Political Islam and Dictatorships

The alarmists warn us about religio-political movements and tell us that the hordes are about to run over and ruin our glass palaces. If it isn’t the secularism that is in profound danger from headscarves, then it is fundamentalism that will use democracy to “take over”, or a militant movement will ”take over” the state and bombardments/crackdowns are therefore declared the sole focus of the State instead of trivial things like clean water, healthcare or education. The discourse around politics involving a Muslim country or a political movement clothed in religious colors is framed in a very Manichean manner (“Islamism” vs. Secularism, fanaticism vs. modernity etc.) or in terms of a threat scenario which amounts to something like the “Green Menace” vs. all things good. Such fear-mongering  is used, in many cases to justify dictatorships & imperialism.

  

Military and Political development in Egypt, Algeria and Turkey: (April 10, 2008)

“Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Steven A. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations for a discussion of the impact of the military on democratization in Turkey, Algeria, and Egypt. He analyzes the structure of power in these countries, the role of Islamic parties in furthering democratization, and raises important questions about U.S. policy in the region through comparison with the policies of the European Union.”

 

Related:  Political Islam and the West, Political Islam and Democracy

 

Turkey’s “Green Menace”:

“State of Belief” by Reza Aslan http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1647252,00.html 

 

“My friend Ana (not her real name) is a wise and worldly middle-aged Turkish American who divides her time between Manhattan and Istanbul, where she works as a handler and translator for American journalists. She is a liberal, feminist, free-market Muslim, a defender of ethnic and religious pluralism and a proponent of Turkey’s entry into the European Union. So I assumed she’d be thrilled by the resounding July 22 electoral victory of Turkey’s pro-Western, pro-business, pluralist and moderate Muslim party, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, or AKP).But when I phoned her after the AKP’s landslide triumph, she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Just you wait. All this democracy rhetoric is for show. Any day now these guys will pull off their masks, and you’ll see the truth. They are all ayatullahs underneath.”

 

Such dire admonitions about the AKP are quite common among a certain segment of Turkish society, particularly among those who continue to cling to the secularist vision of the country’s founder, Kemal Ataturk. It is, however, a bit surprising coming from someone so comfortable with American politics. After all, I reminded Ana, she has spent half her life in the U.S., one of the most religious democracies in the world.

“But that’s different,” she shot back. “The AKP, they’re … Islamists!”

There is that word: Islamist. It is a word that, lately, gets tossed around almost as frequently as terrorist and is equally inflammatory and imprecise.

Islamism is a political philosophy, developed primarily in postcolonial Egypt, that seeks to establish an Islamic state built upon a distinctly Islamic moral framework. Yet because there is little consensus on what an Islamic state looks like or how exactly to define “Islamic morals,” Islamism has become a wastebasket term that, like terrorism, conveys as much about the social and political views of the person using it as it does about the person being described.

Among members of Turkey’s traditional élite and their friends in the West, Turkey’s election was presented as an existential battle between Islamism and secularism for the future of democracy in Turkey. According to this narrative, the “secularists” (led mainly by the last remnants of Turkey’s Kemalist élite and the supremely powerful Turkish military) were the defenders of democracy, despite a history of espousing a disturbingly racist conception of Turkish nationalism, forcefully suppressing ethnic and cultural diversity, regularly denying rights to minority religions and, on four separate occasions, toppling democratically elected governments.

Meanwhile, the “Islamists” of the AKP — who have brought Turkey back from the edge of fiscal collapse, pushed for membership in the E.U., improved ties with Israel and the U.S., granted the Kurdish minority greater freedoms, promoted a more honest and robust debate about Turkish nationalism and been the primary force behind five years of unprecedented economic growth — were demonized as a threat to democracy.

The truth is that the debate in Turkey is not about the role of religion in a democracy. That is certainly a debate worth having, not just in Turkey but also in the U.S. This debate is about Islam and the unwavering belief among even the most enlightened intellectuals that, regardless of past performance or precedents, Islam and democracy are simply not compatible. That Muslims are somehow intrinsically theocratic. That a party favoring “Islamic values” cannot also favor democratic ones. That there could never be an Islamic counterpart to the countless Christian Democratic parties flourishing throughout Europe. That, all things being equal, there really is no difference between the Taliban and the AKP. That Islam is … well, different.

The problem with this view is not just that it overlooks the many successful Islamically influenced democratic movements in Indonesia, Malaysia, Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, Iran and Bangladesh. Nor is it that this view ignores the fact that a third of all Muslims live in democracies.

The problem is that such a narrow view of Islam makes the hope for political reform in the Middle East a more distant prospect. Like it or not, it is inconceivable that democratic reform could take place in countries like Egypt, Jordan or Algeria without the participation of so-called Islamist parties — or at least those willing to participate.

And so whether or not one agrees with all its policies, the AKP is a paragon of what a moderate Islamist party can achieve given the right political atmosphere and a fair chance to govern. For that, we should all be grateful. It was not Islamism but democracy that triumphed in Turkey’s elections. “

**********

Also See Word of the Day: Islamist by Manan Ahmed a.k.a Sepoy http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/optical_character_recognition/word_of_the_day_islamist.html

“Islamist, hence, can mean someone who studies Islam, someone who is an “orthodox” believer [whatever that means], someone who is using Islam as a political tool for mobilization, someone who wants to bring back the Golden Age of Islam, someone who endorses resistance against govts. and civilians, someone who is engaged in subversive or terrorist acts against the US/West, someone somewhere anyone anywhere who is a MUSLIM – a practitioner of Islam.

You see my frustration? Is Bush ever refered to as having a “Christian bent”? And I abhor the implications in “bent”. Is Will Bennet a Christianist? Or how about Billy Graham? Or James Dobson? Can you tell me with a straight face that the faith of a billion people – with all of its complexities, rigidities, varieties of expression and belief – can all be described unapologetically and bluntly by one word? And that word a condemning one at that? Because the taint is not on the believer. The taint is on the faith. No matter what you say or do, your avowal taints you with that disease which may be dormant, mild or in full onset but it is always there. And that is exactly the point made by the Pipes and the Malkins.

To be precise, NYT also qualifies Islamist with “militant” or “radical” in certain cases but the curse remains. Should the NYT and CSM use the same word to describe Jafaari as they do for al-Zarqawi? Is there no difference between the two? Is there a problem here? Am I being overly sensitive? Have we lost the word “Islam” forever?”

***********

Related: “Clash” Euphemisms I: Political Islam and the West, Political Islam and Democracy