Islamism and democracy

Graham Fuller, formerly of the CIA and the RAND Corporation (RAND tends to lean conservative on security issues) has recently published a relatively hopeful brief analysis of the prospects for Islamists accepting democracy:  Islamists in the Arab World: The Dance Around Democracy, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sept 2004 (*.pdf file).

But while he sees hopeful signs of a pragmatic turn among many Islamists groups in the Arab countries, he also makes clear that the public reaction to current US policies is increasing supports for Islamists of various sorts:

The Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 transformed U.S. policy under the Bush administration, placing the war on terrorism at the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.  This goal of eliminating terrorism worldwide has focused almost exclusively on the Muslim world where the majority of radical terrorist movements now exist.  The war against the Taliban, the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the spread of U.S. military presence across the Muslim world, the new embrace of authoritarian Muslim regimes as allies in the war on terrorism, the ongoing deterioration of the situation in Palestine, and America’s close identification with the Likud Party’s hard-line policy toward the occupied territories — all have led to a massive growth of anti-American feeling in the Arab world at nearly all levels of society.  This sentiment is reflected and deepened by independent satellite television channels and is now beginning to affect the views of an entire generation of young Arabs.

At the same time,Arab regimes are under greater pressure — from the United States on the one hand and their own people on the other — more than ever before, at a time when the gap between the rulers and ruled has never been so wide.  Nearly all regimes are viewed with contempt by publics that see them as led by supine dictators, who depend on harsh security services to stay in power, who are powerless to change realities in the Arab world, who cling to tight relations with Washington at any cost to preserve their power and thus are even more subservient to U.S. interests than more democratic allies of the United States such as Turkey or various Western European countries.  There is almost no regime in the region whose fall would not elicit widespread public enthusiasm —with possible exceptions in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and maybe Morocco.  This places Islamists at the forefront of the opposition and in command of much popular support.  The public may also show some cynicism on occasion about the opportunism of Islamists as well, but Islamists are the current masters of anti-imperial and anti-regime rhetoric.

And even though he is notably more optimistic than many of the Bush Doctrine True Believers about the Islamacists and their willingness to accept democratic processes for selecting governments, his nevertheless concludes:

In the face of these immense international pressures and "civilizational " confrontations,, conditions for continuing moderate evolution of Islamist movements are at their worst.  Anti-imperial, as well as anti-regime, instincts now motivate the public at large and generate more radicalized attitudes.  A process of polarization is under way in which anti-Western and anti-American violence is now perceived, if not as acceptable, at least as "understandable " in defense of the Islamic homeland and its culture.  Radicalism on both the secular and religious levels is merging.  Regrettably, it is unrealistic to think that at this juncture in Arab history we will find greater tolerance and openness toward the West or greater interest in Western political institutions or moderation.  In the struggle against local regimes, radical ideologies are likely to shout down more moderate and liberal interpretations of Islam and Islamic  politics in particular.

The prognosis for political Islam under these conditions — indeed for almost any form of moderate politics — is not good.Moderate voices, Islamist or non-Islamist, dare not speak up in the mood of rising radicalism.  Indeed, we might speculate that at least two things must occur before we can hope to see any longer-term trend of moderation within Arab Islamist politics.  Only after existing regimes fall, or throw open the political process, will there be a chance for genuinely open and democratic orders to emerge.  But this in itself is not enough, for the mood of the new, more populist regimes will initially be anti-American.  The external sources of radicalization must also be curtailed.  This means an end to the radical right-wing policies of the Likud in Israel and a just settlement of the Palestinian problem, a departure of American troops from the region, and an end to the more intimidating and broad-brush anti-Muslim discrimination that has unfortunately come to mark the new global alert against Muslim terrorism.