his return to Tehran and considered his accession to power a triumph for Islam and Muslims…

“At the same time, the Muslim Brothers want to draw closer to Iran, the Number One enemy of Gulf Arab countries, to sponge off financial aid from them. The Brothers’ links with Iran, in other words, are meant to pump off cash” from the Gulf Cooperation Council partners. Except that the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb will continue standing in their way.

Egypt’s famed talk show host Imad Adeeb, writing for the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, says al-Tayeb told Ahmadinejad in the face, “Stop persecuting the Sunnis of Iran. Respect the security of Gulf Arab states. Don’t back Bashar’s regime in his campaign against Syria’s Sunnis.”

Adeeb notes, “The Egyptian press and TV channels did not welcome Ahmadinejad. The masses did not crowd the streets to greet him. What was supposed to be a historic visit had nothing historic about it. The dream proved a nightmare. The signals from political and religious forces were disappointing…

“Ahmadinejad had hoped the Egyptian capital would compensate for the imminent exit of Assad’s Damascus from Iran’s sphere of influence. The Cairo visit dissipated that hope.”