The Riddler: Understanding Mohamed Morsi. By Joshua Hammer. The New Republic, December 20, 2012. Also find it here.
More posts on Morsi and Egypt here.
Hammer:
I had
traveled to Al Adwa hoping that Morsi’s hometown might shed some light on a man
who has only become more enigmatic during his brief time in the spotlight.
Since he became Egypt’s first democratically elected leader last June, Morsi
has displayed both extraordinary political acumen and a tone-deafness that has
plunged his country into deeper unrest. In November, he deftly helped negotiate
a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, averting a bloody ground war in the Gaza
Strip. Days later, he lost much of the goodwill he had earned by issuing an
edict that awarded his office near-dictatorial powers.
Sometimes,
Morsi can seem like the inspiring guardian of Egyptian democracy—such as when
he courageously dismissed the military junta that had claimed the right to rule
post–Hosni Mubarak Egypt. At other times, he can seem like a mouthpiece for the deeply conservative Muslim Brotherhood—declaring women unfit for high office
and advocating for an international law to ban religious insults. (And
sometimes he simply seems awkward, such as when he sat down for a meeting with
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gilliard in September at the United Nations and
proceeded, for several excruciating seconds, to publicly adjust his genitals.)
So far, the only certainty about Morsi is that his ultimate intentions remain
unknown.
Among
Morsi’s many critics, the suspicion remains strong that he is an Islamist at
heart—and that this identity, shaped in the small conservative town where I was
standing, will ultimately define his presidency. On the second floor of his
three-story red brick childhood home, he still keeps a small study. His cousin,
a skinny man in his early twenties, showed me the room, with its bare cement
floor and battered sofa. He pointed at a scuffed wooden table: “Whenever he
comes home, he works at this desk.” Books and pamphlets that Morsi had left
behind were stacked haphazardly: a treatise by Hassan Al Banna, the founder of
the Muslim Brotherhood; a biography of a disciple of the Prophet Mohammed; a
manifesto that had been distributed by the Freedom and Justice Party, which the
Muslim Brotherhood founded immediately after the revolution that deposed
Mubarak. On top of the pile rested a slim volume: Teach Yourself French in Five
Days.
I
noticed a poster hanging on an otherwise bare wall. It showed the Al Aqsa Mosque
in Jerusalem above the slogan, in Arabic, “WE WILL RETURN, OH AQSA.” I asked his cousin how I
should interpret these words. “A war will happen again between the Arabs and
the Jews,” he told me matter-of-factly, “and we will regain Jerusalem.”
. . . . . . . . . .
A
hundred miles and a world away from Nour’s penthouse apartment, however, those
who have known Morsi the longest say they have little doubt where his true
values lie. Sitting beside his fields on the outskirts of Al Adwa, Said Morsi
told me that his older brother remains rooted to the uncompromising Islamic
beliefs that stamped his childhood and that have guided him throughout his
life. “All of the vacations before becoming the president, he would come back
here and work the fields, and sit with me, and talk,” he said, smoking a
cigarette as the wail of the muezzin began to sound from a few hundred yards
away. “In his heart, he belongs to the village.”
