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Political Islam: Legitimate interests
Omayma Abdel-Latif assesses the implications of the new wave of political Islam sweeping the region
Hours after the stunning victory of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, in the Palestinian elections and the Western media machine was preparing to launch an avalanche of warnings. Some of the commentary bordered on paranoia as writer after writer questioned whether or not Hamas's ascendancy heralded the dawn of a new age of Islamist politics in the Middle East and what this might mean for the West's interests in the region.
The concerns voiced were hardly new: they reflect a dilemma Western policy-makers have found themselves in for some time now as they struggle to come to terms with Muslim democrats whose presence and integration into the much hyped process of democratisation can no longer be ignored.
Hamas's landslide victory is the latest in a series of electoral successes scored by Islamist groups across the Arab world. In Lebanon three members of Hizbullah, a resistance movement that, like Hamas, is considered a terrorist organisation by the West, now sit around the cabinet table. In Iraq the religious United Iraqi Alliance is the key partner in government following its strong performance in the 15 December parliamentary elections. In Egypt the officially outlawed Muslim Brotherhood holds 88 seats in the People's Assembly, making it the largest opposition bloc. In Kuwait, Yemen and Bahrain Islamist groups constitute the main opposition force. In Morocco the Justice and Development Party, modelled on the Turkish ruling party, holds 40 seats and is the main opposition bloc, while in Jordan the Muslim Brothers have 17 seats in parliament.
More
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/780/fr3.htm
The concerns voiced were hardly new: they reflect a dilemma Western policy-makers have found themselves in for some time now as they struggle to come to terms with Muslim democrats whose presence and integration into the much hyped process of democratisation can no longer be ignored.
Hamas's landslide victory is the latest in a series of electoral successes scored by Islamist groups across the Arab world. In Lebanon three members of Hizbullah, a resistance movement that, like Hamas, is considered a terrorist organisation by the West, now sit around the cabinet table. In Iraq the religious United Iraqi Alliance is the key partner in government following its strong performance in the 15 December parliamentary elections. In Egypt the officially outlawed Muslim Brotherhood holds 88 seats in the People's Assembly, making it the largest opposition bloc. In Kuwait, Yemen and Bahrain Islamist groups constitute the main opposition force. In Morocco the Justice and Development Party, modelled on the Turkish ruling party, holds 40 seats and is the main opposition bloc, while in Jordan the Muslim Brothers have 17 seats in parliament.
More
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/780/fr3.htm
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There has been a sudden burst of activity in American political research centres. The American Enterprise Institute recently sponsored a conference on democracy in the Arab world to which were invited representatives of liberal trends in the region in order to discuss what role they could play in political transformations occurring in their countries and how they could best ensure Western support of their efforts. Its title exhorted Arab dissidents to "speak up!" Soon afterwards, the Washington Institute for Middle Eastern Studies hosted a workshop on the future of Arab liberalism in light of the electoral successes of Islamist forces in 2005, in the parliamentary elections in Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, and elsewhere. Other institutes working for the spread of democracy, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, also held similar forums, attended by White House and State Department officials. A grim foreboding at the growing influence of fundamentalist forces and the simultaneous fragility of liberal forces dominated discussions.
Concern for Arab liberals, at both the official and non- official levels in the US, is nothing new. However, this concern has taken on a desperate edge, as though all this activity were a last ditch attempt to support a political alternative that ballot boxes in the Arab world have proved too fragile to sustain. Numerous factors contribute to this misreading of current political trends in the Arab world. For one, Arab liberals and their Western counterparts speak the same language; they use the same terms and concepts and essentially share the same secularist outlook on such issues as democratic transformation, human rights, the empowerment of women and minority rights.
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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/780/op2.htm