George Banna, M. Bitar
One of the main and fundamental characteristics of conflation is the gathering of contradictions within a single intellectual framework, that is, the combining of contradictions within a single intellectual stance, For example, a position might combine modernity with tradition, democracy with consultation (shura), Arabism with religion, reason with revelation, or science with faith, Depending on the need, the conflationist might speak of democracy while meaning consultation, or speak of Arabism while meaning religion,Religion is not a national characteristic, and nationalism is not a religious characteristic, The discourse that attempts to place religion and nationalism in the same vessel is a contradictory and incoherent discourse whose characteristics are incompatible with each other, both theoretically and practically, The conflation that combines these contradictions is, in most cases, based on ignorance, contempt for human intellect, or manipulation and deception, especially regarding the issue of the civil state and the potential for linguistic ambiguity between “civil” and “city,” which the Muslim Brotherhood groups promoted without clearly indicating the characteristics of this civil state, Their bankruptcy has reached a high degree of absurdity and triviality, forcing them By exploiting the linguistic similarity between the city and urbanism.
Whoever hears the name of the civil state might think that the Brotherhood wants the civil state whose characteristics have been explained by many Western thinkers, most notably Rousseau, then John Locke or Hobbes. However, the Brotherhood’s civil state is not Rousseau’s civil state, nor John Locke’s civil state, but rather the civil state of the religious awakening, i.e., the civil state of Medina or the civil state of Yathrib. The awakening was born in Egypt after the 1952 movement, which was called a revolution, while in reality it was a classic military coup like the rest of the military coups in the Arab region.
We find no need to examine the concept of the civil state according to Rousseau or John Locke, as the concept is known to most people, In contrast, we believe that the concept of the civil state according to the religious revival, which many of the Brotherhood are demanding these days, is unknown, The reason for the lack of knowledge about the concept of the civil religious revival state, i.e., the state of the city of Yathrib, was the deliberate secrecy surrounding this concept by the Brotherhood, a deliberate confusion between a thing and its opposite, The civility of the revival state was the opposite of Rousseau’s civil state, and it was an act of appropriating the name of the civil state, They stole the name, booby-trapped the content, and misled with the word “civil” which they derived from the city, Even some secularists were impressed by this supposed positive development of the Brotherhood, The lack of knowledge regarding the civil religious revival state led some to believe that this state is Rousseau’s state and not Hassan al-Banna’s state or Sayyid Qutb’s state.
The “civil awakening state” was a locally made and recently coined slogan, Moreover, this term or slogan does not exist in legal dictionaries or dictionaries of political philosophy, To clarify, it can be said that the concept of this civil state applies to the concept of the caliphate as an equivalent to the concept of the Iranian mullahs’ state, Calling the rule of the jurist a “republic” did not succeed in transforming the rule of the jurist into a real republic, There is confusion between the concept of “republic” and the concept of the mullahs’ state and its supreme leader, which is a slightly modified concept of the caliphate in line with some features of the current historical context, The Brotherhood’s model of the caliphate state is no less fabricated and hypocritical than the model of the mullahs’ republic in Iran. There is neither civil nor republicanism in either case.
The so-called “civil awakening” state claims to want a “republic,” elections, and a president, just like the Iranian theocratic regime, While there are elections, a presidency, and a constitution, the Supreme Leader is above all of that, as are the religious institutions and the mullahs, No Iranian can run for president without the mullahs’ approval, No Iranian can run for parliament without their approval, No legislation can be debated without their consent, It is a theocratic state in every sense of the word,The government is theocratic, and so is the legislation, Calling such an entity a “republic” is a distortion of reality,A theocratic state can only be a caliphate, and a caliphate cannot be a “republic ” The term “republic” is applied to many entities that do not meet the criteria for this designation, It is well-established that the concept of a republic is not merely a linguistic classification of a system of government, but rather a set of principles, values, and a culture,Many pseudo-states lack these fundamental elements, “The Republic” is just a name, All of this prompted the former Tunisian President, Moncef Marzouki, to invent the name “Republicanship.” The concept of the Republic is the opposite of absolute rule, The Republic is the “state” according to Rousseau, and the state is a system of laws, The concept of the Republic is not compatible with hereditary monarchy or with the Caliphate.
In recent years, there has been much talk about the civil state, Each side in the debate has had its own distinct and contradictory intentions, leading to a vague and ambiguous definition of the term, Those who accept the civil state in its religiously-oriented, Islamist form will be surprised to find an entity called a civil state whose essence is a Sunni or Shiite caliphate, like the regime of the mullahs, Accepting the Brotherhood’s proposal has laid the groundwork for future conflicts that cannot be resolved even with the victory of one side, The victory of one side and the repercussions of such a victory represent nothing but a defeat for the people and an undermining of the state-building process, which will lead to the collapse of this state project and ultimately its demise! Isn’t the regime of the mullahs already in the process of collapse?
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