Muslim World (Important Articles)

Islam’s defining moment with democracyMarch 29, 2012By the Monitor’s Editorial Board

Muslims living in democracies of the West and Asia already know their practice of Islam can best flourish where religious freedom is protected and women’s rights are honored. Now two Muslim countries liberated from dictators in last year’s Arab Spring are trying to define their own line between mosque and state.

In Egypt and Tunisia, the Islamist parties that won postrevolution elections are leading efforts to write new constitutions. Their choices could reshape the Middle East if they decide that Islam must be compatible with democracy rather than the other way around.

On Monday, the leading Islamist party in Tunisia, Al Nahda, announced that sharia (Islamic law) should not be the source for all laws. It said the constitution should simply acknowledge that Islam is the state religion, as the old constitution did.

The party prefers to unite all Tunisians and set an example for other Arab states in transition. A woman, in fact, is heading up the panel to define rights and liberties.

Egypt, however, is home to the Muslim Brotherhood, once the modern source of radical Islamic ideas that inspired groups like Al Qaeda. While the Brotherhood has become pragmatic during six decades of military rule, it decided last week to use its majority in the new parliament to dominate the constitution-writing process. And it is also pushing for a candidate in the coming presidential election who has “an Islamic background.”

Still, much can happen in Egypt’s ongoing political flux between the Muslim Brotherhood, the military, and pro-democracy youth who led last year’s protests against Hosni Mubarak.

Most Egyptians, who are largely rural, care more about clean government and a growing economy than democracy. Any party or person who becomes president later this year will have a difficult time delivering on those hopes.

The possibility of failing to fix the economy restrains the Brotherhood from being out front in leading Egypt for now. And recent dissent within the group reveals a healthy clash of ideas over Islam’s role in defining a new identity for Egypt, where 10 percent of the population is Coptic Christian.

Both Tunisia and Egypt have two models in the region that illustrate Islam’s long and difficult encounter with Western ideas of freedom and plurality.

Since 1979, Iran’s ruling Muslim clerics have botched the country’s minimalist democracy, while in Turkey the ruling Islamic party has ruled since 2002 with mostly liberal policies.

In fact, Turkey, once the seat of the Islamic Ottoman caliphate, has praised the virtues of democratic secular rule to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. It has also scolded Iraq’s Shiite-led government for not easing tensions with minority Sunnis. And it has told Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon to raise their voices against the violence in Syria or else “remove the word ‘Islam’ from their names.”

It took centuries and many wars for Christians in Europe to come to terms with democracy.

Muslims in the Middle East are on a faster track to reconcile their religion with representative government and rule of law. And they have plenty of models to help them see that democracy gives Islam its best protection from sectarian strife.Source: Christian Science Monitor

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Arab Spring: now begins the education of Islamist politicians

May 2, 2012By Graham E. Fuller

Islamist politics in the Middle East cracked wide open with the Arab awakening: Islamists have emerged on top in Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, and Egypt. Western publics, lulled by the sight of iPhones and other social media at work, assumed that the demonstrations, rebellions, and regime changes were all driven by Muslim wannabe Westerners and that Islamist politics were relics of the past.But when dictators started to fall, it shouldn’t have been any surprise that Islamists quickly came out on top. This wasn’t a conspiracy. Islamists have paid their dues many times over for decades as the only group with a clear regional identity, a vision, a courage, and a willingness to suffer the harsh responses of dictators.

OPINION: Political Islam is here to stay – US must accept and adjust

They spoke out, went to prison, and sometimes died. Brave doesn’t always mean correct, but it means they garnered the respect of the public. Western-style liberals couldn’t really fill up the main square on a good day, although the participation of a new generation of youth with idealism and drive is evidence of an exciting new generation of activists.

Islamists make Westerners nervous, sometimes with good reason. We have seen what the most fanatic and worst of them can do – 9/11, primitive Taliban forces, and backwards views toward women. But Islamists have also been driven by a Muslim nationalist zeal, fueled by hostility to past Western political domination and wars brought to their own lands.

Islamists were in a way lucky for a while. Excluded from the system, they could only deliver Islamist critiques but never had to shoulder the burden of office, the responsibility to make things work.

That has all changed. Islamists are being elected into office and will be assuming the daunting policy problems of their neglected societies. The voting public is excited at the

change and will give them a grace period to start improving things. But that period will be limited. Islamists can’t go on winning elections on the basis of pious religious slogans or even anti-Westernism (assuming the West is no longer there with boots on the ground).

Islamists, too, will eventually be chucked out of office if they can’t deliver the goods. And they know it. They will have to make hard policy decisions on complex issues – or they too will soon lose their hard-acquired luster.

In the exhilarating new field of more open Middle Eastern politics, the once oppressed and cornered Islamist spectrum is now opening out, expanding into new space: liberal or conservative, pragmatic or rigid, cautious or bold, skilled or unskilled, politically savvy or not.

We see this spectrum in Tunisia and Egypt today: ultra-conservative Salafis, more moderate Muslim Brothers, a smaller segment of liberal Islamists – all in competition. What’s more, the field is not static. Islamists, now free to play, are evolving rapidly, gaining experience in the face of the hard political and policy decisions ahead of them.

The process has brought some heartening developments. Ultra-orthodox Salafis in Egypt have now surprisingly backed for president the most liberal Islamist candidate in the pack. But should we be surprised? Salafis, too, want to win elections, to back the candidate most likely to win.

Islamists, united by shared years in the dungeons, now differ with each other in the atmosphere of greater political freedom. They are not rejecting, but playing in, the political game. If a pious, well-meaning but isolated bearded sheikh can’t play in the political arena and manage the country, Islamists don’t want to go down with the ideological ship.

In Turkey 10 years ago, a secularized public voted for a party with Islamist roots, the ruling Justice and Development Party, not because it was pious but because it proved it could run municipalities, and it went on to major successes at the national level. It wasn’t about Islam, it was about the economy, services, smart politics. And it has prospered now for over a decade to become a model of what an Islamist party can become.

There are smart and stupid Islamists, competent and incompetent, popular and unpopular. Some will come to office and quickly flail and fail; others will demonstrate vision and management skills. Public demand and expectations will soon sort them out.

Above all, the West must allow these processes to unfold unhindered inside each country. Past Western support to Middle East dictators to “keep the lid on” have cost the West dearly, stirred up deep hostility against it, and have severely retarded the political learning curve of Middle East societies. Will some of them prove failures? For sure.

As the spectrum of Islamist politics widens, there will be periods of chaos, learning, and uncertainty. Look at the excesses of numerous Western countries during the 20th century – Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Russia, Greece, or Japan – and the massive institutional corruption that characterizes so much of Western politics today.

Muslim political behavior in the end is just like that of other groups of people: similar hopes and aspirations, similar angers against oppression, similar hatred of invaders, similar resistance to hegemonic powers. There are no mysteries here. The daily tumultuous unfolding of events shows that Muslim politics are slowly crawling back on the road from the frozen tundra of the autocrats.

Graham E. Fuller is the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA; his most recent book is “A World Without Islam.”Source: Christian Science Monitor