Have Libya’s Islamists been defeated?
A candidate I interviewed in Derna last week has tells me this morning someone blew up a shrine next to the mosque where we met him last week. Derna is famed for its jihadis – we saw black banners, the sign of the extremists, fluttering over the neighbourhood at the entrance to the town as we drove in.
Abdel Karim Hasadi, an Islamist who says he has renounced violence, told me that he supported the elections and would vote, but others disagree. Blowing up a mosque seems sacreligious but extremists have attacked several shrines which they see as idolatrous in recent months. This is maybe their reaction to the apparent victory of Mahmoud jibril’s liberal alliance in the elections.
The early results of Libya’s first elections are confounding those who assumed Islamist parties would take the lead. Unike in Egypt and Tunisia, in Libya many voters seem to have turned their back on the Muslim Brotherhood, casting their ballot instead for a coalition of parties headed by a technocrat, Mahmoud Jibril.
Libyans usually describe themselves as “conservative Muslims” so it’s interesting that they seem to have ignored the Grand Mufti who told them last week that they should go for parties with an overt religious agenda. Jibril, who once taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh, has been careful to say that he is personally religious – the term “secular” is seen as “atheist” here – but presented his coalition as a force to unite the country and start rebuilding.
Several people I met at polling stations said they were voting for Jibril’s coalition – he wasn’t standing for election himself – but they weren’t clear exactly why. “He’s a good man,” said one young woman. So bewildering was the array of candidates and parties on the ballot, he may have benefited simply from being recognisable. As the first Prime Minister after the revolution, most Libyans know who he is. He worked under Gaddafi as head of an economics department, but that doesn’t seem to have deterred his supporters, maybe because he was not seen as close to the Brother Leader.
The Muslim Brotherhood, by contrast, may have been shunned because they worked with Seif al-Gaddafi, when he tried to open up the country in the late 2000s. They were also heavily involved in the National Transitional Council, the interim authority which will make way for the new parliament, and which many Libyans think has been weak and indecisive. More extreme Islamists are treated with great suspicion.
“They’re hated by the people,” said Abdul Karim Bin Taher, an English professor who was standing for election, in the eastern town of Derna, regarded as a centre of Islamic extremism. “We fear that some are using democracy to get their goals, and then they’ll put up the ladder.”
Jibril will not have an easy job trying to write a constitution and rebuild a country rent by tribal, regional and economic division.
“We extend an honest call for a national dialogue to come altogether in one coalition, under one banner … This is an honest and sincere call for all political parties operating today in Libya,” he said at a press conference late last night. “In [yesterday’s] election there was no loser or winner … Whoever wins, Libya is the real winner.