America's most famous political pundit, Thomas Friedman, bestowed his deep insights to Egyptians last week. Gamal Nkrumah ponders the implications "Egyptian Islamists, the newly elected majority in government have some big decisions to make. It is going to be fascinating to watch," Thomas Friedman, who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, his third Pulitzer for The New York Times, wrote during his visit to Egypt this week in a thought-provoking piece entitled "Political Islam Without Oil". So grave, so menacing, so unstoppable has the rise of political Islam become for secularists in Egypt and the Arab world that Friedman's observation takes on an ominous connotation. Unless, of course, the "four-month old liberals" -- rise up to the challenge. The predicament for me is that I suspect the use of the adjective "liberals" to describe the anti-Islamists is rather misleading, and I am afraid quite deliberately so. It is a sobering thought that so much depends on the farsightedness and circumspection of the secularist leadership rise to the Islamist challenge. Secularist, leftist tradition has a long and turbulent history in the course of contemporary Arab politics. The 1952 Revolution of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser was supposedly a socialist-inspired political venture. He engineered a radical agrarian land reform that for the first time in millennia gave the Egyptian peasant some semblance of dignity and a sense of sharing in the prosperity and decision-making process of the country. For the first time, seats were reserved for peasants and workers in the Egyptian parliament. To this day, this particular aspect of parliamentary representation is strictly adhered to, and this is why Egypt is one of the few countries where a complex system of proportional representation and first past-the-post or individual candidates is instituted. The People's Assembly representatives are a mishmash of the two systems combined. Whether or not this is the perfect system for the country is not the pertinent question at the moment. None of this will work unless Egyptians create a firewall around Islamist governments that have been voted in by popular approval of the candidates and in particular the poorly educated and the illiterate majority, the politically disfranchised, the economically impoverished and the socially sidelined. "When something extraordinary happens, like the uprising and subsequent truly free elections in Egypt, you just shut up and take notes," Friedman, in typical fashion, hit the nail on the head. Articulate as always he described the domestic Egyptian situation in "Watching Elephants Fly" on 7 January, using this odd metaphor to suggest that Egypt is currently a land of miracles. Friedman writes a twice-weekly column for The New York Times. He understands that political developments in core countries like Egypt in the heart of the Arab world have repercussions on whatever happens next in the Arab region, and writes regularly about the region -- inaccurately. But it also makes sense to consider whether the Islamists will put the governance of the country on a more people-oriented, more democratic, sounder footing. The blunt truth is that, because of the clout of such pundits with the White House, it is vitally important for the Egyptian political establishment to read them and their take on events here to see which way the wind is blowing. Whether we, as Egyptians, agree with him or not, and even whether he accurately interprets events, is immaterial. For instance, Friedman refers to the new Islamist majority in the "government" by which I presume he means People's Assembly, though it is unlikely that the Egyptian army will give free reign to the Islamists or that even the Muslim Brotherhood will demand it. Friedman compares the moderate Islamists in Egypt to the "Indonesian model", which may be true. However, in my humble opinion, Egypt degenerating into a Pakistan is the more likely scenario. The point is that Egyptians, and I dare say a great many foreigners, fear that so young an institution as their nascent democracy is vulnerable to a loss of credibility if the Islamists mess up. Even so, the democratic gains and ensuing parliamentary and then presidential elections are a huge step forward. Friedman has written extensively on foreign affairs including global trade, the Middle East, and environmental issues. What he says, and how he says it matters a great deal to his Egyptian and Arab readers. Attaching hard numbers to any of this is difficult. What matters is that Friedman is essentially influential, puissant if you will. In 2002, Friedman won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat." What a lot of trouble critical or misplaced words can cause. One thing is certain, the rise of the Islamists is no longer regarded as portentous in the West. Western powers are learning that they can do business with Islamists, with the exception perhaps of those they deem terrorists. That is, those who do not wish to cooperate at any level with the West or with secularists they see as Western lackeys in their native homelands. Saudi Arabia, an arch-conservative unabashedly Wahibist oil-rich kingdom does brisk business with the West and the Western powers have no qualms about conducting such business. Like them or not, the West is prepared to make allowances and concessions to conservative Islamist powers who have a radically different interpretation of human rights than the prevalent views in the West. "The Muslim Brotherhood is legitimate, the authentic, progressive alternative. Only faced by four-month old liberals, they had to win," noted Friedman. Hogwash. Egypt's liberal movements is more than a century old. Westerners like Friedman equate liberalism with individual human rights; they often overlook the fact that Nasser like other socialists of his generation equate human rights with social and economic rights, as does political Islam. Having said that, one must concede that the very conceptualisation of human rights in the West decrees that governments should not discriminate against anyone for his or her religious beliefs. Following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, Friedman became the White House correspondent for the Times. In 1994, he began to write more about foreign policy and economics, and moved to the op-ed page of The New York Times the following year as a foreign affairs columnist. In February 2002, Friedman met the then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, now King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and personally encouraged him to make his comprehensive attempt to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Friedman urged the crown prince to accomplish this mission by normalising Arab relations with Israel in exchange for the return of refugees alongside an end to the Israel territorial occupations. This, of course, is a line in the sand as far as most politicised Arabs are concerned, a red-line, as Arabs say. King Abdullah proposed the Arab Peace Initiative at the Beirut Summit that March, and Friedman has strongly supported ever since. The entire enterprise of course was a flop, but useful to distract attention as Israel's expansion relentlessly carries on. Even more sinisterly, Friedman expressed concern about the United States' dependency on Arab, Muslim or foreign sources of energy. Obviously he doesn't spell this out. He states unabashedly, however, that the US is addicted to Arab oil and even more insulting likens the Arabs to pushers. "First rule of oil -- addicts never tell the truth to their pushers. We are the addicts, the oil producers are the pushers -- we've never had an honest conversation with the Saudis." There was much curiosity about Friedman's expression of an inexplicably strong stance on America's need to become more energy independent and to lead in technologies concerning environmental compatibility. Friedman also believes that his exposure of the Saudi and Gulf Arab political and economic encumbrance will cause the authoritarian rulers in the Middle East to be coerced out of power. Why did he expound such a theory? Was it designed to denigrate Arabs, or to advance the cause of the disadvantaged Arab? Arab pundits concurred that Friedman's intentions were not honourable. He was far from championing the underdog. And what is even more disquieting is that soon after 11 September, 2001, Friedman's writing focused more on the threat of terrorism and the political crisis in the Middle East. Suspicions that he was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and to Israel were re-enforced in the Arab world. Friedman's columns were collected and published in his seminal Longitudes and Attitudes. His post-9/11 writings metamorphosed into the trickiest part of Arabs' trepidation about Friedman's real motives. The Arab media, including cyber-activists, too have been busy measuring how good or bad Friedman's articles were. Technology, Friedman should know, has also made a difference. The notion that Friedman had been writing sympathetically for the good of the Arab underdog is the one theory that has been beaten back hardest in recent years. In the aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings, Friedman called on the US State Department to "shine a spotlight on hate speech wherever it appears", confirming the general Arab mistrust of his works. Friedman's most vociferous critics have not been confined to the Arab world. Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have both charged Friedman with backing US and Israeli aggression against Palestinians. Friedman applauded the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a position that incensed Arab public opinion. Friedman's argument was that an American imposed "democratic" state in the Middle East would force other Arab and Muslim countries in the region to liberalise and modernise. What he did not note was that authoritarian Iraq was among the most progressive in many fields of Arab countries and that the country plunged into an abyss of religious and sectarian conflict after the US occupation of the country. Friedman condoned the bombing of Gazan civilians by Israel in 2009/10. Chomsky responds that "by similar logic, bin Laden's effort to 'educate' Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy." Spring chicken Friedman at 58 is already the recipient of the 2004 Overseas Press Club Award for lifetime achievement. Of course he was not to blame for King Abdullah's plan not having gone quite according to plan, though his elegant articles about it hardly suggest being graced with the epithet "achievement". Queen Elizabeth II is also a fan, and soon after named Friedman a member of the Order of the British Empire. More ominous still, in May 2011, it was reported in The New York Times that President Obama "has sounded out" Friedman concerning Middle East concerns. This is a pundit with a punch, though who is on the receiving end, and to what effect, is not clear. Arabs, people as opposed to presidents and potentates, were deeply perturbed. Friedman first discussed his views on globalisation in the 2000 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree. In 2004, a tour of Asia, visiting Bangalore, India, and Dalian, China, gave Friedman fresh insights into the continuing trends of globalisation and the forces behind the process, leading him to write a follow-up analysis, The World Is Flat. Instead of cheering America's aggression of Iraq, he should have heeded Enuma Elish's ancient Mesopotamian cirular earth theory. Whether it is or not the earth is flat is immaterial and doesn't concern us here. What happens to be crucially important for us in the Arab world and Africa is his views on political Islam. Friedman's favourite whipping boy is the dread Muslim terrorist, but the Muslim Heartlands cannot claim credit for having produced all the travails of the current crisis of globalisation. One thing is certain: most Arabs and Africans are suspicious of what Friedman terms the "golden straitjacket". This sounds distressingly like an apologia for the Bretton Woods institutions -- the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that afflicted the developing world of the South with such tragic consequences -- social and economic and ultimately political. Briefly, Friedman's thesis states that individual countries must sacrifice some degree of economic sovereignty to global institutions (such as capital markets and multinational corporations). What he downplays is that the beneficiaries are beyond doubt the giant financial and corporate conglomerates, the losers are the world's poorest and most vulnerable, and globalisation is a codeword for imperialism. Let's unmask the charade. Friedman is an advocate of this globalisation, but more to the point there is a particular concept of his that curiously coincides with his views on the rise of political Islam. In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman highlights the need for a country to preserve its local traditions, a process he termed "glocalisation", although the term was already in popular usage. Now this is a disturbing term if it implies that "Third World" countries should hang on tenaciously to ancient and moribund traditions, while welcoming their McDonald's, since as he quips in the Lexus and the Olive Tree, "No two countries that both had a McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's". A "truth" that has long since been disproved. In effect, Geronimo in his moccasins lining up for his buffalo burger.
