world leaders given credit for breaking the taboos of the 20th century
Mohssen Arishi
The first two decades of the 21st century has witnessed the rise—almost concurrently—of 2 world leaders, Egypt’s President Abdel-Fatah el-Sisi and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who have been given credit in the new century for breaking taboos, which had been used for blackmailing regional and international decision-making for almost 50 years in the past century.
Egypt’s Sisi is the first Arab leader, who erased the temple of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist turned terrorist organisation, which was established at the hands of a teacher named Hassan el-Bana in 1928. On the other hand, India’s Modi refused to follow the example of his predecessors, who had used faltering hands in the past 45 years when they approached the dispute of Jammu & Kashmir. He announced major amendments in Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that granted “special status” to the state of Jammu & Kashmir, including the Ladakh region. Accordingly, Jammu & Kashmir has been fully integrated into India.
Doing likewise in Egypt, the Egyptian leader rejected the policy of faltering hands of his predecessors (Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak) which produced a good opportunity for the organisation to strike so powerfully that its fundamentalist ideology easily invaded Al-Azhar, the iconic seat of moderate Islam across the Muslim world. Sisi drove the last nail into the MB’s coffin in 2014 and confiscated its huge businesses and bank deposits worth billions of US dollars. A mass crackdown was also launched on the MB’s General Guide, his aides-de-camp and thousands of its violent elements. The Egyptian leader decided to eliminate this contagious ideological epidemic after its warlords waged a war of terror against the government and the people.
The MB’s founder el-Bana suggested his organisation as an ideological instrument for exhuming the remains of the Muslim Caliphate (State) from its grave in history. The late founder sought the reconstruction of the alleged Caliphate to declare the MB, the Master of the World. The deadly blow Sisi dealt to the MB has undermined el-Bana’s project.
The first violent clash between the Egyptian government and the MB took place in 1955 when President Gamal Abdel-Nasser launched mass crackdown on the fundamentalist group after its elements attempted to assassinate him a year before. However, Abdel-Nasser withdrew his tough measures after the group misleadingly renounced violence.
A conciliatory tone and gesture used by Abdel-Nasser’s successors, Sadat and Mubarak, in their dealing with the MB had ended in their ruin and murder. Although he pardoned them and removed handcuffs put around their wrists, Sadat was assassinated by the MB-linked Jihadists in 1981. In 2011, the MB-led mass protests in 2011 compelled President Mubarak to step down.
In India, Modi’s decision to free Jammu & Kashmir from its 45-year constitutional dilemma has reinforced optimism over the rehabilitation of the region and its people, who have been denied rights and development benefits offered to Indian citizens in different states. In a televised speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unveiled a package of development projects, which, he pledged, will end decades-long injustices done to the Kashmiri people. Modi has also pledged to help improve living conditions in the region by launching job-creating development projects, education, healthcare and social programmes. The charismatic Indian leader said that his government is paying special interest to welfare programmes tailored for the benefits of young people in Kashmir.
Historically speaking, the two countries are bearing striking similarities. Both countries won—almost concurrently—independence from the British occupation. Egypt gained its freedom in 1954, about eight years after India, the trailblazer. More significantly, Egypt and India, since their independence, have been working together to help underdeveloped and developing nations free themselves from the fetters of poverty, diseases and social woes.