For many on the American left and right, the "Arab Spring" has become
the "Arab Winter" of triumphant fundamentalists. In Egypt, where Arab
liberalism was once strong, religious parties overwhelmed secularists in
recent parliamentary elections. An Islamist is now certain to be
elected president, provided the military does not intervene, and a
referendum that would likely down the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is
probably in the future.
But Westerners should resist nostalgia and depression. Given the
awfulness of post-World War II Arab lands, where even the most benign
regimes had sophisticated, torture-happy security services, Islamists
who braved the wrath of rulers and trenchantly critiqued the moral
breakdown of their societies were going to do well in a postsecular age.
What is poorly understood in the West is how critical fundamentalists
are to the moral and political rejuvenation of their countries. As
counterintuitive as it seems, they are the key to more democratic,
liberal politics in the region.
The case for a separation of mosque and state has been harder to make
in the Middle East because most Muslims have not been burned by
internecine strife. The West has become an unrivaled liberal paragon in
part because its past savagery was so intense. Westerners now
instinctively compartmentalize their faith and temper its expression
because their Christian forefathers killed each other zealously over
religious differences.
Islam hasn't seen the sustained barbarism that plagued European
Christian and post-Christian—communist and fascist—societies.
Reform-minded Muslims have usually critiqued their faith with an eye to
the West, to the secrets of European power, without appreciating both
the highs and lows of Occidental history.
A hundred years ago, the most consequential Muslim intellectuals were
mostly progressive men who tried to work out a synthesis between the
West and Islam. The Middle East's post-World War II rulers, however,
merely dictated that the Muslim clergy and the faithful change their
ways. Against the seductive power of nationalism, socialism and
communism, which in the hands of military men ran roughshod over much of
the Middle East, Islam stood as a barrier to "progress."
As the imported Western ideologies ended in tyranny, Islam became a
haven, a repository of virtue and memories, both real and imagined, of
better times, when rulers and the ruled abided by the same religious
law. The all-purpose fundamentalist cry, "Islam is the answer," is as
much a critique of what had been tried and failed as it is a tendentious
reading of history.
Among Shiite Muslims, the mullahs became poles of resistance. Among
Sunni Muslims, whose clerics have been closely allied to the state,
devout laymen took the lead in opposition. What ought to be obvious now
is that Muslims cannot be dragged dictatorially to an embrace of
secularism and all the liberal values that spring from it. They have to
arrive voluntarily, organically, at this understanding.
Slavery is de facto no longer permitted in Islam—even though it's
authorized by the Quran—because Muslims successfully grafted European
ethics onto Islamic mores. (British warships also helped stop the
trade.) Individualism, the most insidious of Western exports, has now
penetrated deeply into Muslim societies. The Muslim Brotherhood, for
example, recognizes a woman's equality inside the voting booth.
We can easily find truly disturbing commentary and actions by members
of the Egyptian Brotherhood, or by the Tunisian Rachid Ghannouchi, the
intellectual guru behind the ruling Nahda Party. But we can just as
easily find words and deeds that ought to make us consider the
possibility that these men are neither Ernest Röhm and his fascist
Brownshirts nor even religious versions of secular autocrats. Rather,
they are cultural hybrids trying to figure out how to combine the best
of the West (material progress and the absence of brutality in daily
life) without betraying their faith and pride.
We know that in Iran, under theocracy, once die-hard members of the
revolutionary elite have become proponents of evermore liberal
democracy. Fundamentalists became fundamentalist critics. The Islamic
Republic's controlled elections created a powerful appetite for real
ones.
In Arab lands, militant Muslims who once espoused violent revolution
now back representative government. They do so, in part, because they
know how powerful the appeal of democracy is among the faithful. They
also do so, as Iraq's Shiite clerics have made clear, because they are
certain that free Muslims voting can't do worse than the Westernized
dictators before them. Democracy is thus a means to keep Muslims more
religious whereas theocracy actually secularizes society.
This view is potentially very strong among Sunnis who don't recognize
the possibility that a majority of Muslims can err in their collective
judgment. It is certainly possible that Arab Islamists will try to abort
democracy once they gain power, fearful of how free men and women might
act. But there will be enormous resistance from the faithful.
Arab Muslims have little idea yet where the red lines are—where
parliamentary power, the Holy Law and tradition collide. In Iraq, where
this collision is the most advanced, we have seen the clergy and secular
laymen both give ground on sensitive issues.
As is already happening in Egypt, we will see debates revolving around
issues that will turn Western stomachs—such as the exclusion of
Christians and women from official positions, and the permissibility of
clitoridectomy and childhood brides. Though the outcomes may be
distressing, this is not surprising. If a secular, semi-democratic
Turkey guided by Europeanized generals constantly mistreated its
religious and ethnic minorities, we can be certain that much less
Westernized Arab lands are unlikely to be notably more tolerant.
But democracy, even if vastly more limited than current Western
practice, always introduces a jousting ethic into politics.
Representative government puts into play the sacred and the profane. It
empowers women, the Achilles' heel of Islamic fundamentalism. In Egypt,
it pits Muslim Brothers against more hard-core Salafists. Secular Muslim
liberals may one day form a government. But for now, they are too
culturally close to the West, and to the Westernized dictators, to carry
their societies with them.
Fundamentalists, however, are near the mainstream. Washington should be
under no illusions: They will be neither our friends nor allies. But
their debates with each other and with the region's still-kicking
nationalists, socialists, communists and liberals will get evolution
rolling. Down that tortuous path lies the possibility of less angry
relations between Islam and the West. Dictatorship nostalgia, on the
other hand, will take us right back to the cul-de-sac where Osama bin
Laden was born.
Mr. Gerecht, a former Middle Eastern specialist in the CIA's
clandestine service, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies and the author of "The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box
in the Middle East" (Hoover Institution Press, 2011).
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