Interviewing Egypt's Islamist President: Answers to Reader Questions The interview with President Mohamed Morsi published this weekend prompted more than 1,200 questions and comments on our Web site and a surge of interest on Twitter. Thank you to everyone who participated, and the authors - David D. Kirkpatrick and I - are taking the opportunity to answer some of the most central and thought-provoking questions here. A word about the way the interview was conducted. Any interview is by nature artificial, and interviews of heads of state, particularly new ones, have a lot of protocol attached, not to mention consecutive translation, which is time consuming. President Morsi speaks good English but often chose to respond, as Egypt's head of state, in Arabic. But he did understand questions posed in English, which saved time. We had a long wait for him, but then he was generous with his time, giving us nearly 90 minutes. The first part was not as efficient, because the official translator was nervous and not very colloquial; finally a top aide, more bilingual than even Mr. Morsi, stepped in. His is the voice you hear on a lot of the audio excerpts. All this to say, to respond to the reader in Atlanta who goes by Another Human and many others, that there are many questions both authors would have liked to have asked, some of which readers raised. But not everything is possible, and Mr. Morsi spent a lot of time at the start talking about the geography of California and his deep respect for a particular teacher of his. While one can interrupt the flow of a head of state to try to raise another question, one cannot do it continuously and maintain a necessary degree of respect. - Steven Erlanger I want President Morsi to know that millions of Americans were supportive of Egypt's desire for some form of democracy. Perhaps we were not clear about what that means. My question is: Does Egyptian democracy include Shariah law? I ask this question because Shariah law is about religion and morality. How can that be a democracy? He also states that Egyptian democracy will be for all people. Thank you for articulating a frequent question. I think the honest answer is that there is a robust debate going on right now in Egypt and across the Arab world over how to apply the teachings of Islam in a democratic context, in the Arab Spring. It is worth noting that Egypt's Constitution, like many in the region, has long contained an article stating that its civil laws derive from the principles of Islamic law. So that is old news here. There are some ultraconservatives - under the umbrella term Salafis - who say they want to change that to make the law conform more directly with literal, even medieval Islamic law, although the details are hazy. But Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood prefer to keep it as it is. When I have asked Brotherhood leaders about how to apply Islamic law, they say that they believe the first principle is "shura," or consultation, which they interpret to mean representative government or the consent of the governed. They say that the question of how to apply Islamic law should be up to the citizens, through their elected officials. Democracy, essentially. But the same Brotherhood leaders also sometimes say that they believe the people who craft Egypt's public policy should have expertise in a practical field - economics, or transportation, for example - but also in Islamic law. And Mr. Morsi says he will be a president for all Egyptians while also apparently sticking to the view that under Islamic law the president of the state should be a Muslim. Still, Mr. Morsi was careful to say that whatever his personal views, the constitution of the civil state should not exclude women or Christians from the highest office. We asked Mr. Morsi how he felt about a proposal by the more conservative Islamists for a panel of Muslim religious scholars chosen by Cairo's Al Azhar, the pre-eminent center of Sunni Muslim scholarship, to have court-like powers to strike down statutes that conflicted with Islamic law. He dismissed that immediately. He said that under the old government the Parliament could call on a panel of Azhar scholars for nonbinding consultation, adding that the "consultative" role at the parliamentary level to continue. (At the moment, Al Azhar is a beacon of moderation, but under Hosni Mubarak its leaders were chosen by the government. Now it is expected to be independent and could evolve in other directions.) As a group, the Muslim Brotherhood has indicated that, however conservative its vision of a good society, it does not intend to impose that vision on others by law - though it might try to encourage by example. So we have seen Egypt drop its ban on female newscasters wearing the Muslim head scarf, though we have not seen newscasters required to wear it. We have seen an Islamic bank open, but we have not seen restrictions on Western banking. We see more public employees allowed to wear beards, but none are required to do so. The Salafis are more open to using the laws to enforce moral codes. And on the other side there are also Islamists - including the former presidential candidate and former Brotherhood leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, and some other Brotherhood breakaway parties - who argue even more forcefully that Islamic law itself prohibits the enforcing of religious moral codes on others. "There is no coercion in matters of religion" is a quote from the Koran that Dr. Aboul Fotouh likes to repeat. The more moderate Islamists tend to argue that when the government starts interpreting and applying religious teachings, then it risks corrupting both itself and the faith, and so a more or less secular state is the most conducive context for Muslims to practice their faith. This thinking may sound familiar to Americans. - David Kirkpatrick Great interview, but far too short. What are his plans for the country? What is his vision for the future? What does he see as the next step for the Arab Spring? What are his opinions of the other countries in the region? Does he think Iran is building nuclear weapons, or that Israel is planning an attack? How is the political transition going in Egypt - completely finished, or still in progress? How does he perceive the average citizen to be doing at this point in the history of his country? They just went through a great deal of change, and there are so many other topics worth exploring. Mr. Morsi seems like a very rational, aware, levelheaded person. He seems to have a clear understanding of his role, and of how to provide balanced leadership to his people and his nation. Please tell our editors you found our article too short! We are always fighting for space, in competition with all the other news around the world. I think you are right that President Morsi may have preferred to talk about his plans for Egypt, mainly its economy. Mr. Morsi, his advisers, his party, and the Brotherhood have all made clear that they see that as the most important issue they face in the short term, and how they handle it will go a long way toward determining their fortune in politics as well as Egypt's future. They are very much oriented toward the free market and, over time, dismantling a bloated public sector. In foreign affairs, Mr. Morsi has sought to take a leadership role on the crisis with Syria. He has said he sees a successful outcome of the Syrian uprising as the next step for the Arab Spring, and he has used his case of Syria to stake out a new approach to regional politics and Iran. His first real foray into foreign affairs was convening a contact group composed of what he considers the four chief regional powers, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran - even though the last is treated as a pariah by the West - to try to broker their own solution to the Syrian crisis. Advisers say Mr. Morsi's project on Syria reflects his larger approach to relations with Iran: open to dialogue as key players in the region, unencumbered by Washington's own relations with Iran but without embracing Tehran as a new ally either. In the interview, Mr. Morsi said he had received only encouragement from the United States and Europe for his efforts. "No government I dealt with, including American government, had any objection to this quartet," Mr. Morsi said. He said the United States should focus its own effort on diplomacy within the United Nations Security Council, where Russia and China have blocked the imposition of stringent penalties on the Assad government. And he stressed that he did not support any military intervention. "I want to continue to close the space around the Syrian regime, to allow the Syrian people to resolve this with their own values and their own strength," he said. As for your point about treating him as a public official instead of a religious figure, he is the first Islamist freely elected as an Arab head of state. His inauguration is a defining moment for a movement that has struggled in the shadows for more than eight decades to try to remake the Arab world and its relations to the West. So I would expect continued media attention to the Islamic character or aspects of his agenda. - David Kirkpatrick I wish you had asked the following questions: What is Morsi's opinion of [Sayyid] Qutb's writings and their role in defining the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. Does he reject Qutb's assessment of the inherent conflict between the Muslim world and the cosmopolitan West or does he accept them? Hamas in the Gaza Strip is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Would Morsi criticize any moves Hamas has taken since gaining control of Gaza, such as harassing Western nongovernmental aid organizations, and even some Christian congregations? Morsi attended graduate school in the United States for his Ph.D. in materials science, and yet has endorsed the 9/11 deniers' belief that the World Trade Center towers collapse was due to explosives planted by parties other than the Al Qaeda terrorists. Indeed, Morsi has expressed skepticism that amateur pilots could have flown the planes into the towers. Does Morsi still believe this? In his years in the U.S., Morsi undoubtedly was exposed to the First Amendment and the importance of free speech to Americans. Yet after the Cairo embassy attack, Morsi's first reaction was to call for the American government to place the filmmakers of the "Innocence of Muslims" on trial. Why did Morsi demand this, and did he expect the U.S. government to comply? I see you are following Egypt closely! And these are also questions that come up often. Sayyid Qutb was a historically significant and widely influential midcentury Islamist thinker. And he was a part of the Brotherhood during the revolution that brought Gamal Abdel Nasser to power. But he is now best remembered for his most radical and militant ideas. Those ideas were always controversial within the Brotherhood, whose founder, Hassan el-Banna, emphasized inclusiveness. And the Brotherhood has disavowed militancy or violence since at least Nasser's revolution in 1952. But I find Qutb often looms larger in the West these days than he does in Egypt or the Middle East, because his ideas the foundation of a different, far more militant and antidemocratic strain of Islamist thinking that led to Al Qaeda. The Muslim Brotherhood has never endorsed terrorism or Al Qaeda. And when Al Qaeda took responsibility for the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Morsi - then a leader of the Brotherhood's political arm and its parliamentary minority - was quick to denounce it. We tried briefly to ask Mr. Morsi about Hamas's rule in Gaza, and, in a polite way, he told us it was a silly comparison. Egypt is a giant and far more diverse. It has an established Christian minority whose rights are at least written into the law, and it has a relatively strong tradition of respecting the rule of law, compared to some of its neighbors. But I regret that we did not get a chance to ask him exactly your question. We did not ask Mr. Morsi about 9/11, but, despite his engineering degree in materials science, his aides tell me he does indeed question the official United States government account of what happened to the buildings. I know that a lot of Egyptians question the official story but at the same time think the attacks were a horrendous crime. I suspect part of the explanation is that many Egyptians, probably including Mr. Morsi, deeply distrust the United States for some of the reasons that he tried to articulate. And I think another part of the explanation is that Egyptians have been lied to by their own government and its official media for at least 60 years (and the privately owned media is not so accurate either). I sometimes have to explain to Egyptians that The New York Times is not owned or controlled by the United States government. Mr. Morsi's first response to the attack on the United States Embassy here did condemn the violence. It is not true that he first called for legal actions against the makers of the video mocking the prophet. But his reaction was more than a day late. The Muslim Brotherhood, which is allied with Mr. Morsi, had called for a nonviolent protest against the film in advance of the day the protest took place, and afterward it continued to call for criminalizing such films. And when Mr. Morsi and the Brotherhood both condemned the violence, their statements were mixed with criticism of the video. Many Egyptians seem to believe that it is possible to criminalize grave insults to established religions without intruding too much on freedom of expression - an idea utterly alien to the United States' legal tradition. - David Kirkpatrick I wish we had asked some of those questions, too, especially on Qutb. Morsi was clearly put off by the sexual freedom the United States, as Qutb was, but clearly to a significantly less violent degree. Even the 9/11 hijackers were both fascinated and repelled by parts of the American lifestyle. But I think a vast majority of Muslim visitors, even from conservative backgrounds, take it in stride. As Morsi said, couples living together out of wedlock is something legal and tolerated by American society. He does not admire it, he said. But his point was a fairly simple one: not all cultures are the same. Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew often talked of "Asian values" as different from Western values on social issues as well as issues of human rights. And Beijing's leaders are very aggressive in stating the same thing. Mr. Morsi is breaking no new ground here. I am sorry not to have asked the question about 9/11, though I'm sure he would have had an answer prepared, as he did for questions about Egypt's delay in ousting demonstrators from the U.S. Embassy. In general I would say I found Mr. Morsi warm, affable and guarded. He was well prepared and conscious of the importance of the interview for his visit to the United States. I had in the past met Mr. Mubarak and Omar Suleiman, and my sense for the moment is that Mr. Morsi is a man with a lot of good will, with an extraordinarily difficult task in front of him - a country of more than 80 million people, with rising prices and high unemployment, with enormous expectations that the Arab Spring and Egypt's new leadership will deliver a new more prosperous life for all, and quickly. Respect and a little patience seem to me modest things to ask. - Steven Erlanger Please ask President Morsi how the U.S. should assist the Palestinians in achieving self-rule when Hamas, by its very charter, denies Israel's right to exist. Or phrased slightly differently, can there be a two-state solution when one of the states denies the other's right to exist? Thank you for your question, which touches on a concern of many readers about Egyptian and Palestinian relations with Israel. You were curious about President Morsi's long-term view of relations between Egypt and the Palestinians, particularly since Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist. I wish we had more opportunities to speak directly to President Morsi and at more length, so we could press him on all these things! But I have had a chance to speak to others in Mr. Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, about their view of these things. Hamas, as you may know, is a Palestinian offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and its parent organization has traditionally argued that Hamas was exercising a legitimate right to resist against a foreign occupation. The Brotherhood was sharply critical of the Western-backed Fatah faction that controls the Palestinian Authority for agreeing to work with Israel without receiving any real guarantees about an end to settlements or genuine statehood. Since coming to power in Egypt, however, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood says that it has changed its stance and feels an obligation to play a more neutral role as an arbiter between Hamas and Fatah. The party's stated position is that Palestinian unity will advance the cause of a peaceful two-state solution. That means pressing Hamas to accept the fact of Israel's existence, if not Israel's moral right to exist. Analysts who follow Hamas closely tell me it has sometimes hinted of its willingness to do this, if it received enough recognition in return. When I asked if a Brotherhood-led Egypt might provide weapons or military support to Hamas, a senior Brotherhood official responded with something close to shock at the idea; he said the overarching goal was regional peace and stability and the Brotherhood would never condone the militarization of the region. The stated goal is putting more pressure on Israel to ensure Palestinian self-rule - not wiping Israel off the map. That seemed to be President Morsi's thinking as well. He approached the question of the Palestinians in the framework of the Camp David accord, which also envisions two states living side by side in peace. He has met with leaders of both Palestinian factions. When asked about his agenda, his advisers speak earnestly and almost exclusively about reviving the Egyptian economy, and they acknowledge that requires tranquil borders. In my view of the Egyptian political scene, it will be a long time before any politician (secular or Islamist) starts talking publicly about an abstract moral "right" for Israel to exist. But by the same token there is not much appetite in the Egyptian public for efforts to challenge the fact of Israel's existence. - David Kirkpatrick I am neither a Jew nor a Muslim. I've spent a great deal of time in the Middle East. I can appreciate Egypt's position on Palestine and Israel's position on Iran. I would have asked President Morsi if he would renounce Iran's position regarding the destruction of Israel if and when substantive progress were made on a Palestinian State. Mr. Morsi made it clear he would try engagement with Iran, especially on Syria, and said that the U.S. and others gave him the green light to do so, to try to arrange a regional solution. But there is no doubt that Iran remains a rival to Egypt for supremacy in the region, that the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran shakes Egyptians as well as the Gulf Arabs, that the Sunni-Shiite rivalry remains hot and hostile, and that Mr. Morsi intends for a newly democratic Egypt, led by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to take a more assertive leadership role. And that includes firm opposition to the continuing rule of the Assads in Syria, but also opposition to any outside military intervention. - Steven Erlanger On the eve of his first trip to the United States as Egypt's new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi said the United States needed to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state, if it hoped to overcome decades of pent-up anger. And this seems to anger many readers, a great many saying Egypt has no business telling the U.S. how to interact with his country. They also suggest that the U.S. can cut off funding if Egypt does not act as they think it should. As usual we see ignorance of history by these conservative commentators. They do not know the history of the Aswan Dam and the Russian financing. The Russians were quite happy to step in and give aid and arms to Egypt which made the U.S. sit up and take notice; you just cannot go pushing people around because they can use your financial aid. There are others willing to take your place, and Egypt is the largest and most influential country in the Arab world. Arabia my have more money, but Egypt has more resources. He is not dictating to the U.S. how to treat them, he is saying what a great many of you do not want to hear. There is pent-up anger and the U.S. has to change its approach to dealing with the Arab world, and many of you do not seem to be able accept this. Well, get over it. He and his government are in charge there, and they can do without U.S. financing, they have before and can do so again. Thank you for your perspective. It is not for me to judge whether his comments were appropriate. But there are two things worth noting: Egypt's view of the U.S. aid money. First, in my experience the Egyptian military and political elite seem to feel like Egypt holds a lot of leverage here. Egypt is the linchpin of peace with Israel and stability in the region. Egypt controls the Suez Canal at the crossroads of three continents. And by virtue of its size and military strength, it is a major player in the Arab world. Egyptian leaders often feel that the United States is getting more than its money's worth if its aid buys Egypt's allegiance. "The U.S. got Egypt cheap," is how one retired general put it to me. Second, most Egyptians feel that all United States aid delivered before the revolution did not go to them. It went to Hosni Mubarak and his government. So when readers say, "We want our money back!," most Egyptians would say: "Please! See if you can get it back from those crooks, but don't look at us! You helped prop up a corrupt autocrat who left his country's economy in a shambles, so our feelings about your past financial support are ambivalent - but this is no take it away." - David Kirkpatrick How great is it that people from all over the world, including President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, chose to come to universities in the United States for their higher education. They bring their skills home again, but they also take with them cross-cultural understanding that serves them well when they become leaders back home. I agree. During the cold war, we used to joke that the best way for the Soviet Union to lose future allies was to let their students come to Moscow to study. But the American university system, though varied by state, represents a major source of American soft power. Mr. Morsi had high praise for the California higher education he received, for his professors and for the way students organized themselves, including providing help to the disabled. He admired, he said, the openness and inclusiveness of America, and he admired, too, he said, the way that Americans worked hard and managed their time. - Steven Erlanger My first impression is that Mr. Morsi sounds a lot more agreeable, logical, sensible and more contemplative than his counterpart in Israel. We back Israel blindly to our detriment. Notice his response to the "ally" question -- it's spot on. I perceive in Mr. Morsi a real window of opportunity for the United States to move past its often myopic view of the Middle East and reset its relationship to that world, with Mr. Morsi potentially acting as our ambassador of that good will. I think he's got the street cred we need to make it work, if we can prove that we are serious about it. Frankly, I'm a little tired of being barked at by what seems to me to be a completely ungrateful and unapologetic Netanyahu. And I feel that Mr. Morsi presents a refreshing new view and with it new possibilities. Hopefully, this opportunity won't be wasted. - Chicago Guy Mr. Morsi enjoyed American freedoms and saw equality at work while he was living here. Yet, as a leader he would discriminate against both females and Christians. It would seem that Mr. Morsi only chooses to remember the scientific things that he learned here. It is time for the U.S. to do now with Arab countries like Egypt that call us neither enemy or ally, as President Reagan did in Lebanon after our Marines were killed in an unprovoked attack. We withdraw taking all of our aid, support, and materials that we have provided in the past until such time as leaders like Mr. Morsi decide if their countries will be enemy or ally of the U.S. If we compare the actions of Libya and Egypt after the attacks on the U.S. embassies in those countries, there is little doubt which country we can count on as an Ally and which one fits in one of the other categories. We should give aid only to those countries who openly claim to be allies of the U.S. Mr. Morsi knows full well the game he is playing. The question seems to be what does he hope to gain by playing the way he is now and will he be sent home knowing that he played and lost it all? His popularity at home will quickly decline as the consequences of complete loss of U.S. aid starts to spread through Egypt. Egypt may have been a valuable ally at one time. Mr. Morsi is very much aware of the context in which he spoke. The relationship with the U.S. is very important to him and to Egypt, not simply for aid - which the U.S. has been slowly diminishing - but for future investment and stability. He has a huge unemployment problem among young people, a considerable factor in the Egyptian revolt against Hosni Mubarak, and Egypt needs to provide young people, especially those with an education, better jobs. It is easier in Egypt to get a job without education than with it; clearly that has to change. Also a point on aid: a lot of what the U.S. gives to Egypt is military aid - in Israel's case, all or nearly all of it now is. And a lot of that goes to buy American-made equipment. It seems to me, at least, that the United States has an important opportunity to rebalance its relationships with the Arab world itself, to deal with the new realities of shaky but more democratic governments and a wide variety of so-called Islamists. President Obama obviously feels himself constrained by electoral politics from reaching out too forcefully to Mr. Morsi, who knows enough about America to understand why. But beginning with President George W. Bush, the U.S. is committed formally to a Palestinian state living alongside Israel, while guaranteeing Israel's security; Mr. Obama supports the same ends. Egypt matters enormously to U.S. interests and that is well understood in Washington, at the White House, State Department and Pentagon. The peace treaty with Egypt and a quiet Egyptian border are one of Israel's main security requirements, and Mr. Morsi and the Egyptian military give no indication that they want to overturn matters with Israel. Mr. Morsi knows that the Sinai is a large and sometimes lawless place and that security has slipped since the Tahrir Square uprising. He says he intends to keep order there, and diplomats suggest the Egyptians and Israelis are in regular contact about Sinai, Gaza and possible radical Islamic groups and possible terrorists there. Hamas, too, is worried about being outflanked on the so-called right - by the Salafis and the Al Qaeda wannabes. But Morsi also made clear that Egypt has begun to shut down tunnel activity between the two Rafahs, which the military council did little about before his election. I say good luck to that. The conditions of life in Gaza remain a sore point for Egyptians, but at the same time, Egypt itself is wary of opening up to Gaza so much that it allows Israel to wash its hands of Gaza entirely and Cairo becomes responsible for it. Menachem Begin offered Gaza to Anwar Sadat in their peace-treaty negotiations; Sadat said no, thank you. The position in Cairo is unlikely to have changed. - Steven Erlanger