Posted on 11/16/2004 5:20:24 AM PST by SJackson
Allowing fundamentalist parties to participate in free elections would be catastrophic
Should Islamist parties be included in the reform programs the West wants the Arab world to pursue? Some European intellectuals seem to think so. Their argument is both principled and practical.
On a principled level, they argue that you cannot demand the Arab world adopt democratic practices, such as free and fair elections, but that political parties representing sizable components of society be excluded on account of their worldview.
Democracy is about process, not outcome, and imposing a specific outcome is hardly democratic. One must practice what one preaches, and to the Arab world, to pursue democracy starting from undemocratic practices makes the entire argument for reform both weak and suspect.
On a practical level, their argument is that not all Islamist parties are bin-Laden-like. True, the example of Turkey's Islamist party, currently in power in Ankara, seems to back the theory that inclusion works. But Turkey has a long tradition of democracy and secularism the Islamists have to confront, not to mention Turkey's army and its role as guardian of Kemalism.
These impediments do not exist in the Arab world, where sectarianism, weak national identities, fragile civil societies and a long legacy of dictatorship make Turkey's experience the exception rather than the rule.
Besides, rarely in the Arab world have these political organizations been put to the test of power. Many of them, whether in Egypt or Jordan, accept the rules of the game.
And in Algeria, their victory was stolen by a military coup that precipitated civil war: Their democratic credentials were not tested. Had they been tested they would have had to moderate their radical ideology to come to terms with the realities of power.
Give them a stake by allowing them to participate, the argument is, and they will become moderate Islamists who embrace democracy, much like Europe's Christian Democrats.
Though Europeans do not practice what they preach, they ask the Arab world to take risks they would not contemplate themselves today, or which they regret having taken in the past. Many European democracies have legislative provisions barring neo-Nazi and neo-fascist parties from participating in elections, or even being established. Yet this is hardly considered undemocratic. Similarly, many European countries regulate speech - effectively limiting it - by forbidding hate speech, Holocaust denial and other forms of verbal extremism.
These limits not only do not undermine European democracies, they are crucial to Europe's democratic experience against the background of its troubled past.
After all, the arguments made presently about Islamists in the Arab world were voiced in the 1920s and 1930s about fascist parties across Europe. In Italy and Germany, Mussolini and Hitler won elections - only to proceed, against the na ve expectations of those who had advocated inclusion, to abolish both elections and democracy and consolidate their dictatorships.
Where is the evidence that Islamist parties from Morocco to the Gulf would behave differently?
Europe bans extremism because its past teaches that one cannot trust wolves to become lambs if they win an election. Why, then, ask the Arab world to do what the Europeans themselves would not do?
JUST AS with Nazism and fascism, the Islamists' intentions are well-known. Their political programs and worldview are no mystery to anyone.
Their hatred for Jews and Christians is explicitly written in their programmatic platforms and does not exactly reflect a predisposition to respect minorities and religious pluralism.
There are differences and nuances, true. But while not every Islamist movement is as extreme as the Taliban, their Algerian counterparts - if one judges by their behavior during Algeria's recent civil war - are not an encouraging example.
European liberals of course have an Islamic problem of their own, as the Madrid bombings, the headscarf controversy in France, and now the Netherlands' anti-Muslim wave of violence after the ritual murder of Theo van Gogh attest.
The threat of Islamic radicalism and its attendant anti-Muslim backlash looms large in the European mind. Islamic radicals are not practicing democracy in Europe; they are exploiting it. Why would they behave differently in a future Arab democracy?
Still, argue the same Europeans, once in power the Islamists would prove themselves politically inept in the long term. Their imposition of an Islamic order unsustainable, they would have to leave power forever, discredited.
But if one looks at Iran as a precedent, it might take decades for this to happen. And with all their failures, Iran's mullahs are still in power.
Therefore, the Islamists' access to power in the Arab world would not only spell the end of all democratic hopes for a long time to come. It would inflame the Arab world and destroy any chance - slim as it may be - of reviving Arab-Israeli peace talks.
Why should European liberals, so obsessed with the Palestinian-Israeli dispute and so concerned about civil rights, gay rights, women rights and human rights, choose not to believe what the Islamists claim to stand for? Why should Islamists not be taken at face value and held accountable for what they say?
If one truly wants to differentiate between a public rhetoric that will surely subside once Islamists reach power (or more likely seize it) and a private pragmatism their leaders reflect in off-the-record conversations, why should one trust them for speaking in two voices? For if that is what they do, isn't that lying? Why should one leave democracy at the mercy of liars?
The writer is Leone Ginzburg Research Fellow in Israel Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and a columnist for Italy's daily Il Foglio.
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That's hard to do. How do you split the yolk from an egg and it still be an egg?
Those who fail to learn the lessons of History are doomed to repeat it...
Insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time
The only thing that can be done is to either take their money away...gas and oil production revenue
Or keep their numbers so low they cannot make any significant impact on any cultures they have parasitic relationships with...
IMO
...Unless we surrender, that is.
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