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It is democracy not political Islam

November 17, 2014 at 10:55 am

In the battle of transition to democracy in the Arab world, the question of religion and its role in the state and politics throws its weight over the dynamic causing its exhaustion and dividing the elites forcing them into an unwholesome state of entrenchment and polarisation that impacts on the entire society. At times, and this has already happened, this may delay the process of transition to democracy and may even kill it altogether. So, is this a genuine or artificial question?

I used to believe this was genuine. I even took part in several seminars over the past quarter of a century, dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall that triggered the democratisation process throughout Eastern Europe. Most of these succeeded within a very brief period of time and those that were initially hindered managed eventually to make it. Undoubtedly, this is what triggered a silent desire in the Arab world for a similar transition. The question raised among the educated elite at the time was: Could the forces of political Islam be “adapted” and integrated into political life in terms of power-sharing, elections and alternation of power?

This question was put forward as if the Arabs were waiting at the next turning point. However, it soon emerged that the purpose of the question was not to prepare the Arab states for the awaited transition to democracy, but rather to warn against it. Hence, the phrase “one man one vote for one time” was coined and propagated in order to warn the West against pushing the Arabs toward democracy because Islamic parties were going to win the elections and then stop the democratic route.

What occurred in the Algeria of 1992 and in Egypt in 2013, of the intervention of the army in the democratic process with the consent and encouragement of “liberal forces”, turned the theory completely on its head. Not only that, it shifted the problem of dealing with democracy to the “democratic” camp, which continues with amazing insistence, to raise the question of whether political Islam is qualified to practice democracy! This is not a serious discussion. It is simply used by the “liberal” forces to cover their shameful stance toward democracy. It is also an invocation of a debate about an Arab situation that has long been over and cannot simply be returned to.

During that “distant” time, Arab and Western political analysts and researchers, together with local reformists, were dealing with a solid mass that clenched to power relying on some legitimacy that was born out of resorting to force. Such a regime seemed to be the Arabs’ final destiny. But this was the old Arab regime which consisted of three elements: the military in the driving seat, an obedient bureaucracy that runs the country’s affairs and a benefiting civilian class.

They tried to persuade it and consider the possibilities and likely outcomes of involving the Islamists in a limited and controlled form in regime institutions. This happened after realising that the Islamists could not simply be eliminated despite all the endless and recurrent persecutions, executions, detentions and distortion campaigns. It was not the outcome of an awakening of conscience or a desire for reform but rather a long overdue acknowledgment of the public strength of the Islamists. The official media sought to downplay that strength but not the active security agencies who had good knowledge of what was going on in slums and mosques and submitted report after report about the Islamists’ powerful existence.

This debate found its way to seminars and newspaper columns. The theme was “political Islamic and democracy”. At times it appeared as a desire for reform and opening up. At other times it sought to justify the distorted practice of democracy. The alleged excuse was the protection of “civil society” from the encroachment of political Islam with what it carries of reactionary ideas that threaten the social reforms achieved thus far. “Progressive” regimes found solace in “Salafism”, so they embarked on encouraging it to grow, engaging it at times and benefiting from it at other times to promote the Salafi school of “listening and obeying”, a school that admonishes the poor and the commoners in slums to “listen and obey”. These regimes also benefited from the closed-mindedness of Salafism which is incapable of progress and which rejects democracy, denouncing it as an infidelity and an offence against Allah’s divinity and His Shari’ah (Law).

They applied such narrow-minded vision to the entire spectrum of political Islam. The regime’s cultured elite acted like Don Quixote as they enjoyed wrestling with a non-existent idea within the Islamic movement, which reconciled itself with democracy since the 1930s. However, the promotion of Salafist ideas led to a relapse among some movement activists vis-a-vis democracy. This was manifest in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt following the fall of Mubarak. During the two years of short-lived democracy there the magnitude of the “Salafisation of the Brotherhood” became apparent as they strayed from the traditional Egyptian national project that distinguished them throughout the 1940s. Consequently, they have paid, and continue to pay, the price of their popularity, especially among the cultured elite.

Dialogue and interplay between political Islam and the old Arab regime was not always confrontational. In some of the Arab countries it led to partnerships between them, such as in the case of Yemen. For more than two decades the Brotherhood forged an alliance with deposed President Ali Abdullah Saleh and it was only the Arab Spring that ended their alliance.

In Sudan too, a pact was formed between the army and the Islamists. Yet, these were partnerships entered according the rules of the old Arab regime; that is they were at the expense of democracy. The crux of the matter is that the Arabs’ problem, whether liberals or Islamists, is with democracy and not with political Islam or with any other ideology. It is their hesitant and selective stance towards democracy that stalled its march.

It is time to raise, once more, the questions of the future. Democracy, or people’s participation or shura, call it what you will, is coming, no doubt. It is the natural entitlement and the inevitable historic evolution. One of its most important stipulations is “the right to choose”. This right, which seems so simple, is what changed the face of Europe when the government of Democratic Germany (yes, this was the official name of totalitarian, single party, East Germany) on November 9, 1989, allowed its citizens to cross the famous Berlin Wall and visit West Berlin. That right transformed into human waves that knocked down the Berlin Wall stone by stone and ended the totalitarian regime not only in “democratic” Germany alone but throughout Eastern Europe.

Democracy is the right to choose. Elites, no matter how enlightened they may be, have no right to determine who has the right to play the game and who is to be denied it. Otherwise democracy would become a private club. Abdel Nasser did that before when, on July 23, 1952, he staged a coup against a democratic regime and formed what he called the “Socialist Union” in a bid to resolve the crisis of his totalitarian regime with democracy, a promise cherished in the Egyptian conscience. But that was the parliament of Abdel Nasser’s regime and not a people’s parliament in accordance with the rules of liberal democracy. By doing so, he established a precedent that was followed by those who, like him, came to power through a coup in the rest of the Arab republics.

There is no middle position between the two positions in this age. It is either a full-fledged democracy as promised by any civilised constitution or no democracy at all. Furthermore, democracy cannot be postponed until prosperity reaches all, until the economy improves and until people’s awareness increases. The proven theory is that all ills were due to despotism. Therefore, despotism, where the rules of transparency and accountability are absent, can never be the route towards prosperity and good economy. The theory is clear and there is no need for another article about the ills of despotism.

This is a translation Al Hayat newspaper, from 15 November, 2014

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.