Richard Bulliet & Abdur-Rahman Abou Almajd Chatting in Tahrir square.

"Richard Bulliet" is Professor of Middle East History at Columbia University.

He writes about Muslim religious politics in both the contemporary world and in earlier periods of Islamic history. He first visited the Middle East in 1965. On his many subsequent trips he has spent time in virtually every region of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia. He has abilities in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish along with several European languages.

Bulliet has given several hundred interviews to the print and broadcast media. His commentaries have appeared in Newsday, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Arizona Republic, and he has served as a consultant on Islamic matters for Time Magazine.

His books include The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004, in press), The Columbia History of the Twentieth Century (ed., 1998), The Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (co-ed., 1996), Islam: The View from the Edge (1994), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (1979), The Camel and the Wheel (1975), and The Patricians of Nishapur (1972).

I prepared my questions well, you condemn Huntington's thesis about the "Clash of Civilizations" indicating how it is both misleading and damaging.

(Bulliet might have added it has been used for aggressive, hateful, and misguided policies that obscure economic, oil, and geostrategic motives). Christianity and Islam as social, political, and institutional matters are "siblings" not clashing civilizations and excellent comparative analysis about responses to often similar needs are enlightening.

but your latest article took us to chat in Tahrir square.

Abdur-Rahman: Michael Cook has just told me that there isn't much I can do--I have no connections to the politicians.  But I can tell you that you guys are getting a lot of sympathy, especially since the baltagiyya started attacking the demonstrators, I asked Bulliet to do his best for Egypt, so he did.

I don’t know how to begin, I'm not a member in any party or a group , I like Egypt, we want to change ,we  want international push to force the president  Mubarak to yield to Egyptians' demands for democracy.

urging the immediate departure Unrest have killed more than 100 people, Supporting an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people.

In EGYPT’S NEO-MAMLUK ENDGAME

Bulliet: Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt resembles not just to the fallen regime of Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in Tunisia, but also the regimes in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, and Oman.  All of them are now at risk.  How the Egyptian drama plays out will tell us what to expect in the weeks to come. It is unlikely that Hosni Mubarak is personally determining the government strategies being pursued in Egypt today.  In neo-Mamluk regimes, the man on top serves at the pleasure of his senior colleagues.

When the regime is threatened, those colleagues are properly concerned with their collective interest.  They confer with the president, or plot behind his back, to determine when he should leave, and they try to manage the succession in a fashion that will preserve their privileges.

Louis XV said “après moi, le deluge.” Mubarak has wanted his son Gamal to succeed him every bit as much as that French monarch wanted his son to reign as Louis XVI.  But instead of leaving the vice presidency vacant and trying to bull his way ahead for the benefit of his son, Mubarak has effectively said “après moi, Omar Suleiman.” There is no way of explaining this other than to assume that Mubarak has his bags packed and is ready to head for the airport.  True, he has said he will stay until the September election.  But why, then, appoint a Vice President?

Abdur-Rahman: What will determine the date of Mubarak’s flight into exile?

Bulliet: an agreement among the senior military officers on a plan to quell the unrest, get the country back to work, and devise an electoral strategy that will preserve their behind-the-scenes domination.  The president’s departure is a bargaining chip.  The army has already shown its willingness to go with the flow of the street demonstrations by pledging not to use force.  Now they must persuade the crowds to go home and resume their jobs once Mubarak leaves.

Nevertheless, it is characteristic of neo-Mamluk regimes that they are ideologically flexible.  So long as the status of the military and the privileges of the officer corps are maintained, they can accommodate secularism or Islamism, socialism or capitalism, populism or fascism.  What they can’t tolerate is the kind of callous disregard for the status and sensibility of the officer corps that existed under Saddam Hussein in Iraq and that is emerging in Iran with the rise of the Republican Guards at the expense of the professional military.

Abdur-Rahman: well, Bulliet.

Bulliet: For three decades the United States has supported Mubarak, albeit while occasionally tut-tutting his heavy-handed rule.  Now Egyptians want to know where America stands.  So far, the administration’s pronouncements have lagged behind the unfolding events.  The White House is not urging Mubarak to leave even though it is clear to everyone in the world that the Egyptian people want him gone.

The Obama administration needs to open its mind to the likelihood that the Muslim Brotherhood will be part of Egypt’s post-Mubarak government.  The Brotherhood has long formed the primary opposition to Egypt’s dictatorship, and its members permeate Egyptian society from top to bottom.  For them not to play a central role now would simply set the stage for continuing uncertainty, renewed oppression, and future conflict.

Abdur-Rahman: This fear is not unrealistic.

Bulliet: well, This fear is not unrealistic but the United States cannot afford to condition its acquiescence in a new Egyptian government on pledges of warm relations with Israel and opposition to Palestinian militancy.  Israel and the United States will always be friends, but losing Egypt’s friendship would begin the unraveling of a half-century of American policy in the Middle East.

Things may unravel nevertheless.  The Arab world has been poised for a massive restructuring for decades.  But apprehension about future uncertainty affords no basis for trying to sustain a crumbling status quo.  The time has come to help Hosni Mubarak leave, persuade Egypt’s generals to allow a democratic civilian government to emerge, and put our anxiety about the Muslim Brotherhood on hold.

Regardless of American ideological preferences and our popular Islamophobia, Islamist political parties are destined to play a significant role in the transition to democracy in the Arab world.  They deserve an opportunity to show how they can compete, and possibly govern, in a pluralistic electoral system.  President Obama should make this clear.

It´s the latest symptom of a crisis of authority that has been building for more than a century--and which now must be resolved.

Abdur-Rahman: I remember reading your article Islam’s Crisis of Authority That published on  Tuesday, February 07, 2006.

You said: Resolving this crisis of authority will take several generations. After all, socio-religious developments tend to play out over decades and centuries.

- Are the United States afraid of joining a scheme in fall?

Bulliet: The United States would probably lean harder on Mubarak to leave the country immediately if it thought there were pro-American democrats waiting to lead the transition to democracy.  But Mubarak’s policy of oppression, which the United States criticized but acquiesced in, prevented the emergence of such leaders.  Secular, pro-American Egyptians are numerous, and many have the experience and technical skills to help their country in this crisis.  But they are afraid to step forward because they gained their experience by holding official posts under Mubarak.  It is striking that the only secular leader who has spoken out so far, Mohamed ElBaradei, built his reputation outside of Egypt as a U.N. official and does not owe his prominence to Mubarak.

The Obama administration would probably work more forcefully to get Mubarak to leave if it could identify people it trusts as possible successors.  A familiar military man like the new Vice President Omar Suleiman might gain American support, but so far it seems that the Egyptian street would demonstrate as strongly against another general taking over as against Mubarak.  So the United States is afraid to act forcefully because it is afraid of regional instability.

Abdur-Rahman:  Which is the biggest fear of the United States now?

Bulliet: The biggest fear is the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood as the dominant political force in Egypt.  This fear derives from the nightmare of the Iranian Revolution, and from the later electoral success of Hamas in the Occupied Territories; but it is fueled just as strongly by the Islamophobia that has mushroomed in the U.S. and Europe since 9/11.

The slogan “one man, one vote, one time” that became popular during the Algerian coup in 1991 is meant to characterize all overtly Islamic political parties as dictatorial.  This is historically ridiculous.  Many leaders around the world have used democratic elections to establish tyrannies, but they have usually been generals or heads of national liberation movements.  Hamas won an election in the Occupied Territories, but it has not eliminated its more secular Fatah opposition or banned elections.  The semi-Islamist AK government in Turkey has not become a dictatorship or interfered in elections.  And the Islamic Republic of Iran, supposedly the best example of a dictatorial religious takeover, has held hotly contested presidential and parliamentary elections for thirty years.  Nevertheless, the stereotype of Islamic religious dictatorship is deeply entrenched in the minds of American officials.  So they are afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood categorically, because it is an Islamist movement, and it is specifically fearful that a Brotherhood influenced Egyptian government would become unfriendly toward Israel.  (One might note, in this respect, that popular sentiment in Egypt has been consistently unfriendly toward Israel ever since the 1979 peace treaty.)

Abdur-Rahman: Obama said a year and a half at the University of Cairo that the United States supported the democratic aspirations of young Egyptians.

Bulliet: In the end will Obama support Mubarak? Or will he stand for democracy? In the end, Obama will support Egyptian democratic aspirations.  But he may be too slow in doing so and thereby damage the hopes the United States might have of working constructively with a new Egyptian government.

Abdur-Rahman: Is the demonization of political Islamism in Egypt an overstatement?

Bulliet: The demonization of political Islamism in Egypt and everywhere else is irrational and a major barrier to dismantling Middle Eastern autocracy.  The United States has never come to grips with the reality of the Islamic Republic of Iran because it is obsessed with memories of the hostage crisis.  Thus it cannot grasp that there is a world of difference between the democratic Islamist movements that are pressing for free elections throughout the Muslim world and the terrorism of Osama Bin Laden.  Until the United States achieves a new understanding of Islamic movements, its policies will be timid, vacillating, and detrimental to its interests.

Abdur-Rahman: Thank you a lot you enlighten different sides wonderfully.