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What the Muslim Brotherhood and the Levellers have in common What the Muslim Brotherhood and the Levellers have in common
(21 days later)
In 2006, this newspaper asked its readers to nominate a place from British political history that best represented this country's neglected radical past. Readers voted in their thousands – for Bodmin parish church where the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion began, for the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, for Orgreave colliery and its role in the 1984-85 miners' strike – but the winner was my old church in Putney, the site of the Putney debates of 1647 where the so-called Levellers pressed Oliver Cromwell, general of the army, to establish a democratic state with universal male suffrage. By 1649, the army had deposed Charles I and cut off his head. Nonetheless, the army leadership was nervous of politically dangerous religious radicals. "You must cut these people in pieces or they will cut you in pieces," Cromwell is reported to have said. Many of the Levellers were rounded up by Cromwell's army and hanged or shot. Now, of course, most of us think of them as heroes.In 2006, this newspaper asked its readers to nominate a place from British political history that best represented this country's neglected radical past. Readers voted in their thousands – for Bodmin parish church where the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion began, for the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, for Orgreave colliery and its role in the 1984-85 miners' strike – but the winner was my old church in Putney, the site of the Putney debates of 1647 where the so-called Levellers pressed Oliver Cromwell, general of the army, to establish a democratic state with universal male suffrage. By 1649, the army had deposed Charles I and cut off his head. Nonetheless, the army leadership was nervous of politically dangerous religious radicals. "You must cut these people in pieces or they will cut you in pieces," Cromwell is reported to have said. Many of the Levellers were rounded up by Cromwell's army and hanged or shot. Now, of course, most of us think of them as heroes.
Last week, while going through my old papers on setting up a Leveller exhibition in St Mary's, I happened to be listening to a news report on the future of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and it prompted a strange flight of fancy of the sort historians are rightly nervous. The Levellers and the Brotherhood were not so very different, I found myself thinking. Both grew from movements that stood out against what they saw as foreign occupation (from Rome, from the British), both helped depose a decadent, out-of-touch king (Charles I of England and Farouk I of Egypt) who was regarded as being too much a puppet of that foreign power, both were/are religious puritans of a pretty rigorous kind, both were/are powered by popular grassroots activism, both were/are unsound on women (no one at Putney dreamed of giving women the vote), and both were done in by the leaders of the army during a violent civil war. For the Brotherhood, "Islam huwa al-hal" (Islam is the solution). No doubt the Levellers thought Christianity was the solution too.Last week, while going through my old papers on setting up a Leveller exhibition in St Mary's, I happened to be listening to a news report on the future of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and it prompted a strange flight of fancy of the sort historians are rightly nervous. The Levellers and the Brotherhood were not so very different, I found myself thinking. Both grew from movements that stood out against what they saw as foreign occupation (from Rome, from the British), both helped depose a decadent, out-of-touch king (Charles I of England and Farouk I of Egypt) who was regarded as being too much a puppet of that foreign power, both were/are religious puritans of a pretty rigorous kind, both were/are powered by popular grassroots activism, both were/are unsound on women (no one at Putney dreamed of giving women the vote), and both were done in by the leaders of the army during a violent civil war. For the Brotherhood, "Islam huwa al-hal" (Islam is the solution). No doubt the Levellers thought Christianity was the solution too.
Some tedious qualifications are probably in order here. Of course, there is nothing like an exact parallel. And, of course, I have no love in my heart for Islamist terrorism, nor the hateful antisemitism that is often present within the Muslim Brotherhood. But my point is this: the Levellers were neither secular nor liberal, yet we turn them into great political heroes. The Muslim Brotherhood are neither secular nor liberal, yet we too often turn them into villains.Some tedious qualifications are probably in order here. Of course, there is nothing like an exact parallel. And, of course, I have no love in my heart for Islamist terrorism, nor the hateful antisemitism that is often present within the Muslim Brotherhood. But my point is this: the Levellers were neither secular nor liberal, yet we turn them into great political heroes. The Muslim Brotherhood are neither secular nor liberal, yet we too often turn them into villains.
Why, I wonder? Is it because we mistakenly invest people like the Levellers with our own sense of what liberal secular democracy has come to be? Or is it because we are unable to see the same potential for political development through the distorting fears and fantasies generated by Islamophobia?Why, I wonder? Is it because we mistakenly invest people like the Levellers with our own sense of what liberal secular democracy has come to be? Or is it because we are unable to see the same potential for political development through the distorting fears and fantasies generated by Islamophobia?
As Carrie Wickham's fascinating new book on the Muslim Brotherhood takes great pains to point out, the Brotherhood is a political movement subject to the same political gravity – ambition, infighting, dissention, negotiation, change – as any other. The fact that it has Islam at its core does not make it intrinsically different from any other political movement. It is not homogenous nor is it unique. The idea that it is especially sinister and mysterious, the sort of organisation that one cannot do any sort of business with, is a dangerous feature of the wider western refusal to see anything worth commending within political Islam itself; dangerous because it encourages us away from the crab-like and constantly frustrating progress of political negotiation (and thus, too often in the Middle East, to the quick fix of cruise missiles).As Carrie Wickham's fascinating new book on the Muslim Brotherhood takes great pains to point out, the Brotherhood is a political movement subject to the same political gravity – ambition, infighting, dissention, negotiation, change – as any other. The fact that it has Islam at its core does not make it intrinsically different from any other political movement. It is not homogenous nor is it unique. The idea that it is especially sinister and mysterious, the sort of organisation that one cannot do any sort of business with, is a dangerous feature of the wider western refusal to see anything worth commending within political Islam itself; dangerous because it encourages us away from the crab-like and constantly frustrating progress of political negotiation (and thus, too often in the Middle East, to the quick fix of cruise missiles).
Dealing with organisations whose values we don't much like is a necessary part of the political. Assumptions of basic cultural superiority do nothing whatsoever to help that process along.Dealing with organisations whose values we don't much like is a necessary part of the political. Assumptions of basic cultural superiority do nothing whatsoever to help that process along.
Twitter: @giles_fraserTwitter: @giles_fraser
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