Road Map for Moderate Network Building in the Muslim World (long read)
RAND Corp. ^ | Angel Rabasa, Cheryl Benard, Lowell H. Schwartz, Peter Sickle
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1818382/posts
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Should Islamists Be Engaged?
Within the academic and policy communities in the United States and Europe there is a major debate surrounding the question of whether or not Islamists should be engaged as partners. Before outlining the two sides of the argument, we first need to define the term “Islamists.” One definition is that they are simply Muslims with political agendas.16
This definition is too broad to be useful, since it encompasses anyone involved in politics in the Muslim world. A narrower, more useful defi.- nition identifies Islamists as those who reject the separation of religious authority from the power of the state. Islamists seek to establish some version of an Islamic state, or at least the recognition of shari’a as the basis of law.17
The argument in favor of engaging Islamists has three attributes: first, that Islamists represent the only real mass-based alternative to authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world (and especially in the Arab world); second, that Islamist groups such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood have evolved to support pluralistic democracy, women’s rights, etc.;18 and third, that Islamists are more likely to be successful in dissuading potential terrorists from committing violence than are mainstream clerics.19
According to Amr Hamzawy, in countries like Egypt there has been a convergence of left-leaning liberals and moderate Islamists on the rules of democracy, good governance, and anti-corruption.
Hamzawy states that since the 1990s, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt have revisited their conception of politics and society. Their evolution includes a retreat from the goal of an Islamic state and a shift from conservative to less-conservative perceptions of society: for instance, a more modern view of women’s rights.
Hamzawy concedes that less-progressive zones do still exist within the Muslim Brotherhood. Moderate Islamists are not liberals. They harbor conservative views. Nevertheless, he believes that there is a window of opportunity for the United States to reach out to moderate Islamists, and that by engaging them the United States will be able to in.uence them.20
The U.S.-funded, Washington-based CSID subscribes to this approach. CSID aims to bring together scholars and activists to promote democracy in the Muslim world. The center’s partners are secularists and moderate Islamists who believe in democracy and reject violence; the center engages these groups in discussions on conceptions of democracy, ways to implement it in their countries, areas of agreement and disagreement, and whether they can work together on the issues on which they agree.21
Some European governments are willing to recognize and promote Islamists, although in some cases this seems to stem more from an inability to distinguish Islamists from liberal Muslims than from a conscious policy. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the Muslim Council of Great Britain (the main government-recognized Muslim organization), is led by Islamists. In Spain, leaders of the Unión de Comunidades Islámicas de España [Union of Islamic Communities of Spain] (UCIDE)—one of the two federations that compose the government- recognized Islamic Commission of Spain—have close ties with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
In France, radicals took control of a new government-sponsored organization, the French Council for the Muslim Religion, following elections held in April 2003 in radicalcontrolled mosques.
Like the argument for engaging Islamists, the argument against engaging them has three parts.
First, we do not know whether the Islamists’ pro-democracy rhetoric and relatively more moderate discourse represent a strategic or a tactical shift. Have they ceased to be true Islamists, in the sense that they have accepted the separation of religion and the state?
Or are they simply lowering the profile of one goal (the establishment of an Islamic state) and emphasizing a more appealing and less controversial agenda? Without a fundamental and demonstrable change in their outlook, what guarantees are there that if Islamists came to power they would not revert to a more radical agenda? Iran provides a cautionary example.
The second argument is that even if Islamists might be more effective in the short term in dissuading potential jihadists from committing acts of terrorism (a questionable proposition to begin with), offcial recognition and support would enhance their credibility and enable them to proselytize more e.ectively in the community. Over the long term, the social costs of the spread of the Sala. movement to the masses would be very high.
Third, even if one concedes that in many parts of the Muslim world moderate and liberal groups are organizationally weak and have been as yet unable to develop substantial constituencies, for the West to bypass these groups in favor of Islamist interlocutors would simply perpetuate these weaknesses. One presumption of this study is that the primary weakness of these groups is organizational and that linking them together in robust networks would amplify their message, broaden their appeal, and enable them to compete more e.ectively with Islamist groups in the political marketplace.
This is not to say that the United States and its partners should not enter into a dialogue with moderate Islamists; such a dialogue could be constructive in clarifying the positions of both sides. However, capac- ity-building programs and resources are better directed at moderate and liberal Muslim organizations.22