Gamal Abdul Nasser is
often remembered as a great Arab leader who
not only returned the control of the Suez
Canal to Egypt but was also the key founder
of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab
League. His policies against Anglo-American
interest in the Middle East cannot be
denied. He was not a corrupt leader either.
Even while he was the President of Egypt,
his father used to work as a messenger. An
Arab nationalist by orientation, his
socialist policies remained ingrained in
Egyptian society for over a decade after his
death despite the subservience of his
successors to Washington.
However, that is where
the good about Nasser ends. Speak about
human rights abuses and Nasser suddenly
falls into the pit of infamy. He was a
totalitarian of the first order. He tried to
silence every dissenting voice and fought
every opponent. The Soviets were his
masters. It was on one of his visits to
Moscow in early 1960s that he stood by the
grave of Stalin and swore that he will never
forgive anyone involved in an attempt to
assassinate him. Nasser stood by his words.
He did not forgive. Neither was he expected
to do so. Oppose him, or be a member of a
group he disliked, and you will be arrested,
tortured very severely, and jailed
indefinitely, if you are lucky to survive.
The people who suffered
most from his highhandedness were members of
the Muslim Brotherhood. This group, founded
by Hasan al-Banna in 1927, is dedicated to
reforming the Egyptian society using Islam
as a rallying point. There was no doubt that
Western (including communist) establishments
were uncomfortable with its growth. Within
fifteen years of its formation it had
covered every nook and corner of Egypt and
extended its branches to neighbouring
Jordan, Syria and Palestine. Luckily for al-Banna,
he was assassinated while returning from his
morning prayer in 1948. Western
establishments could not hide their delight.
I said al-Banna was lucky
to be assassinated because he did not share
the regime of torture and executions that
became the hallmark of Nasser's human right
record. Within two years of being on power,
Nasser, using an assassination attempt,
cracked down mercilessly on the Brothers,
the same group that assisted him to
overthrow the monarchy. From then until his
death in 1970, Nasser subjected the Brothers
to every conceivable measure of repressive
treatment: arrests, interrogation, torture,
disappearances, executions, exile, etc. So
brutal was Nasser to the Brothers that they
received the news of his death with utter
disbelief.
Nasser maintained
elaborate machinery for torture that
employed various techniques. Routinely,
cables were used to beat mercilessly; dogs
were set to devour people, often to death;
cigarettes were used to burn sensitive areas
on human body; people were hanged from their
feet; cold rooms were common place; plaster
of Paris was used to block urinary tracks
until the prisoner died; etc.
Eminent scholars received
the severest and inhuman punishments. To
date, there exist a section in the Ministry
of Interior in Egypt that deals with
research, procurement and maintenance of
torture equipment.
To the craze of
intolerance Egypt lost its finest
intellectuals, people like Sayyid Qutb and
Sheikh Audan, despite their age. Yet, they
ended up better than Nasser. They were never
replaced. The then septuagenarian Audan who
served as Qadi for over forty years went to
exile in Saudi Arabia where he was received
at the Airport by King Faisal. He wrote a
will in two verses saying, "God, save
us from every difficulty by the guidance of
The Chosen (Muhammad), the best of all. And
give me in his City a place, provision and
then a burial in (the graveyard of) Baqi'."
Faisal granted his request: He gave him a
chair for commentary on the Holy Qur'an in
the Prophet's mosque in Medina, maintained
him and then buried him in Baqi'.
Nasser did not spare his
friend, Sayyid Qutb, the foremost ideologue
of the Brotherhood, the poet, the famous
author of In the Shade of the Qur'an
and dozens of other books, one of the finest
brain I ever come across among Muslim
writers. Nasser arrested him in 1954, only
to re-arrest him in 1955. He remained in
prison for ten years until the President of
Iraq, Arif, interceded on his behalf.
Shortly after, Nasser rearrested him and
hanged the sixty year old man after ten
months in 1966. Sayyid died a true martyr,
unlike the false ones that people want us to
believe.
Women were not spared.
The inhuman treatment of Zainab Ghazali was
a typical example. She was among those
arrested in 1965 and remained in Nasser's
prison until she was released after his
death by Sadat in 1971. Throughout her jail
term, Nasser took particular interest in
persecuting her in a manner which, as
described in her book, Ayyamun Min Hayati
(Return of the Pharoah), was the
worst any sadist will inflict on his victim.
But there is a twist,
always. Nasser was neither saved by his
rhetoric nor by ruthlessness. He was
crushingly defeated in 1967, a year after
Qutb was hanged. Within six days, the
tyrannical regimes of Egypt, Syria and
Jordan that oppressed the Brothers were
humiliated by the Israelis. Nasser offered
resignation to the Egyptian people. They
refused. Three years later, he collapsed and
died. "And never think that God is
unmindful of what tyrants do…"
Nasser's Minister of War,
Shamsuddin Badran, along with Hamza al-Basyuni,
oversaw his human rights abuses. Badran was
as cunning as he was ruthless. One day, he
oversaw the cruel treatment of Zainab al-Ghazali
who was beaten to unconsciousness
repeatedly. She begged to sit on the flow as
her feet were bleeding and she could not
stand. Badran replied: "No! No! Where
is your God now? Call Him to save you from
my hands! Yet call Nasser and you'll see
what will happen! Answer me, where is your
God?Answer me, you B…" In the
end, Badran was himself accused of spying
for the Soviets; he was arrested and tried
by Sadat for his heinous crimes.
As it turned out, the
violent repression of the Brothers prolonged
their survival. Though outlawed, the group
is the greatest opposition party in Egypt,
running the most efficient social services
in the country. Elsewhere in Palestine,
Israel still has to confront its off-shoot,
Hamas. And throughout the Middle East,
similar groups that are off-shoots of the
Brothers continue to be the nightmares of
Washington, the only veritable challengers
of American imperialism.
Early this week, the
half-brother of Saddam, Barzani, and Bandah,
were executed by hanging in Iraq. That is
another twist. Tyrants do pay for their
sins. Whether it was in the Palace of the
End or in villages, these were people who
had the liberty to kill, maim, and torture
thousands of fellow Iraqis that were not in
the good books of Saddam. I am not among
those who sympathise with them. Count me
out.
Whenever we express
delight over the departure of tyrants like
Nasser, Badran, Saddam, Barzan or Banda,
their sympathizers among Muslims remind us
of the Prophet's injunction to mention
(only) the good deeds of our dead. But as
the late Abdulhamid Kisk asked, "Was
Nasser among our dead. And, in any
case, had Nasser any good worth
remembering?"
In the same vein, it is
false consciousness to regard those who
persecuted their people as martyrs simply
because they are no longer in the good books
of their Western masters. These were agents
of imperialism, of the East or West. They
tortured by proxy; so when their masters
came after them, we must resist their
attempt to exploit our sentiments for their
advantage.
I am
surprised that before they were hanged
neither Saddam nor any of his close
associates ever confessed his atrocities and
sought for forgiveness from those they
persecuted or the families of those he
killed. Yet, without fulfilling this first
pre-requisite for forgiveness, some Muslims
are willing to regard them as martyrs. Haba!
Together with those who
plant bombs to kill innocent citizens all
over the world, the likes of Saddam are in
the same wagon of murder as the Americans
who dropped bombs on innocent citizens. As I
edited this article, al-Jazeera
reported the death of sixty-five university
students blown up by bombs in Baghdad. This
is madness, not Islam, regardless of what
Osama, al-Zarqawi or al-Zawahiri would say.
Despite its rhetoric, the
West, and US in particular, is yet to prove
its commitment to freedom, democracy and
liberty. The brutal regimes in the Middle
East are sustained and funded by the West. A
recent review of torture in Egypt listed all
the five members of the Security Council as
topping the list of countries that export
torture equipment. America, of course, is
the gold medallist here with seventy-eight
companies. Between 1997 and 2002 alone, US
concluded deals for the provision of torture
equipment worth $97million to Middle Eastern
governments, as shamelessly stated by US
Trade Department!
Now, which freedom and
democracy is Bush talking about in Iraq? And
from where did Saddam source his VX, sarin,
mustard gas and other chemical weapons? They
were supplied by America, France,
Switzerland, India and China. And since its
application in 1987 until when the US was
prepared to attack Iraq recently, the CIA
continued to misguide the world into
believing that it was the Iranians, not
Saddam, that used chemical weapons attack on
Halabja.
So whom do we support
among the culprits? The likes of Saddam or
America? It is my opinion that we must
condemn both: the dictatorial regimes in the
Middle East on the one hand and the West,
especially America, on whose behalf the
abuses were carried out, on the other. That
is why if Barzan al-Tikriti will be hanged
one million times for his crimes, I will
remain least bothered. But for every
innocent life killed in the jail of Nasser,
or the Palace of the End, or the street of
Baghdad, or the World Trade Centre, or
Darfur, my heart will continue to bleed.
