아프리카ㆍ중동

As we have seen, the terms most commonly used for the anti-regime and Islamistmovements were ‘salafists’ or ‘radical Islamists’. The religious leaders tendedto argue that such radicalism mainly resulted from a misunderstanding of Islam orradicalism and foreign involvement. Through these two explanations, the Egyptianreligious leaders tried to find scapegoats, attributing the reasons for the politicalchaos to others – mainly Islamists themselves and foreign governments or foreignpressure – not to their own government or the inadequacies of the political andeconomic system. The religious officials also warned of the negative effects of thepolitical chaos on domestic stability and the religious values of the people. Thesolution proposed and supported by the officials was a combination of repressiveand co-optive policies. From this examination of official religious discourse, three points can beextracted. First, there were interconnections among several discursive levels –explanation of the reasons for the political chaos, the choice of the terms deployed,the warning of negative consequences, and the suggestion of solutions. The factthat the leaders found the reasons for the political crisis in an ignorance of Islamled them to define the chaos as salafists. In addition, since it was thought that theactivities and ideologies had the effect of destroying domestic stability and sectarianconflicts, the religious officials were obliged to find solutions in the disseminationof ‘correct’ information. Second, it is demonstrated from all the four categories of official religious discourse examined in this research that the language of the religious elite was, toa considerable extent, similar. The officials sometimes used very similar or identicalexpressions. Such expressions as “extremism and terrorism have nothing to dowith Islam”, “[Islamists] wear the cloak of religion”, “Islam is a religion oftolerance”, and “revenge or retaliation against terrorists” were often used by thereligious leaders. Finally and most importantly, the religious officials appeared to hold out somehope for the ideological correction of Islamists and other revolutionary forces,thereby in the process both upholding the base of their social authority as the oneswho would do the correction and subtly reminding the secular branch ofgovernment of their worth. With the similarity and consistency of their arguments in mind, it can be said thatthere was a tacit agreement between the ruling elite and the religious establishment. As shown in the similarity of language and approach, the religious officials haveexploit the conflict between the state and revolutionary or Islamist movements fortheir own hegemonic process. It is likely that they were trying to expand thescope of their activities and to enhance their political position as an ideologicalstate apparatus. The way the religious officials seem to have conceptualized the political changesthat were going on in Egypt when President Morsi was in office must haveconfirmed to them not only that the alliance with the state was the safer bid if theywanted to maintain their privileges and consolidate their interests, but also that theirtraditional approach to politics was sound (Khan 2014, 81). Thus, the religiousestablishment has failed to break out of the vicious circle of the traditionalconception of the relationship between religion and politics. The decision to takesides in the conflict between the Egyptian military and the Muslim Brotherhood wasboth dictated by its traditional understanding while at the same time reconfirming this understanding. By siding with the state, the religious officials has failed torealize the contradiction between its position and the discourse that its scholarspropagated in the last few months prior to the military coup.