Islamists and the Arab Spring

Anyone can notice the worrisome signs these days in many post-Arab Spring countries. Will pledges made by "moderate Islamists" to respect democracy, hold honest elections, protect human rights and treat religious and ethnic minorities as equals be honored or ignored, as in Iran? Even the influential "Erdogan model" in Turkey is showing authoritatrian tendencies--arresting journalists who criticize or expose ills, seizing generals and holding them without bail on what appears to be light and questionable evidence, targeting minorities by promoting hate-inspiring, nationalistic rallies, etc. Let's look at a few Arab Spring countries:

EGYPT: Egypt's Islamists, who will have a major say in Egypt's consititution, overwhelmingly believe that no woman should serve as head of state even if popularly elected. They remain silent while Egypt's generals promote the idea that demands for human rights and democracy are "foreign inspired, while NGO's are trashed and foreign employers arrested as "spies." You'd think the victims were promoting fascism or communism rather than human rights and democracy--supposedly Arab Spring goals. The real conflict of interest is with those behind such tactics.

By no coincidence, such tactics resemble exactly those used by the mullahs to sieze power in Iran after the Shah's ouster. Appealing to ultra-nationalism and xenophobia, the Bad Guys cloaked their intent. Theyt hang on now by the same means. As Samual Johnson said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

LIBYA: a mess dissoliving into Irag/Somalia/northwest Pakistan-style anarchy on which radical Islamists always feed.

SYRIA: The longer Assad insists on staying where he isn't wanted, the more likely Syria will end up like Libya if not worse. Al Queda and its experienced bomb makers may have their uses now, but they won't conveniently vanish when the regime goes down.

TUNISIA: Salafists (estimated at 3% of the population, are using plainclothes mobs to intimidate secular types. Will we soon see equivalents to the Abadan fire and Iran's acid-in-the-face tactics to eliminate undesired secular behavior?

People say the Arab Spring has been a "half-revolution." There are worse things. Like Iranians after 1979, Arabs could wind up under regimes infinitely worse than those they removed. The behavior and life expectancy of such regimes will be determined by the presence or absence of oil.

Islamists seized power in Iran and dragged our nation back to the dark ages, if we had not been ruled by Islamists we would be a very powerful country and much wealthier than Turkey, personally I think the USA loves Islamists governments in countries like Iran because they stall development - hence they can continue to bully the region and keep potentially very powerful countries like Egypt and Iran weak and relatively powerless. Will we see the same thing in these Arab nations? In Iran the Islamists took over by massacring the secularists and the leftists who overthrew the Shah with violence and lies lies lies, will we see the same in Arab nations?

Opting for rule by radical Islamists is as moronic as returning to another failed experiments like fascism and state communism. These choices squander years or decades of development and building up of national strength pursuing a destructive ideology while giving up what might have been. If moderate Islamists double cross the people and renege on promises, Arab clerics will be as discredited as Iran's mullahs. It would be tragic for the Arab peoople if they must go to go though the same hard lessons as Iranians to fully grasp the dangers of religious excess and theocracy.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 1

Obfuscator

Original post by Ferdowsi

Personally, I feel that the growth of radical Islam in these countries has been somewhat overplayed by the media. In Egypt, half the seats in the house that is to be elected soon will go to women. As far as I'm aware, the Muslim Brotherhood have the most power, and they are moderates. I trust their intentions for democracy.

In both Egypt and Tunisia, there are fairly high levels of education and literacy, for both genders. This means that more people are more likely to actually understand the teachings of the Quran and realise that most of the teachings of the Islamists don't really follow true Islam, and so such groups will be rejected.

The main danger is violence between Christian and Muslim groups, especially in Egypt.

Libya the problem is significantly harder. The National Transitional Council face massive youth unemployment, and these are the youth who were involved in the revolution. Now they walk the streets with their guns, and still promote violence. I believe that much of the problems will be solved if people have jobs. There will still be some problems with radical Islam, but much smaller and easier to handle. Forming a stable Libya, though, will prove incredibly difficult.

Syria I think it is very hard to tell at the moment. If the only unifying message against Assad is the message of radical Islam, then there is perhaps a problem in the future. I think, though, the humanitarian crisis should be the top of the agenda, rather than worrying what happens next.

Reply 2

Brutal Honesty

EDIT: About Turkey, it's far less authoritarian under AKP than it has been before, trust me. Turkey has always had this insane law about 'insulting Turkishness' and Erdogan has himself been jailed for 6 months for a stupid infringement on free speech by quoting a poem. They've made efforts to change these laws but given Turkey's history/constitution it's quite difficult. Turkey has massively improved minority rights and even though it's non-constitutional they've introduced a 24hr state TV channel exclusively in Kurdish. They've also improved women's rights which has been ignored for some time in Turkey and 3/4 of Kurds in Turkey vote for the current ruling AKP much to the resentment of the Kurdish party. Free speech, civil liberties, minority/women's rights were very much violated under the hands of Turkey's military (especially with regards to Kurds) and AKP has done an extremely good job in rollling back the power of the military which has been the root of a lot of authoritarianism/oppression in Turkey.

WARNING EXTREMELY LONG POST:

This is a commonly raised point but I don't see the Iranian model being followed for various reasons. The first is that the Iranian model of mullahs being in complete control of the state is a completely revolutionary concept, never was that tried in Islamic history and proponents of classical Shari'a were hugely concerned at this development. The classical role of scholars in Islamic rule was to [1] provide legitimacy for the ruler; often a caliph or in the latter years a sultan, and to [2] limit the power of the ruler. This system actually worked very well, the Shari'a would act as the basis for law, scholars would criticise the rulers for violating the law or abusing/overstepping the bounds of their power and this would have the effect of delegitimising the ruler. You'll notice Saudi Arabia has a similar system to the traditional one but because the Saudi regime has had access to oil wealth, it doesn't need the legitimacy of the people or the scholars (who play a relatively narrow role in Saudi Arabia). It can simply sell the oil to buy arms/military and maintain its dominance, taxes aren't required to be collected and welfare can be used to placate the masses. Saudi has a very generous welfare system which wouldn't exist without the oil and if it didn't exist the regime would have already been overthrown. Similar things could possibly be said for Iran although this trend is noticeable worldwide that dictators can last a very long time if they have access to a lot of resources (this can also come in the form of aid as was the case in Soviet countries and Egypt under Mubarak).

Another thing to consider is that Ayatollahs don't exist in Sunni Islam. Sunni Islam is possibly the most anarchic, decentralised religion in the world. Small groups may emerge and a temporary hierarchy but this hierarchy usually breaks down pretty quickly. I can't think of a Sunni Muslim scholar or mullah who has any real assumed authority in Islam. Shi'a Islam I immediately think of Ayatollah Sistani who was massively influential in post-war Iraq and managed to keep the country from breaking up into a long and bloody civil/sectarian war which would have certainly resulted in the civilian government being compromised. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have royalty which have their origins in powerful tribes but a similar system doesn't exist in North Africa and to be honest, this sort of stuff is generally regarded as being against Islam so the last thing a ruling tribe would want is the rise of Shari'a in their state.

Currently there has been no Islamic figure who has been heralded as the saviour or who should return to rule the country as was the case during the Iranian revolution where the Ayatollah Khomenei and his anti-Shah cassette tapes played a big role. In fact, this revolution better reflects 1989 in Eastern Europe which have largely been successful in creating civilian led, democratic governments which have legitimacy.

Which groups in the MENA (Middle East/North Africa) region have legitimacy and by extension, can assume authority? In Egypt, obviously the Muslim Brotherhood which has been the longest running anti-dictatorship/pro-democracy movement in Egypt. They've also plugged the gap in providing much needed social welfare systems and infrastructure whereas the state has simply been hoarding public wealth. They are also an Islamist movement which sees Shari'a as being the root of justice, liberty, democracy, security and importantly the alleviation of poverty and elimination of corruption which are the biggest problems in the MENA region. One should remember that the MB's followers have been targeted, tortured and detained over the past few decades in Egypt but they haven't resorted to terrorism and continued providing social services to Egyptians. It should also be noted that the members of the the MB's FJP (Freedom and Justice Party) are quite rich businessmen who have been able to make money in the harsh economic climate of Egypt. This is how they've been able to afford their charitable programmes but it also indicates they will manage the economy successfully. The Salafis are a more conservative Islamist group who have also been key in Egyptian civic society providing charitable programmes such as schools and housing the poor/orphans. My concern is that they don't know how to run a country, they don't have the pragmatic approach of the MB and they are very socially conservative. They have stated they don't to impose a dress code which is a surprisingly liberal position for a group of Salafis but perhaps they're acknowledge they have limited authority and most of it remains with the MB (who are liberal capitalists). One advantage is that they have a good reputation for not being corrupt and this is extremely important in Egypt.

One thing people seem to overlook is why have secular parties been such a disaster in Egypt? In Morocco and Tunisia although liberal Islamist groups won the majority, they went into coalition with secular parties and in the case of Morocco, monarchist parties as well. In Egypt however, the Salafis did far better than people thought and the secular parties had a relatively poor showing. Saying that, the Egyptian Bloc and New Wafd, both secular parties did manage to get just over 18% of the vote combined. The reason I think they've done poorly overall is because Egypt, like many other countries in that region have been governed under a failed system of authoritarian, Arab nationalism (like Syria and Iraq under Saddam). The long term opposition to this system have been Islamist groups who have continuously highlighted the failure of Arab nationalism and military dictatorship a viewpoint which resonates with many people including minorities. Instead, they want a civilian led government which is restricted in its power by Shari'a thus ensuring the government doesn't violate the principles of Islam which most would agree that people like Assad, Mubarak and Hussein did. It would also ensure integrity of politcians, dignity for the poor, respect for civil liberties/privacy and human rights. Obviously this is a far cry to what most of us would think of as Shari'a. Importantly, it appears that scholars will play no role in the Arab Spring and have no real desire to play a role in government. I can't think of one scholar who's been even mentioned in the past year or so. It could be argued that the Salafis are are a party of scholars but it just seems they're very traditionalist.

One thing to take into account is that these revolutions are only seen as secular/liberal revolutions in the west. In Egypt for example, a lot of the young people were sympathetic to the MB and also the return of Shari'a but because they weren't dressed like Osama Bin Laden people in the west branded them as secular. The reason why the MB had to change its stance which was to avoid protesting was because they realised a lot of their members were already out in protest. In places like Syria and Libya were violence has been necessary Islamism has clearly been more obvious but there's nothing to suggest anything would have been different had things turned ugly in Egypt or Tunisia. In fact, in Iraq there was a lot of sectarian conflict post-Saddam, Islamist parties won majorities and the constitution is based on Shari'a as are the laws yet the government functions relatively well.

TL;DR: A civilan led, elected government in which liberal Islamist parties have a majority is the likely outcome of these revolutions but that's not necessarily a bad thing. What's important is that these governments have legitimacy, authority, accountability and a constitutional framework which they're bound by to prevent authoritarianism. It's not going to be an Iran/Saudi Arabia.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 3

Ferdowsi

Original post by Brutal Honesty

Thanks for your response.

Your posts are always really good, not sure why you have so much neg :biggrin:

Reply 4

Brutal Honesty

Original post by Ferdowsi

Thanks for your response.

Your posts are always really good, not sure why you have so much neg :biggrin:

Thanks, I edited to add the bit about Turkey in the beginning. I enjoy trolling sometimes :ninja:

I've been reading a fair about the history of Shari'a. You can check out Noah Feldman's lectures, he explains Shari'a quite well but in a purely technical, legal, institutional sense. He aided in writing the Iraqi Constitution and sees Shari'a as very similar to the US constitutional framework and the use of common law in Britain. Of course in terms of ideas, the US constitution is very good and pro-liberty but in practice one of the world's largest slave populations existed in America as well as genocide/ethnic cleansing etc. You could also argue a lot of the stuff taking place today in the US is non-constitutional (according to classical constitutionalists like Ron Paul).

A Shari'a won't necessarily mean the state itself will always abide by Islamic law but it will limit the authority of government to do things which are un-Islamic. The reason the Iranian regime has been allowed to do things which clearly violate ideas many would regard as Islamic (committing rape for example) is because they don't need to justify themselves to the populace or even the 'elected' government. I would regard Iran's system of religious rule as very similar to the old school European/Christian monarchy (something which would seem very unlikely to occur in Muslim societies given its lack of appetite for divine hierarchy).

I actually don't think it's necessary for Iran's 'mullahcy' to be overthrown but like Britain and other European countries, it could still exist in a very limited form. The Ayatollah may be able to make a religious declaration but it would be up to elected representatives to intepret and codify this into law and you could end up with a very liberal system of Shari'a. I'll give an example, the Ayatollah could say 'alcohol is fobridden in Islam'. The elected politcians could say something like 'well this means we can't promote alcohol and therefore the advertising of alcohol is banned, it is also banned to openly drink it in public'. In practice, this could mean they treat alcohol in the same way we treat cigarettes. People would still be able to sell it, but not advertise on their shop window that they sell alcohol. It would give the Ayatollah great ceremonial power and some state power but in practice I think this system has probably lost legitimacy in Iran. In Iraq it might work, the Ayatollah Sistani is actually a very nice man and well liked in iraq.

Islamists and the Arab Spring

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