HOSNI MUBARAK’S FOREIGN POLICY AND THE ISLAMIC FACTOR

Abstract

The article examines the complicated domestic and foreign political situation inherited by H. Mubarak after the assassination of the former head of state A. Sadat by radical Islamists because of his foreign policy steps directly related to Islamic solidarity at the international level. H. Mubarak’s foreign policy was a continuation of the domestic one. He tried to attract supporters among the Islamists, at the same time widely using repression to weaken the Islamist opposition, and, at the same time, sought to pursue a policy of promoting state Islam, which was designed to show the Islamic character of the country and thus seize the initiative from the Islamist opposition. Having restored Egypt’s position in the Arab and Islamic world, in the last decade of his rule, H. Mubarak, as a result of unsuccessful steps towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, again faced criticism of his course. This was superimposed on the growth of opposition within the country, and the dilemma, which H. Mubarak tried to solve at the last stage of his rule, looked like a classic “paradox of democracy”, when the launching of democratization processes leads to the strengthening of Islamist forces. Another dimension on which the Islamic factor manifested itself in the foreign policy pursued under H. Mubarak was the fight against international terrorism. For Egypt, this problem worsened in the 1990s. Opposition to radical Islam reached a new level after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and the declaration of a “global war on terrorism”, in which Egypt became a participant. During this period, al-Qaeda considered Egypt as one of the directions of the “global jihad”. The actions of the government of Egypt and the terrorist acts against this country revealed previously unknown groups that were somehow identified with Al-Qaeda and the “global jihad”.