Increasingly strong, increasingly insane. Recep Tayyip Erdogan enthroned himself as the “second conqueror” of Hagia Sophia after Mehmet II in 1453. He proclaimed it in his “message to the nation” broadcast on television on that funeral day – July 10, 2020 – when Ataturk’s 1934 decree transforming the building into a museum was rescinded. Mustapha Kemal had given back to humanity the basilica, jewel of Christianity for 916 years, then flagship mosque of the Ottoman Empire for five centuries. He wanted to put an end to the Islam-Western divide and ease conflicts. Erdogan, on the other hand, is turning them back on.
To paraphrase the Michel Audiard of Les Tontons flingueurs, we can say that collaborators dare to do anything. While the jihadist cutthroats are still shedding blood on France, a black flight of peremptory crows is descending on the plateaus and squatting in the newspaper columns. The poisonous honeyed platforms charged with rewriting reality follow one another as if nothing had happened. In any case not what had upset us to the core of our souls: this aftershock of previous earthquakes, five years after the massacre of Charlie Hebdo’s journalists, the attacks on the Bataclan and the Hypercacher.
In an open letter addressed to President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Jean Castex and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, 22 French personalities, including elected officials, intellectuals, researchers and a lieutenant general, called for the dissolution of the organisation “French Muslims” (formerly UOIF), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood described as a “secret brotherhood that advocates a political and totalitarian Islam” whose “thinkers have inspired worldwide jihadism”.
Multiple French flags and effigies of President Emmanuel Macron have been burnt all over Pakistan in the last couple of days as Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government encouraged political parties, radical Islamic groups, lawyers and students’ associations to come out to the streets in thousands against the perceived Islamophobia in France.
In rapid succession, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Britain’s leading Muslim NGO, was forced to get rid of two of its key leaders. The first for antisemitic writings, the next for singing the praises of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
On September 2, the trial of the January 2015 terror attack at the Charlie Hebdo office and the Hyper Cacher of Porte de Bagnolet in Paris commenced at the Paris Criminal Court. The same day, the Charlie Hebdo magazine re-printed the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that had made those who worked in the magazine target of lslamist terrorists. When questioned during his visit to Lebanon, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would not intervene against the reprint of these cartoons, as the press in France enjoys freedom of expression and even the freedom to blaspheme. While Mr. Macron’s statement was well received in France and in most countries around the world, it sparked strong opposition in some countries in the Muslim world.
Let’s say it outright, the only difference between the brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS is the method. The end remains the same: to apply the Islamiya Sharia, the Islamic law, and to re-establish the caliphate, by appointing a caliph in the Islamic way, without a vote. Once this is done, they work on Islamising the existence and dominating the world. Thus, two fundamentalist entities do each other favours often consciously, sometimes unconsciously.
Beylik: that’s the word we don’t want to hear anymore in Tunis. Beylik, domain of the bey, vassal of the sultan. Beylik, province or Ottoman “regency”. A word that comes from the well of the centuries, a return of the historical repressed. It was furiously written in the country’s media after the unexpected visit to Tunis of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who came to ask President Kais Saied to support a Turkish intervention in Libya in support of the ill-named “Government of National Accord” of Faiez Sarraj against General Khalifa Haftar. By opening Matmata airport to Turkish military aircraft. But yes, of course, it made sense: the tiny and strategic Tunisia could not but acquiesce to Ankara’s desires. In the spirit of the neo-Great Turk, it had to become again the vassal of the old days.
About fifteen years ago, I had the privilege of entering Gamal al-Banna’s lair, the youngest brother of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. In a small apartment in a working-class district of Cairo, he had collected more than 30,000 books, many of which cannot be found today, hundreds of unpublished documents, such as handwritten notes on the secret links between the Brotherhood and the Free Officers Movement, the military organization founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser. During Gamal al-Banna’s lifetime, these treasures did not interest many people. What have they become since his death in January 2013?
Under the leadership of the new head of the World Islamic League, Mohammed Bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, a close to the crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia announced in January that it would separate from the mosques it control in the West and which have long served to spread the Wahhabi ideology. But five months later, Riyadh did not find takers. And this Saudi disengagement raises fears of a takeover of these mosques by even more radical actors. The mosques in question are coveted by some disreputable states, such as Erdogan’s Turkey, and by non-state groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafist movements.
