An Interview with Tarek Heggy - The Australian magazine (Rhapsody) - issue of July 2009

An Interview with Tarek Heggy

The Australian magazine (Rhapsody)

issue of July 2009

DAN GOLDBERG

FACE TO FACE

A.     I accept that I represent a minority but I wouldn’t at all accept that I’m the only one. There is a sizeable minority of Egyptians who admired [former Egyptian president] Anwar
Sadat, and who thought very highly of his vision. As far as the Israeli-Arab conflict is concerned he thought it was high time to go from a military handling of this conflict to a
political one

I am not the only believer in this school of thinking. There are hundreds of thousands of men and women who follow the same path, who are fully convinced this is very good for humanity, for Egypt, for the region. I accept that I belong to a minority but I assure you there are hundreds of thousands who bought the Sadat dream

A. I would blame very much the media and the
entire intelligentsia because they exploited that these people are 50 per cent illiterate, they exploited the fact that these people have no access to the international media. Al- Jazeera is an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood ideas plus Arab nationalism. It’s like a combination between Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad and Osama bin Laden. If you put
the three of them in a mixer you can imagine the type of media you get. The Arab citizen is inclined to like al-Jazeera, it talks to him from the right perspective, from an emotional
perspective, it talks to him from the pan- Arabist and Islamist standpoint

Q. Why is Arab culture so obsessed with the so-called ‘Zionist conspiracy’ when they have so many domestic issues. Is it a form of escapism?

A. I accept this fully with regard to the Arab regimes. The regimes, the media, the intelligentsia and the religious institutions are united – they made the Arab people believe that the only problem in life is Israel. Israel is a challenge, but there are various ways to respond to it. The option for them was always to cry and scream that life was so dark because of the presence of Israel. But I blame the intellectuals more than religious institutions and political regimes. Sadat was ready to accept the consequences of peace with Israel – the domestic political and economic challenges – but these are the two questions most of the Arab regimes don’t want to face

A. This is one of the most important realities in the Arab world. Islam witnessed a moderate mainstream for 12 centuries. Islam has been around for 14 centuries but over 12 centuries it had a mainstream that could be described
as moderate and progressive even, and these are the words of [British-American historian] Bernard Lewis, who said by the standards of the Middle Ages Islam was progressive.
Since 1744 – when Wahhabism got its historic opportunity near Riyadh – it and many other marginal, hardline interpretations of Islam have gone from being a small
minority towards the mainstream. What made it capable of taking the driving seat from moderate Islam was oil production.
In a survey of Islamic centres in America, I found that 92 per cent were built by Saudi money, so Wahhabi Islam was in a position with oil revenues not only to rule Saudi Arabia but to go out to the rest of the world. Wahhabism is an interpretation of Islam that has been since day one the most rigid, inhuman, aggressive, isolated, impossible to integrate interpretation of Islam. Wahhabism has been since day one the most rigid, inhuman, aggressive, isolated, impossible to integrate interpretation of Islam. He’s a leading political thinker and liberal intellectual in the Arab world who has written more than 20 books in three languages and was described by Professor Bernard Lewis as a ‘courageous and distinctive voice from Egypt’