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Since the death of Nasser 30 years ago, the top leadership of the army has been controlled by the US and corrupted by the money of the US and the Gulf countries; and they accepted the polices of submission of Mubarak and Morsi. But everybody should know that the Egyptian army is not just its top leaders but also thousands of officers who remain patriotic. They are not necessarily progressive, nor socialist, but they understand that the people don’t want Morsi. The new Prime Minister, Hazem Al Beblawi, I knew him personally. He was a brilliant student of economics. I don’t know what his mind is like today, but he’s a clever man, able to understand that continuing neoliberal policies would be a disaster.

Hundreds of thousands who are organized. They are those who started Tamarod. These young people are politicized, they discuss politics continuously. They do not accept following parties; they have no confidence in bourgeois parties, democratic parties or even socialist parties.

To have a movement getting together with a minimum common program is important: there are discussions among various partners, particularly with the organizations of the youth. There is a need for a common program which is to meet the immediate challenge; it is not a program for socialism, but a program to start moving out of the trap of neoliberalization by restoring the power of the state, and the other dimensions of starting to move out of the rut of the alliance with the US, Israel, and Gulf countries, and to open new relations with partners, particularly with China, with Russia, with India, with South Africa, so that we can start having independent policies and therefore reducing the influence of the US, of Israel, and of the Gulf countries.

First is the task of social justice: it is not socialism. It is a set of good and important reforms of management of enterprises; the end of privatization; recapturing of the enterprises which have been given at very low prices to private companies; a new law of minimum wages; a new law for working conditions, a new law of labor rights – strikes and so on; a new law of participation of the working people with the management of the enterprises in which they would have a say.

second task is to address the national question. It is a question of dignity. People want a government that represents Egypt with dignity and self-respect. It means a government which is independent, not one accepting the US’s orders, not standing with Israel’s repression of Palestinians. A government independent of the Gulf countries who are allies of the US, they can’t be anything else. In this context, China has a big responsibility. It would be great if some people in China say frankly : “we are with you and we are prepared, if you ask, to help you solve your economic problems.” Such a declaration would have a tremendous echo in Egypt. There are slogans on the streets of Cairo, “we don’t need US aid, we can also get it from other countries”. We don’t need US aid - which is associated with corruption and political submission. This is called a national independent policy, in order to be able to develop a sovereign Egyptian project.

We should have a popular parliament, which is not an elected parliament. It is a parliament which consists of people sent by the organizations of the movement, by the trade unions, by the women organizations, by the youth organizations. This is the true parliament, more than a so-called elected parliament in which the distribution of party is so unequal and biased. You can call it not-a-socialist-program, but a national, democratic, sovereign, and progressive program.

On one hand, we can say the US accepted and supported the army and the new government, but on the other hand, they tried to put pressure to bring back the old reactionary, which is not Muslim Brotherhood but the salafists. This is the plan of the US, which is not to help Egypt out of the crisis, but to use the crisis to destroy more.

These groups are coming from Libya. Since Libya has been destroyed by the western military operation, Libya has become the base for all kinds of Jihadists. There are Jihadists with strong arms including missiles coming from the desert, this is the real danger. Also in the Egyptian peninsula of Sinai small Jidahist groups supported by Israel and the Gulf countries are carrying out terrorist actions.

'The Turkish road is not my model because I am critical of the way you are dealing with freedom of expression, of how you are dealing with the treatment of minorities, and your economic vision.’  But at the same time, I say, I’m watching what you are trying to do and I think there are things that are interesting in the Turkish approach, which for the first time in the last decade has started to shift towards the south and the east, opening almost fifty embassies in Africa, and having a new relationship with China.  That is just huge.

Now the problem is that you have two trends that are in fact objective allies in destablising the whole process of this discussion: on the one side the very secularist elite that is doing everything to paint a picture that they are in danger from ‘the other side’ and on the other hand, the Salafis, who are constantly putting Ennahda on the spot by questioning their religious credentials – ‘who are you? What are you doing? You are just compromising everything.’  And the secularists are saying about Ennahda, ‘they are not clear because they want to please us and they want to please them.’

If you read the Rand Corporation on who supported the Salafis in Egypt, what you learn is that up to 80 million dollars’ worth of support was poured into Egypt before the elections by organisations that are not state, they are very precise on this, but Qatari and Saudi organisations.

Remember – the Taliban in Afghanistan were not at all politicised in the beginning. They were just on about education. And then they were pushed by the Saudi and the Americans to be against the Russian colonisation, and as a result they came to be politicised. (They are not exactly like the Salafi because the Salafi think that they need to be re-educated, Islamically-speaking, convinced that they have to follow the prophet in a very literalist way.)

Is the dialogue across national borders also important, between Muslims in Europe and in the Middle East, for example? TR: Yes, there are ongoing discussions about this too.  The problem with what we call the ‘Arab spring’ is that these are very nationalistic experiences.  Tunisians are concerned with Tunisia, Egyptians concerned with Egypt and so on.  But still I have been invited I don’t know how many times to Turkey, where Turkey has been following very quickly in the footsteps of what is sometimes referred to as the movement of cyber-dissidents.

So you can see the connections beginning to form. If in the very near future Anwar Ibrahim succeeds in Malaysia, he is positioned as very close to the Turkish experience, and many in the Muslim Brotherhood and Ennahda have a similar perspective. So there are important relationships across national boundaries.

Yes, the drafting of the constitutions is interesting and the discussions around them revealing in many ways.  I take it as a discussion of very important symbols revealing many different problems.  My take at the beginning was to warn that Tunisia might be the only successful country, the only one to justify us in talking about the spring, while all the other countries were less successful, if not failing. Now the point is that even in Tunisia it is not going to be easy, and this is where we have a problem.

They were trying to find a way to confront the Turkish army with their own contradictions – “you are talking about a secular state but then you want a secular military state, and we want a secular state which is in tune with the requirements of the EU.”  So they simultaneously use the EU against the army and meanwhile, they shift towards the south and the east. That’s interesting.

But I do think they are trying to find a new space in the multi-polar world, and this is what I am advocating.  I don’t think that Muslims have an alternative model. An ‘Islamic economy’ or ‘Islamic finance’ doesn’t mean anything to me. But I do think that in the multi-polar world, it is time to find new partners, to find a new balance in the economic order.  And this could help you to find an alternative way forward.

What Morsi has done will go down in history as one of the major turning points in Middle-Eastern history. Political Islam, which has traditionally been a one-dimensional creedal culture, has now been repositioned in the wider consciousness in terms of democratic legitimacy. This is entirely against the interests of a military régime that has, since 1973, built its power and reputation, not on fighting wars to protect its people, but on running a protection racket.

They put tremendous sums into universities and higher education but inexplicably neglected K–12 education for the rural and urban poor.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said he would not seek another term; his opponents have charged him with operating secret torture cells and a private army, and aspiring to become another corrupt strongman.

Because the generals won the civil war, and the army stands behind the regime, it is harder for the urban crowds to gain traction.

Many among the demonstrators, whether union organizers, villagers or college graduates, seem to believe that once the lead log in the logjam is removed, the economy will return to normal and opportunities for advancement will open up to all. Somewhat touchingly, they have put their hopes in free and fair parliamentary elections, so that the Middle East may be swinging back to a new liberal period, formally resembling that of the 1930s and ’40s. If these aspirations for open politics and economic opportunity are blocked again, as they were by the hacienda owners and Western proconsuls of the mid-twentieth century, the Arab masses may turn to more desperate, and dangerous, alternatives.

It is both ironic and sad that while mediocre analysts, to say the least of their understanding of the changing Middle East, make frequent appearances in two-minute on-air interviews in newsrooms, the voices of other academics and experts with serious research backgrounds and true expertise of the region remain largely unheard.  Serious analysts are not in demand, not only because they have long overcome this Orientalist paradigm in analyzing the politics of change in the Middle East, but also because they don’t have the talent of crafting those superficial, short, studio-made answers to questions of news anchors.   

The United States, Britain and many other counterparts have heavily invested in the empowerment of a tamed Islamist rule—spearheaded, of course, by the Muslim Brotherhood—to take over the Middle East from post-colonial populist regimes living long past their expiry dates. American and British ambassadors to the region have been carefully weaving this vision and reporting back home that this is simply the best formula for the protection of their interests in the region. That such a formula would lend itself to the protraction of another cycle of vicious human rights abuses and continued economic injustices is, naturally, of little concern to them.