As for my mentioning of lip service paid to Islam in some constitutions in that part of the world, I would have thought that what I meant was obvious seeing as you yourself seemed to be pointing out that this stuff had been in Egypt's constitution since at least 1981, but I doubt many would have considered that the Mubarak regime really implemented a system that did more than pay lip service to such religious values.
Yes but I don't see it as lip service - it's real Mubarak was never a secularist, nor was Sadat, nor was Nasr. What Mubarak did do was massively ramp up state funding to the state religion of Sunni Islam, at the same time as extending the infitah reforms.
Take the case of Nawal El Saadawi, for the crime of providing birth control to the poor, she is arrested and imprisoned by Sadat for 3 years, released when she dies by Mubarak, then hounded with raids by Mubarak over the years, then the Islamists announce they intend to kill her, Mubarak doesn't protect her, instead she is forced to leave the country. A perfect result for the regime.
I consider it to be completely false to claim that the uprising had secularism as a central pillar.
No, it wasn't, but when asked what kind of freedom , what kind of justice those people who took the brunt would almost always describe secular freedom and secular justice etc.
In a similar way the fact that many of the most visible (especially in english media) voices of protest happened to be liberal did not lead to liberal policies being placed at the centre of the movements rhetoric, because that would have caused splits between them and some of those who were pressuring the regime by engaging in strikes, who were more socialist or otherwise left-leaning in their outlook than the liberals
Liberals had no problem with strikes against Mubarak, opposition business figures were calling on all to go on strike, to avoid bloodshed etc.
You are correct to point out that people praying does not give a clear indication as to the extent that any of them do or do not want some aspects of Islam mentioned in their countries constitution. But on a similar basis, I am at a loss as to how you came to have a method for detecting that 95% of the protests were secular.
It's my estimation of the kinds of people killed in the eighteen days, overwhelmingly the young from secular beliefs, if not always expressed outright.
If a desire for secularism was considered to be a wildly popular stance in Egypt, then I do not see any reason why those other than the MB who have drawn up various Egyptian constitutions in recent years would have felt the need to leave all the stuff about Islam in place. The military certainly don't need it in order to maintain their privileges. But obviously there are plenty of risks in removing it, especially now that they just acted to remove a MB president. And since they can leave it there and not actually have to turn their legal system into a Sharia nightmare as a result, they have done.
The military are not secularists - they are conservatives above all, hence they will maintain state funding of state religion. The wording is actually longer than the old constitution ! - it's emblematic of how desperately weak relying on the military a strategy was.
I'm puzzled by "shariah nightmare". Is avoiding a shariah nightmare the only aim in all this? What happens to the demand for women's control over their bodies, in the same way that men have control? Islam as the source of jurisprudence means no abortion.
Secularists should obviously complain about this, I have no objection to that, and I should not be defeatist about the prospects of making more progress on this front at some point. But now is hardly the optimum time for that, and given what has happened I'm in no mood to start buying into any claims about how many millions of Egyptians want this stuff entirely removed from a new constitution.
"Making more progress on this front at some point". When is the optimum time? When the Brotherhood is power, that's what you're saying in effect, sadly. That you struggle for secularism when the more religious pole is in power, but when that more religious pole is being squeezed by the other pole (as it is now), it's time to put away those demands.
That there'll be a better time to do this stuff when the Islamists are in power and people will be more pissed off with those clauses then.
(That's how the Brotherhood see struggle against the military, support them when in power, only when out of power do you confront them.)
It's madness. It makes zero sense to assert don't raise your demands on the grounds that others (perhaps many more others but who really knows) will by force of habit or feudal structures oppose the demands.
Even if I took the number of Tamarod petition signers at face value, which obvious I do not, I could not translate such numbers into evidence of how many people care about these clauses being in the constitution. For example, as per my lip service comments, there may be plenty of people who don't care too much if such things are written into the constitution just so long as the people in power are not Islamists who are inclined to turn those words into actual laws.
A written constitution tradition with the reality of constitutional courts and judges, means secularist laws such as disbanding state funding only to Sunni mosques, legalised gay and lesbian marriage, abortion clinics and women-run shelters in every high street etc will not make progress or be cast out on the grounds of the 'Islam as its principle' constitution. Even "lip service" delays progress.
Of course it's possible to have constitutions without this reference that deny these basic rights. The bit about Islam is just one extra hurdle for them to delay, to defend religious privileges and stop female equality.
