by David Bukay
2nd part of 2
Islamism and Democracy: Mutually Exclusive?
A growing number of mainstream foreign policy voices—former New Republic editor Peter Beinart and Carnegie Endowment scholar Robert Kagan, for example—advocate for engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists.[17] While Beinart and Kagan may be swayed by the rhetoric of democracy and appeals to electoral fairness, the new Islamic wave could undercut not only the stability of traditional military regimes but also meaningful reform and liberal opposition.
The problem distills to conflicting concepts of legitimate, authoritative government. In the West, in the mid-eighteenth century, Jean Jacques Rousseau outlined the concept of a social contract between a people and its government. Islamists, however, reject the idea of a social contract in the Western sense. According to Arab culture and many Islamic tenets, legitimacy is granted exclusively to the leader.
While some majority Muslim states—Egypt and Iran, for example—have long and cohesive histories, many others, whether in Africa, the Middle East, or elsewhere in Asia, have weak national identities easily rendered weaker by clerics appealing to ties with the Muslim umma (community) rather than national sentiment.[18]
Civil society cannot defend itself against Islamism enforced and protected by the military. Especially within the Arab Middle East, civil society is weak. The problem is not the absence of organizations but rather their independent function. Even if there are political parties, professional and civic associations, and opposition groups, they have little influence on governance and decision-making. Parties operate more on behalf of the regime as mass organizations for political mobilization while opposition is mostly illegitimate and works underground. The 2002 Arab Human Development Report, for example, found deficits in freedom, knowledge, and opportunities for women.[19] In Arab states, Iraqi Kurdistan, and
With the exception of the West African nation of
Western political culture is participatory. It represents the norms, attitudes, and values of the individual and the group towards political institutions and the state. In Arab society, political culture is, in the best case, subjugated at the center and parochial at the periphery. Cultural values of honor and shame hamper Arab political culture. Traditional political culture and ethnic divisions pose a barrier to the development of effective parliamentary government and democracy.[29] Underneath the modern veneer, the older realities of ethnicity and desert values persist.[30]
The principles of Islam are in contradiction to the values of civilian society and democracy.[31] The source of authority and sovereignty is neither a social contract nor the will of the people but God. There is no egalitarianism between leader and subject, between man and woman, Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim, or even between segments of society.[32] The concepts of democracy and liberalism are rejected ab initio.
The Western temptation to engage moderate Islamists is misguided. The absolutism of political Islam—and the extra-constitutional rejection of those who do not accept its precepts—raise the danger of one-man, one-vote, one-time scenarios. Many Islamist movements readily embrace the rhetoric of democracy but fail to follow its principles when no longer convenient. This was the case with Algerian Islamists who, upon winning the first round of elections in December 1991, spoke openly of changing the constitution and abandoning the democratic process. Erdoğan, while mayor of
Engaging Islamists undercuts democracy in other ways. Egyptian-American sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim described the dichotomy that exists between autocrats and theocrats. "We have had autocrats in our region, fifty years or more of autocracy, in many of our countries; actually, nearly all of our countries. Who in due course generated their mirror image? Theocrats, the Khomeinis, the bin Ladens, the Zawahiris, the Zarqawis … who are challenging the autocrats, but who also are participating with the autocrats in an unholy, unintentional alliance to squeeze and to crush the budding democrats."[34] When Western officials embrace Islamists—even those they deem moderate—they contribute to oxygen starvation for liberals and those truly committed to democracy.
Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood or Tablighi Jamaat can be dangerous in other ways. Even when they say they eschew violence, they often serve as a "recruiting agency" for more radical groups or terrorist causes.[35] Tablighi alumni have gone on to join Al-Qaeda affiliates, for example, and many of those who joined the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Kurdistan Islamic Union continued, after further indoctrination, to join more radical and violent movements such as the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan or Ansar al-Islam.
Conclusion
The
Scholars and policy experts find attractive the notion that political Islam is a spent force.[39] Repeatedly, they have been proven wrong. Today, Islamism is rising not only in
David Bukay is a lecturer at the
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
[1] The Economist (
[2] See, for example, Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation: The Rise of Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
[3] Howard W. Wriggins, The Ruler's Imperative: Strategies for Survival in Asia and
[4] Michael Bratton and Nicholas van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 82-97; Houchang Chehabi and Juan J. Linz, "A Theory of Sultanism," in Chehabi and Linz, eds., Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), pp. 3-48.
[5] Amos Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 104-5, 145-7; Michael Herb, All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 21-50.
[6] Al-Hayat al-Jadida (Ramallah), July 17, 2006.
[7] Zachary Abuza, "Jemaah Islamiyah Adopts the Hezbollah Model,"
[8] H. Osman Bencherif, "Algeria Faces the Rough Beast,"
[9] Steven A. Cook, Ruling but Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in
[10] "Islamizing Egyptian Education,"
[11] Ido Zelkowitz, "Fatah's Embrace of Islamism,"
[12] Michael Rubin, "Who Is Responsible for the Taliban?"
[13] Daily Times (
[14] David Caprezza, "Turkey's Military Is a Catalyst for Reform,"
[15] Financial Times, July 31, 2003.
[16] Soner Cagaptay, "Turkey's Secret Power Brokers," Newsweek International, Mar. 30, 2009.
[17] Open Letter to President Obama, Mar. 10, 2009.
[18] Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798-1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 291-323.
[19] Arab Human Development Report 2002 (
[20] Moisés Naím, "What Is a Gongo?" Foreign Policy, May/June 2007.
[21] Sharq (
[22] Dankwart Rustow, "Transition to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model," Comparative Politics, Apr. 1970, pp. 350-1.
[23] "Map of Freedom in the World, Tables and Charts: Combined Average Ratings: Independent Countries, 2008," Freedom in the World, 2008 (
[24] Mustapha K. al-Sayyid, "The Concept of Civil Society and the Arab World," in Rex Brynen, et. al., eds., Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 131-48; idem, "International Dimensions of Middle Eastern Authoritarianism," in Oliver Schlumberger, ed., Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in Nondemocratic Regimes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 215-6.
[25] Elie Kedourie, Democracy and the Arab Political Culture (London: Frank Cass, 1994), pp. 103-5.
[26] Eva Bellin, "Coercive Institutions and Coercive Leaders," in Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds., Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance (
[27] Marsha Pripstein Posusney, "The Middle East Democracy Deficit in Comparative Perspective," in Posusney and Angrist, Authoritarianism in the Middle East, p. 2; Nicola Pratt, Democracy and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007), pp. 189-204.
[28] Frederic L. Pryor, "Are Muslim Countries Less Democratic?"
[29] Michael Herb, "Princes, Parliaments, and the Prospects for Democracy in the Gulf," in Posusney and Angrist, Authoritarianism in the
[30] Fouad Ajami, The Dream Palace of the Arabs (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), p. 155; Philip Carl Salzman, "The Middle East's Tribal DNA," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2008, pp. 23-33.
[31] Daniel E. Price, Islamic Political Culture, Democracy, and Human Rights: A Comparative Study )
[32] Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 28-36, 54-61, 85-91; idem, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 1-6.
[33] The New York Times, May 11, 2003.
[34] Saad Eddin Ibrahim, "Dissent and Reform in the Arab World," conference transcript, The American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., Jan. 13, 2006.
[35] Alex Alexiev, "Tablighi Jamaat: Jihad's Stealth Legions,"
[36] "America's Image Slips," Pew Global Attitudes Project,
[37] International Islamic News Network, Dec. 16, 2004; Rediff
[38] Abrar (
[39] See, for example, Ray Takeyh, "Islamism, R.I.P," National Interest, Spring 2001.
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