Voices from the Arab Press: Hezbollah's retreat, Egypt's extremism problem, and Yemen's crossroads

The state prevented Hezbollah from handing Nabatiya to Israel

Nida Al Watan, Lebanon, September 15

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The story of Ali al-Taher Ridge is not merely about the loss of a military position. It raises a question that Lebanese must confront: Why did Hezbollah refuse to hand the position over to the Lebanese Army, when it knew the alternative could be the Israeli army reaching it?

This is no longer simply a political argument. Had Hezbollah transferred the hill to the state, it could have strengthened Lebanon’s position in negotiations with Israel.

Instead, developments on the ground culminated in Hezbollah evacuating the position and Israel announcing that it had taken control of it. Worse still, Hezbollah left Ali al-Taher with an Iranian green light.

Here lies the contradiction that demands scrutiny: If Hezbollah regards Israel as the foremost threat to Lebanon, why is handing a Lebanese position to the Lebanese Army more difficult than leaving it exposed to the possibility of falling into Israeli hands?

Hezbollah can invoke military considerations, arguing that surrendering a strategic position to the army before a comprehensive understanding of its weapons could force it into further concessions.

But that argument itself exposes the heart of the problem. Hezbollah does not treat the Lebanese Army as the sole natural authority responsible for defending Lebanese territory; rather, it views the army’s assumption of a military position as something that could alter the equation surrounding its weapons.

That is the most painful lesson of Ali al-Taher. The Lebanese state should have been the natural beneficiary of any withdrawal from a Lebanese military position. For Hezbollah to leave and Israel then to find itself able to establish a presence there means that the dispute is no longer only with Israel, but also over who possesses the authority to decide matters of territory and arms.

Ali al-Taher has demonstrated how the slogan of “resistance” can become a political predicament when the state itself is excluded from the defense equation.

If Hezbollah refused to hand over the position because it feared setting a precedent for other positions, then the problem is not the hill alone. It is the rejection of the principle that military decision-making belongs exclusively to the state.

Hezbollah understood that Ali al-Taher would not be the final target and feared a new pattern in which Israeli military pressure would eventually force it to surrender everything.

Yet losing the position to Israel does not strengthen Hezbollah’s case. It raises the opposite question: What did Lebanon gain from Hezbollah retaining the position if its fighters ultimately withdrew without transferring it to the Lebanese Army?

The state, not Hezbollah, should now be given the opportunity to control the land and the decisions governing it. Lebanon does not need an armed force that independently decides where to fight and where to withdraw, leaving the state to deal with the consequences.

Ali al-Taher is not merely a hill. It is a genuine test of the very idea of the state.

And the harshest consequence for Hezbollah is that its refusal to hand the position to the state may leave its opponents asking whether protecting the “resistance” mattered more to it than preventing Israel from reaching the site.

– Jean Feghali

Endowments and scientific research

Al-Masry Al-Youm, Egypt, September 16

Egypt needs to revive the endowment system and extend it into new fields, most importantly education and scientific research, where state spending has declined. It has become necessary to seek new sources of support, including mechanisms that once existed and proved effective, such as the endowment system, which is part of our society’s culture and history, and is used in one form or another by virtually every developed country, or every country aspiring to develop.

Turkey, for example, preserved the strength of its universities and research centers through an endowment system that continued operating even under previous military governments.

Whether we call it a waqf, as in the Arab and Islamic world, or an endowment, as in the US and many other countries, the principle is the same: an asset or sum of money is set aside not merely for charitable purposes, but for a university, research center, or scientific institution, providing salaries for its staff, financing research and scientific discoveries, supporting partnerships with international universities, and funding other academic activities.

Of course, other conditions are necessary for research centers to succeed, particularly in the social and political sciences. They need an atmosphere of freedom that permits constructive interaction with political elites and decision-makers, access to information and fieldwork governed by rules rather than restrictions.

They also need institutional independence, operating within the constitution, the law and established public rules without becoming an official mouthpiece for either the government or the opposition, or for funders that frequently pursue their own priorities.

National solutions to the financing problem are therefore essential if these institutions are to attract scientific and research talent, achieve the desired effectiveness and influence, and preserve their independence, credibility and the quality of their academic output.

This is precisely where an endowment becomes important: it can finance the activities of research institutions while protecting their independence and continuity.

Sustainable financial resources, particularly through an endowment, are among the most important guarantees that institutions can continue working long enough to accumulate knowledge and achieve meaningful influence.

Article 90 of the Egyptian Constitution requires the state to encourage and support charitable endowments serving scientific and cultural institutions. This could help address the weakness of state spending on education relative to what the constitution itself stipulates.

Educational reform will not be achieved through cosmetic measures or steps unrelated to the essence of education. It requires solving the fundamental problem of funding, and that will happen only when the state treats education and scientific research as top priorities.

The endowment system flourished throughout Islamic history and remained vibrant in Egypt before the July Revolution, but its role has diminished considerably in recent decades.

The time has come to restore it – not only as a vehicle for almsgiving, supporting the needy, treating patients or fighting epidemics, but also, and perhaps above all, as a means of financing education and scientific research.

– Amr El-Shobaki

The Muslim Brotherhood's int'l organization: Egypt's unfinished battle

El Watan, Egypt, September 14

When a movement evolves from an idea operating within the borders of a state into an organization whose branches extend across countries, everything changes: the nature of loyalty, the way it operates, and the instruments of conflict. The homeland itself becomes merely one arena in a broader project rather than its ultimate objective.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which in its early years could be viewed as an organization operating within Egyptian society, gradually constructed a transnational structure with leaders in different countries, its own resources, relationships, and channels of operation, until its international organization became one of the most important keys to understanding the Brotherhood’s transformation and its management of political conflict.

This was not merely the geographical expansion of a single organization; it was the transition from a movement operating within one state into a project capable of moving between states, changing its names, methods, and rhetoric according to its environment while preserving, at its core, a unified objective and organizational reference point.

In 1983, Mustafa Mashhur established regulations for the international organization. The Brotherhood leader in each country became known as the “General Supervisor,” while each local entity was allowed to select a name suited to its political and social environment.

An International Guidance Bureau subsequently emerged, bringing leaders of different nationalities together under a leadership connected to the Brotherhood’s center in Egypt.

The nature of the game had changed. This was no longer simply a movement seeking power within a single state, but a transnational organization capable of operating on several fronts, changing its instruments according to circumstances, and seeking allies, resources and influence beyond the region in which it originated.

It developed relationships with various Western circles, benefited from research centers, organizations, and human-rights institutions, and found in some of them a gateway through which it could present itself to the world differently from the way it appeared within its own societies.

At the same time, it expanded its financial resources and economic activities across the broad geography in which it operated.

In one of its most consequential transformations, the international organization became more than the administrative machinery of a religious-political movement; it became a structure capable of adapting continuously to changing realities.

An organization that can change its name, tools, and rhetoric in every country without changing its underlying objective is more dangerous than a local organization whose boundaries can be clearly identified.

Egypt eventually became the Brotherhood’s greatest objective, and not by chance. Egypt is not a marginal state or merely another number in the Middle East. If Egypt’s position changes, the balance of the entire region changes with it.

For the Brotherhood project, taking power in Egypt therefore meant more than an electoral victory or transfer of authority: it meant placing the Arab world’s center of gravity in the hands of an organization extending beyond national borders.

This leads to the larger question of why political Islam was suited to a project of fragmenting the region. A divided region is easier to manage than a cohesive one.

A state consumed by sectarian conflict is weaker than one whose citizens share a national identity, and a country preoccupied with internal war cannot build a strong economy. When political differences become religious, sectarian, or ethnic conflicts, a state becomes incapable of looking beyond its own borders. That, ultimately, is the essence of fragmentation.

An outside power need not always invade and destroy countries itself. It is more effective for a country’s own people to become instruments of conflict, for ordinary disagreements to turn into existential hostilities, for politics to become creed, and creed to become a weapon, until the state itself becomes an open battlefield.

Major powers can then appear whenever convenient – as mediator, policeman, arms supplier, or financier.

In this wider picture, the US benefits from playing multiple roles in the region: banker when needed, policeman when necessary, weapons manufacturer in wartime, and political power capable of influencing the direction of conflict.

It is for this reason that forces seeking to fragment Egypt and end its present form have decided to convene a conference in The Hague using the Brotherhood to prepare for a new stage in their larger battle against Egypt. Their objective is not simply to weaken the region but to reshape its balance of power.

Yet Egypt has always been something different. It is not the easiest link in the chain, nor is it a country that can simply be brought down before moving on to the next as though nothing had happened.

– Tharwat El-Kharbawy

Imam Zayd and Zaydism have nothing to do with Bab el-Mandeb

Al-Ittihad, United Arab Emirates, September 16

Under Houthi control, Yemenis have never really known what kind of political system governs them. Is it a monarchy, a republic, or an imamate? Yemen today displays none of the clear characteristics of a recognized political system.

Yemenis have known monarchy and the imamate [the office, position, rank, or territory governed by an imam], and they have known the republic, but how are they supposed to deal with an armed group that seized the capital by surprise and governs through weapons and religious doctrine?

When the Houthis previously reached Aden, their doctrine found little acceptance, because Yemen contains different religious schools. All revere Imam Zayd ibn Ali ibn al-Husayn, who was killed in 122 AH (740 CE), but political authority was not exercised in his name, because religious doctrine alone does not establish legitimate government.

And even if the Houthis reach Bab el-Mandeb and dominate Yemen’s territorial waters, their fate would hardly be better than that of the Somali groups that once controlled those waters, turned to piracy, and were quickly defeated.

Yemenis are accustomed to political systems whose contours are clear, regardless of their qualities, but never to something as politically undefined as Houthi rule. Religious doctrine belongs to worship.

Yemenis of the Zaydi and Shafi’i schools pray in the same mosque, and even differences in the call to prayer do not divide them; each worshiper prays according to his own tradition.

The Houthis present themselves as Zaydis descended from Yemen’s imams, while some of their views are associated with the Jarudiyya, which holds that the imamate belongs to the descendants of Hassan and Hussein.

As they entered direct politics, however, they increasingly came under Hezbollah’s influence and fought a succession of wars from their stronghold in Saada.

Historically, Zaydism served as a bridge among Islamic schools: Zaydis followed Hanafi jurisprudence and Mu’tazilite theology, and accepted the possibility of the rule of the less-preferred candidate.

Yet the deeper the Houthi movement has descended into partisan politics, the further it has moved from traditional Zaydi moderation. Zayd ibn Ali himself had nothing to do with what appeared among supposed followers centuries later, after partisan ideology penetrated the movement.

Yes, Zayd was politically active and led a revolt, but anyone examining its origins will find something very different from what later revolutionary movements built upon it.

Religious and sectarian movements tend to return continually to the past, often under the banner of vengeance, and this is visible in the Houthi movement itself.

Zayd left no book setting out a doctrine of political authority, and writing was limited in his era, as it was among many early imams and jurists. Nevertheless, later generations constructed a political theory in his name and built the Zaydi school around it, with different factions disagreeing over the legitimacy of the early caliphs and the nature of succession.

Sources by major Zaydi scholars indicate that Zayd refused demands to repudiate the first and second caliphs and regarded Ali ibn Abi Talib’s succession as one of religious knowledge rather than political rule.

So where exactly do the Houthis intend to go today, as the region changes around them? Nowhere is that question more consequential than in the waters of Bab el-Mandeb, a strategic passage serving global interests and one of the world’s principal maritime routes.

How can an armed group without international recognition expect to dominate this gateway, impose its conditions, consolidate its rule over all Yemen, and threaten whomever it chooses?

Anyone familiar with the moderation of Zaydism, what has been transmitted from Imam Zayd and even the conduct of the imams who governed Yemen in his name will find no justification for an adventure in Bab el-Mandeb – or in any other international waterway.

– Rasheed al-Khayoun ■

Translated by Asaf Zilberfarb. All assertions, opinions, facts, and information presented in these articles are the sole responsibility of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of The Media Line, which assumes no responsibility for their content.