Hussein Ibish is one of the more interesting Arab writers on
regional affairs. In a piece published by the
liberal site “Lebanon Now” he contemplates the broader meaning of the Libyan
election. Although official results are not in yet it appears that the
U.S.-backed National Forces Alliance led by the NATO-installed leader, Mahmoud
Jibril, won a big victory.
In
this light, Ibish critiques the idea that “assumes the inexorable rise of
Islamist parties.” He is right and properly adds: “Libya shows that Islamists
can be defeated in contemporary Arab elections, and this should be celebrated
and emulated, not ignored or dismissed.”
Part
of the problem, of course, is that the mass media and the analysts it generally
features have so often—with almost monopolistic power—repeated that Islamists
wouldn’t win or that it didn’t matter because they are really moderate. This
has created a reaction among wiser people who warn the Islamists are winning
and aren’s moderate.
Ibish
doesn’t want the Islamists to win and stresses that they can be defeated. The
question, of course, is how they can be defeated.
To
begin with, seeing what happened in Libya reminds us that Islam is not some
monolithic force that is inevitably radical or Islamist. Just because
revolutionary Islamists can validly use quotations from the Koran and other
Muslim holy books to justify their ideology doesn’t mean everyone will be
convinced they are right.
Ibish quotes the columnist Charles Krauthammer as writing that
what’s “taking place in the region is an Islamist ascendancy, likely to
dominate Arab politics for a generation.” And Ibish responds:
“There
is no doubt that Islamist parties will be major factors in the coming decades.
But what Jibril’s victory demonstrates is that the `Islamist ascendancy’ is by
no means assured or even likely.”
I
think Islamist ascendancy is likely but not assured. That’s not because I
believe Arab politics are “relatively homogenous,” far from it. The problem is
the collapse of Arab nationalism coupled with the weakness of liberal reformist
views, and the Islamist side’s relative coherence and organization.
Let’s
briefly look at some countries:
--Bahrain,
Jordan, and Saudi Arabia: Islamists have been defeated by force.
--Egypt:
Islamists have a huge popular base. Yet some of their support came from a
reaction against the Mubarak regime and the messy status of its opponents. Egypt
does, however, have an institution—the military—able to contain the Islamists.
--Gaza
Strip: Hamas won an election by a small margin then staged a coup. It
benefitted greatly from the corruption and incompetence of its rival Fatah and
the Palestinian Authority. I don’t think Gazans love Hamas but its armed power
ensures that it will remain in power.
--Iraq:
The country has lots of problems but an Islamist takeover isn’t one of them,
though Islamists do seem to have huge power in the south.
--Syria:
If the opposition wins the civil war, which seems increasingly likely, the
Muslim Brotherhood has a good chance of gaining power. But the outcome is far
from certain. Only 60 percent of the population—though almost all those backing
the opposition—is Sunni Arab.
--Tunisia:
The Islamists won the election but sixty percent voted for non-Islamist liberal
parties. If moderates had only united they would have won. The coalition
partners could restrain the Islamists.
--Turkey:
Islamists win because they are patient, cautious, and camouflage themselves.
Their opponents were in chaos and lacked leadership; the Islamists seized
control of the nationalist card and were able to deliver (or just benefitted
from) a good economy. Although they are trying to get such control over the
institutions so as to stay in power forever, they could be voted out.
So,
yes, not everything is going the Islamists’ way in a tidal wave. Still, they
are setting the agenda and in every country where they have failed to seize
state power they now constitute the main opposition grouping.
Back
to Libya. Ibish accurately rejects the claim of some Western observers that
Jibril’s alliance is itself essentially Islamist. I’d suggest Jibril’s approach
is a traditionalism popular in Libya, a country sick of former dictator Muammar
Qadhafi’s crazy experiments. The traditionalist factor—pious, socially
conservative but not radical Islamist—should not be counted out anywhere. After
all, it’s the main reason why the monarchies—including Morocco and Jordan as
well as the Gulf Arab states—are surviving.
There
are, then, a number of important lessons here:
--Islam
and revolutionary political Islamism are not identical. Islamists have a real
advantage over liberal reformers in recruiting Muslims but Muslims often choose
not to be Islamists. They can give their loyalty to a tribe, state, ethnic
group, the idea of a moderate democratic alternative, or a traditionalism that
mistrusts Islamism.
--Islamists
are not fated to win everywhere. Each country is different.
--The
weakness of reformers--including political incompetence, factionalism, and lack
of funding—is as big a factor as the revolutionary Islamists’ strength.
--The
next era in the Middle East will be dominated by the debate over whether
Islamism is the way to go. Islamists will radicalize the regional scene, carry
out terrorism at home and abroad, and inflict repression on their own people
wherever they get power. But remember that even at the height of Arab
nationalism—in the 1950s and 1960s—that movement inevitably produced Arab
Muslim enemies, people who didn’t want to knuckle under to President Gamal
Abdel Nasser’s Egypt or the Ba’th Party that ruled in Iraq and Syria.
Finally,
it is precisely because a battle is going on—a battle for control over Islam; a
battle for control over each country—Western policy is important. That is
precisely why Western policy should help liberal reformers, traditionalists, or
pragmatic militaries, depending on specific circumstances, and not Islamists.
If
Islamists were winning everywhere and no one could stop them, Western policy
wouldn’t matter and the Obama Administration could claim that it is on the side
of history—anti-American history, but still history. But because Ibish is
basically correct, that policy is not only disastrous but also tragic.
Barry Rubin
is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and
editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His
book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University
Press. Other recent books include The
Israel-Arab Reader (seventh
edition), The Long War for
Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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