The
fear of Islamist militancy
still governs West's attitude to
Egypt's September 7th election
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments to JonatPower@aol.com
September 1, 2005
LONDON - In Washington and other
Western capitals there is a view gaining ground that a
popularly elected government in the Middle East is better
than a shaky autocratic client. Maybe there is some
element of truth in this. Yet there is still a marked
reservation about going the extra mile and accepting that
a free and open poll might bring Islamist parties to
power. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said
a few measured things about the need for next week's
Egyptian presidential election not to be a forgone
conclusion but the U.S. is hardly keeping the pressure
on, presumably fearing an opening will be exploited by
the Muslim Brotherhood with its "secret
agenda".
We have still not come far enough
from the 1990 elections in Algeria when France, the
former colonial master, and the U.S., ignored the fact
that the Islamists had clearly won a majority and turned
a blind eye when the army overturned the result, sparking
a bloody civil war.
Yet the truth is Islamist parties
in many countries have faced enough persecution,
prosecution, imprisonment, torture and repression to form
an instinctive empathy for the calls and cause of
democracy and human rights. Human rights, if the West is
clever, should be the wedge that keeps their door open if
and when they come to power.
The platform of Egypt's Muslim
Brotherhood calls for parliamentary rule, separation of
powers and the protection of minorities. In the Lebanon
the militant Hizbullah has adopted progressive stands on
both social and religious issues. Both it and Hamas in
Palestine are participating vigorously in electoral
politics. In Morocco, Islamists are four square behind
the government's efforts to expand women's
rights.
As Reza Aslan wrote in a recent
issue of Prospect magazine, "It is pluralism that defines
democracy not secularism. And Islam has had a long and
historic commitment to religious pluralism." No other
monotheistic religion can match the reverence with which
the Koran speaks of other religious
traditions.
With terrorist bombs in July
causing mayhem once again in Egypt I will told I'm
naïve. Yet there is no evidence that these latest
terrorist acts are linked to Gamma'a Islamiya, the
organization founded and inspired by the theologian Sayed
Qutb, the intellectual godfather of Al Qaeda. Just three
years ago Gamma'a's jailed leaders confessed in a
four-volume treatise that they had been wrong to attack
both fellow Muslims and tourists and said that their
members had been forbidden to join Al Qaeda. Apart from
some isolated terrorist cells this is the predominant
view today of all Egyptian Islamists.
Of course, there is no doubting
that all over the Islamic world some "born again Muslims"
have been seduced by the call of violence. But the
predominant trends in Islamic societies remain
non-violent, even more so following the havoc wrecked by
Al Qaeda and despite rising anti-Americanism brought on
principally by the invasion of Iraq.
The important trends to watch in
contemporary Islamist theology are towards what
Westerners call "human rights". Islamist intellectuals
like Rashid Ghanoushi, the Tunisian leader, and
Abdal-Wahhab el-Affendi, the Sudanese writer, are now
arguing that restoring Sharia law "from above" by
political action is a "recipe for tyranny and violence".
Many Islamic scholars are now
relooking at the influential writings of the Iranian
scholar, Jamal al-Din al-Afgani, who lived from 1838 to
1897.He preached a message of reform that has been dubbed
the "protestant Islam". He argued that just as Islam had
been open to absorbing Greek philosophy in the Middle
Ages so it should be open to European ideas today. His
protégé, Mohammed Abduh, started the
Salafiya movement, identifying with the salafi (elders)
of the early Muslim community. He preached the
compatibility of revelation and reason and condemned the
blind following of tradition. He had a great influence in
Cairo as mufti (chief religious leader) of al-Azhar
University (whose mufti today is still one of Islam's
most outspoken liberals and influential preachers). He
criticised polygamy, argued for the improved status of
women. His associate, Qasim Amin, went further,
denouncing veiling, social seclusion and the male's
unfettered right to divorce.
Fundamentalism, as Edward Mortimer
wrote in his magisterial "Faith and Power", should be
properly seen as "an effort to define the fundamentals of
one's religion and a refusal to budge from them once
defined. Surely anybody with serious religious beliefs of
any sort must be a fundamentalist in this sense." The
West will not progress in its effort to replace
autocratic regimes with democratic ones until it sheds
its knee jerk antipathy to Islamic fundamentalism. The
likes of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt with their
rigged elections will continue to feel secure until the
West full square faces up to this.
Copyright © 2005 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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