Hālah Muṣṭafá (*1958)

Hālah Muṣṭafá is an Egyptian political scientist and analyst who is the Editor-in-chief of the quarterly political journal Dīmuqrātīyah [Democracy Review] and Member of the National Democratic party.

 

The Education Background and Beginnings of Career

 

Hālah Muṣṭafá was born in Egypt in 1958. She attended a French school in Cairo and in 1980, she graduated from Cairo University with a BA in political science. In 1981, whilst continuing her graduate studies, Mustafá started to work as a researcher at the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, and she began writing articles for al-Ahrām, the largest semi-governmental newspaper in Egypt.

 

She was granted two academic scholarships, one from the University of Maryland in the United States (1983) and the other from the Institut de Sciences Politiques in Paris (1986-1987). In 1986, she obtained an MA in political science from Cairo University.

 

In 1992, Muṣṭafá published the book 'Al-Islām al-Siyāsī fi Misr' (Political Islam in Egypt). In this book Muṣṭafá analyzed the Islamic political movement in Egypt in the 19th century, and focused on the formative role of the early reformist movement initiated by Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī².

Muṣṭafá continued her research into political Islam and received her doctorate from Cairo University in 1994. Her PhD thesis dealt with Islamism and the Egyptian government’s strategies for dealing with Islamic opposition under Sādāt and Mubārak. It was published in Arabic in 1995 under the title:

 

'Al-dawlah wa-l-harakāt al-islamiyya al-mucarada, bein al muhadinah wa-l-muwajjahah' [The State and the Islamist Opposition Movements: Between Appeasement and Confrontation]³

 

Muṣṭafá was the Head of the Political Department at the Ahram Center of Political and Strategic Studies from 1994-2000. Since 2001 she has been the Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal al-Dīmuqrātīyah [Democracy Review], which is funded by the Ahram Foundation.⁴

 

She was also a visiting fellow of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the fall of 2003 and from May-April 2006.

 

Muṣṭafá has also served as a visiting lecturer at The Institute of Diplomatic Training which is affiliated with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Nasser Egyptian Military Academy and at the Postgraduate Department of the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences at Cairo University.

 

As well as frequently writing in the Arab press, she has published articles in American newspapers and journals and written academic papers for American think tanks. She has taken part in various conferences both within Egypt and abroad. Her fields of expertise are political Islam and fundamentalism, development and democratization in the Arab world and American foreign policy in the Middle East.

 

She has been criticized for her links with American policy-makers and researchers and also for her ambiguous relationship with the Egyptian government. [See more below]

 

 

Membership at the NDP

 

Muṣṭafá was appointed to be a member of the new Policies Committee of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 2002 by its chairman, Jamāl Mubārak. Coinciding with her acceptance for the post, she became a member of the party.

 

However, Muṣṭafá presents herself as an independent writer and thinker more than a party member.⁵ This commitment is reflected in her writings and activities. Her membership in the Policies Committee has been turbulent and marked by controversy.

 

Egypt Needs a Shift to More Liberal, Pluralistic and Secular Framework

Muṣṭafá has frequently stated that Egypt and the Arab world have an often neglected secular history⁶, and she sees herself as an inheritor of the secular and liberal movement that started with the rule of Muhammad ^cAli in the first half of the 19th century. In her view, this liberal current peaked with the creation of the first Egyptian Constitution in 1923 and started to decay following the 1952 Free Officers revolution.

 

The one-party system launched by President Nāsir and the dominant ideologies which have prevailed ever since, namely socialism, Pan-Arabism and Islamism are in Mustafá’s opinion, anti-liberal forces that block any liberal development of the political system in Egypt.⁷

 

For instance, she concludes that the establishment of the Sharī^cah as the main source of law for the constitution was a mistaken populist move by President Sādāt to please the influential Islamist trend in society.⁸ Therefore Muṣṭafá calls for severe and comprehensive amendments of the constitution, which she describes as a mosaic, inconsistent, and a product of populist trends from the last 50 years.⁹

 

She argues that “shifting from old political norms to a more liberal, pluralistic, and secular framework that supports reform”¹⁰ is what Egypt really needs in order to face the challenges of reform and the democratization of the political process.

 

Being an advocate of secularism and a religiously neutral state, Muṣṭafá is very reticent when it comes to inclusion of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in parliamentary life. She believes that an Islamist government can only be allowed in a democratic system, if this system is already guaranteed by a secular constitution and points to Turkey as a possible model.¹¹

 

Consequently, Muṣṭafá tends to stress the liberalization and secularization of society at the constitutional and cultural level¹² as a prerequisite for truly open elections and positive changes to the electoral laws. Her suggestions depend on the regime's willingness to carry out juridical and constitutional changes.

 

She admits her approach to reform is elitist and believes that there is a small intellectual and liberal middle class group that must be given the power to influence decisions. She believes that a combination of the U.S, European powers and economic pressure will help this to occur.

 

On Women's Rights

Women's rights and the promotion of women to leading positions in society is another of Muṣṭafá 's top priorities. She claims that the poor state of gender equality is related to Arab culture and politics, which she claims is based on collectivism rather than respect for the individual, whether they are men or women. She points to this characteristic as a sign of the crisis in the Arab world.¹⁴

 

Additionally, she blames the government for giving in to the Islamist agenda when it comes to women's position in society. She contends that the government is struggling to maintain power to the detriment of the women in Egypt by adopting Islamist and conservative agendas. She thinks this policy severely discredits the government's fight against extremism.¹⁵

 

Interviewed by the independent Egyptian newspaper al-Misrī al-Yawm in July 2006, she regretted that she has not yet been able to make a significant difference to women's issues through her activities in the Policies Committee.¹⁶

 

Islamists Are ‘Privileged’ Compared to Liberals

Muṣṭafá frequently contends that Islamists have much freer access to participate in political life in Egypt than liberal reformers. She even called the Islamists, although they have been formally banned, “privileged” compared to liberals.¹⁷

 

For this reason she tries to make liberal reformers more visible, because they offer a political alternative to what she calls the prevailing “false alternative” between the current authoritarian regime on one side and Islamism on the other.¹⁸

 

She claims that the regime benefits from this simplistic picture of the political scene, because an Islamist party in opposition would never receive enough support to overthrow the regime from major Western powers. In contrast, she argues, a liberal and Western-oriented party as opposition would hardly be ignored either within Egypt or abroad, if it was allowed space and publicity.¹⁹

 

Reform From Within

Muṣṭafá advocates reform and severe changes to the political system and political culture in Egypt, but her attitude to political involvement is pragmatic or in her own words “realistic”. She has been critical of the regime and the work of the Policies Committee, but in an interview with Misrī al-Yawm in July 2006 she explained that is also aware of the fact that she is promoting change from within the system that she is criticizing.²⁰

 

In a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 2003, Muṣṭafá stated that the keyword for democratization in Egypt should be “political liberalization”, by which she meant, "[…] adopting an incremental, evolutionary approach to reform from within the system."²¹

 

Controversy with the NDP and security services after a short while in the NDP Policies Committee, Muṣṭafá’s critical statements and positions toward reform were no longer appreciated by influential members of the committee, and the government newspaper Rose al-Yūsuf, which was supposed to become the mouthpiece of the policies committee, started to attack her.²²

 

Criticisms of Muṣṭafá                   

 

One criticism that is leveled against Muṣṭafá in the Egyptian press is that she is too Americanized or even that she acts as an American agent. Rumors have also circulated that she received American funding. Muṣṭafá has rejected all these accusations and argues that her opinions have been expressed openly and consistently in the Egyptian press for more than 20 years and are the same whether published in the Egyptian or American press. She denies that she has a hidden agenda, and claims that her views are especially targeted when they are published in the American press.²³

 

In her opinion, some of the committee members who felt threatened by her views or by her relations with U.S. officials have framed her as pro-American and claimed that she is.²⁴ She has also said, the accusations against her stem from a wish to “intimidate liberal voices to adopt a certain line of thought or more precisely propaganda.”²⁵

 

Muṣṭafá confirmed to the Egyptian press that there was a ban on all of her activities in the committee and even her writings in al-Ahrām newspaper for a long period.²⁶

 

The most controversial issue that has made Muṣṭafá a highly unpopular figure among people in the political bureau of NDP is her outspoken criticism of the Egyptian security apparatus. In an article entitled “Ending the Silent War in Egypt” published in the Washington Post on December 24, 2005, she openly criticized the increasing power of the security services:

 

“In Egypt it is no secret that the security services are deeply involved in the National Democratic Party (NDP), selecting high-level officials and most of the party’s candidates for elections. (…) Even the NDP Policies Committee – established three years ago as the party’s vehicle for reform – could not escape the clutches of the security services, which promoted a group of phony reformers to positions of influence and visibility in a false response to America’s call for political change.”²⁶

 

In an interview in May 2007 with CIDT interns Muṣṭafá said that the Policies Committee was only a fake initiative meant to please the American reform agenda that was dominant at the time. She claimed that it was never meant to set any real reforms in motion, but to appear willing to reform and to give Jamāl Mubārak a political career and status that is necessary to authorize and promote him as a competent successor of his father.²⁷

 

In this manner, she spoke out directly against people belonging to Jamāl Mubārak's circle and their relationship with the security establishment, whose influence she sees as the largest hindrance for political changes and “reform from within”.

 

Muṣṭafá increased her critical statements about the manipulative power of the security establishment after her own experiences with them after she ran counter to the Policies Committee. In an interview with al-Misrī al-Yawm in November 2006, she explained that she was harassed and monitored and felt that her life was in danger because of how the security services treated her.²⁸

 

Relations with the USA

 

Muṣṭafá has focused on America's support and ability to change the situation in Egypt through political and economic pressure and therefore she makes frequent appeals to American decision makers and promotes her views and ideas in the American media. In her writings she adopts a positive although not absolutely uncritical tone towards American political intentions and she does not agree with the scathing criticism and rejection of U.S. foreign policy that prevails in the Arab world.

 

She has met the United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice twice.²⁹ The first time was during the lecture that Dr. Rice delivered at the American University in Cairo, June 2005, on the ‘Future of Democracy in Egypt’. At the time, Dr. Muṣṭafá introduced the U.S Secretary of State to the audience. Because her introduction promoted her well-known liberal agenda, it was highly criticized by the government-run newspaper Rose al-Yūsuf, which started the beginning of a long campaign by this newspaper and the security authorities to target Muṣṭafá.

 

The second time she met Dr. Rice was in February 2006, when a group of prominent Egyptian intellectuals took part in a meeting with Dr. Rice which was also held at the American University in Cairo. As expected, Muṣṭafá criticized the government controlled media and their pervasive exercises to discredit liberal reformers who promotes freedom in Egypt thus instigating a second and more serious campaign against her.

 

Muṣṭafá was ridiculed by the newspaper Rose al-Yūsuf and other sources for “complaining” to Secretary of State Rice about her personal controversies with authorities in Egypt. The criticism came at a time when there was a prevalent negative feeling toward all pro-Americans in Egyptian society and according to Muṣṭafá it was an unfair use of this situation by the press in order to "defame her image" and "affect her credibility".³⁰

 

In addition to her ambition to reform the system from within, Muṣṭafá also believes that the United States could be an important ally in reform as well as in strategic relations.

 

She finds the general attitude of reluctance and skepticism toward America among Egyptian leaders hypocritical, as the U.S is officially a friend and partner to Egypt and donates billions of dollars to Egypt every year.³¹

 

She calls the official discourse in Egyptian government newspapers “monologue” and marked by an American complex that reveals an ambiguous and unsettled relationship with America. The one-sided nature of the official discourse means that people are classified according to their relationship with America, following criteria made up by leading officials. She believes that the monologue is awash with double standards, because there are a lot of close ties to America within official circles.³²

 

Revealing a great deal of hypocrisy in the attitude to America among party members, she contended that:

 

“Those who have accused me of being pro-American introduced themselves to the regime by saying that they are close to the American administration.”³³

 

In 2005, following the September 7 presidential election in Egypt, Muṣṭafá spoke as a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. She appreciated the great impact in the Arab world of the democratic reform agenda adopted by the Bush administration, and stated that the first multi-candidate presidential election in Egypt was an effect of this new U.S. policy.³⁴

 

However, later Muṣṭafá expressed her disappointment about the absence of any democratic developments in Egypt. She has emphasized the continuous suppression of the liberal opposition and the stagnated process of constitutional change. She concluded that only “cosmetic changes” were actually made and equally cosmetic was the role allowed for the oppositional parties.³⁵ In a CNN debate after the 2005 election, she said:

 

“I think we go one step forward and two steps back, and I'm afraid that after a period of time that we will return back to the same stagnant situation that Egypt has been stuck in for more than 20 years.”³⁶

 

In an article published in January 2007 in the American journal Current History, Muṣṭafá uttered regret about the waning American effort to put pressure on the Egyptian government for democratic reforms. She repeated her urging of the United States to work for democratization in the Middle East and especially Egypt, as she believes Egypt to have the potential to become a model for other Arab countries as it has been before.³⁷

 

In fact, Muṣṭafá believes the only way to promote liberal values, which she thinks should come before democracy in Egypt, is by means of foreign pressure. The kind of pressure she calls for could involve establishing criteria for obtaining funds for civil projects.

 

On the Interreligious Relations in Egypt

 

In an interview that was published on July 1, 2006 in al-Misrī al-Yawm, Muṣṭafá was asked by the interviewer to comment on the situation of the Copts and how Americans manipulate their situation by claiming that the Egyptian Copts are being persecuted by Muslims.

 

Muṣṭafá clearly rejected the underlying presumptions of the question, which she called, "already prepared clichés that state that everything in Egypt is OK and that America is the party drumming the cards." She agreed that Copts do, to some extent, have problems with discrimination in Egypt and that the government ought to listen more carefully to their demands, without feeling threatened by them.³⁸

 

Along with women, she frequently draws attention to Copts as a discriminated group, who she feels are denied equal access to influential positions in Egyptian society.

 

Marie Lunddahl, May 2007

 

1. Halāh Muṣṭafá 's CV is based on information from: Halāh Muṣṭafá's own professional CV. Most of the information is available on following websites:
http://www.faits-et-projets.com/decouvrir_egypte_GB.htm and
http://www.siyassa.org.eg/asiyassa/serv/serv_hala.htm and
http://cache.zoominfo.com/cachedpage/?archive_id=0&page_id=1624878358&pa...
2. http://www.faits-et-projets.com/decouvrir_egypte_GB.htm and
   AWR 2006, 14, art.85
3. http://mondediplo.com/1998/01/08egypt (Le Monde Diplomatique)
4. http://www.siyassa.org.eg/asiyassa/serv/serv_hala.htm
5. Interview in the independent newspaper al-Misrī al-Yawm, July 1, 2006 (also published in Democracy Review 23, July 2006)
Article available on the internet at: http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547
6. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/673/op43.htm
7. http://www.defenddemocracy.org//publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=372066 and
AWR 2006, 24, art.52
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=259
11. http://www.defenddemocracy.org//publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=372066
12. http://www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1682
13. (Al-Misrī al-Yawm/ Democracy Review 23, July 2006) http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547
14. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=207
15. http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547
16. http://www.currenthjkhistory.com/org_pdf_files/106/696/106_696_39.pdf
17. http://www.currenthjkhistory.com/org_pdf_files/106/696/106_696_39.pdf and
http://www.defenddemocracy.org//publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=372066
18. http://www.currenthjkhistory.com/org_pdf_files/106/696/106_696_39.pdf
19. (Al-Misrī al-Yawm/ Democracy Review 23, July 2006) http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547
20. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=207
21. (Al-Misrī al-Yawm/ Democracy Review 23, July 2006) http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547
22. Ibid.
23. (Democracy Review 25, January 2007, interview from al-Misrī al-Yawm, November 2006)
http://democracy.ahram.org.eg/eng/Index.asp?CurFN=selt2.htm&DID=9083
24. http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547
25. (Democracy 25, January 2007 from al-Misrī al-Yawm november 2006) http://democracy.ahram.org.eg/eng/Index.asp?CurFN=selt2.htm&DID=9083
26. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/23/AR2005122301065.html
27. AWR 2007, 22, art.2)

28. http://democracy.ahram.org.eg/eng/Index.asp?CurFN=selt2.htm&DID=9083
29. http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547 and
http://usinfo.state.gov/mena/Archive/2005/Jun/20-589679.html?chanlid=mena (The speech of State Secretary Rice at the first meeting) and http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=283 (Remarks by Mustafá at her second meeting with the State Secretary)
30. (Al-Misrī al-Yawm/ Democracy Review 23, July 2006) http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547 and http://democracy.ahram.org.eg/eng/Index.asp?CurFN=selt2.htm&DID=9083
31. Ibid.
32. Editorial by Hālah Mustafá in Democracy Review 23, July 2006: “The American Complex in the Egyptian Debate”. Only available in the journal
33. (Democracy 25, January 2007 from al-Misrī al-Yawm november 2006) http://democracy.ahram.org.eg/eng/Index.asp?CurFN=selt2.htm&DID=9083
34.http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC07.php?CID=259
35. http://www.currenthjkhistory.com/org_pdf_files/106/696/106_696_39.pdf
36. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/07/i_ins.01.html
37. http://www.currenthjkhistory.com/org_pdf_files/106/696/106_696_39.pdf
38. http://www.ikhwanweb.com/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&System=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5547

 

 

Further reading

By Halāh Muṣṭafá:
• Al-Islām al-Siyāsī fi Misr, (Political Islam in Egypt), Ahram Center of Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo, 1992
• "Al dawla wal harakat al-islamiyya al-muarada, bein al muhadena wal muwagaha" (The State against the Islamist Opposition Movements: Between Appeasement and Confrontation), Al Mahroussa, Cairo, 1996.
• Islam and the West: Dilemma of Coexistence, General Egyptian Book Organization, 2002.
• In Support of Arab Democracy: Why and How?, Council on Foreign Relations (U.S.A) Task Force Report, 2005
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/735/op3.htm