ISLAMISTS TRIUMPH IN TUNISIA
Jacob Laksin
FrontPage, October 25, 2011
The “Arab Spring,” the regional upheaval that swept Tunisia, Egypt and Libya over the past year, was supposed to mark the beginning of a new, more democratic Arab world. But if this week’s election results from Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, are any guide, the transition from entrenched autocracy to pluralistic democracy is by no means assured.
The first free election in Tunisia’s history brought to power an Islamist party, Nahda, that may yet jeopardize the country’s newly gained freedoms. Banned under President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator who brutally suppressed Islamist movements during his 23-year rule, Nahda won a new lease on life following Ali’s ouster last January. Now it has won an election. Early voting returns suggested that Nahda could have garnered as much as 50 percent of the vote, and the party was running first in every single voting district. Not entirely unforeseen, the success of Tunisia’s largest and best-organized Islamist party nevertheless raises worrying questions about whether a country that for years had been one of the most modern and secular in the Arab world will remain that way when Islamists have access to power.
There is ample reason for worry. Nahda’s founder, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, has repeatedly sought to put a friendly face on the party’s agenda, insisting that it would respect Tunisia’s secular tradition, including the rights of women to education and employment and the right to reject Islamic garb like headscarves. But that did not prevent Ghannouchi from trying to stir up voter support in the run-up to the election by appealing to more religiously conservative elements in the electorate. At one election rally, he instructed the audience that “God wants you to vote for the party that will protect your faith.” That party, of course, was Nahda.
In addition to a tendency to go off script, critics note that the party, a descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood, has a documented record of radicalism and violence that belies its moderate message. Exiled members of Nahda in France, for instance, have joined the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, a group that sympathizes with the Muslim Brotherhood; some of Nahda’s rank-and-file would like to see it adopt the Brotherhood as a model. As Ghannouchi himself has acknowledged, moreover, the party counts among its base fundamentalist Salafists who hope to overturn Tunisia’s secular traditions. Ghannouchi has insisted that this is a small minority within the party, but a radical party seeking mainstream respectability might be expected to say exactly that.
Fears that Nahda is talking a double game on moderation were amplified in a troubling outbreak of violence last week. On Friday, hundreds of Islamists rallied in protest against the television screening of “Persepolis,” an animated film about an Iranian girl living during the Iranian Revolution. Because the film showed God as a cartoon, protestors denounced it as an offense to Islam. Chanting, “Your god has been insulted, come out and defend him!” a petrol-bomb armed mob tried to burn down the house of the television station’s owner, who was forced to flee with his wife and children. Given its presumed moderation, Nahda might have been expected unequivocally to condemn the attacks. But despite expressing its opposition to the violence, Nahda appeared to side with the protestors, as it insisted that the film itself was a provocation.… As a demonstration of Nahda’s commitment to pluralism and non-violence, it was unconvincing at best.
The questions surrounding Nahda underscore the political uncertainty to which the Arab Spring has given way. Despite hopeful early pronouncements that the ouster of Arab autocrats would mean a better future for the countries they ruled, little supporting evidence has emerged. In Egypt, it is the Muslim Brotherhood that has seemed to be the most bolstered by Hosni Mubarak’s ouster. In Libya, there are indications that Islamist rebels, having taken their vengeance on Moammar Qaddafi, will become the country’s new power brokers. With its election this week, Tunisia too has joined the club of countries where Islamism is a political force on the rise.…
Tunisians are right to worry that the rights they hold dear could be rolled back by an Islamist government. For years, the country distinguished itself as one of the most tolerant in the Arab world. Just a few years ago, visitors to the capital of Tunis could see female police officers patrol the streets, and dine in restaurants where Israeli tourists were warmly welcomed. It would be a great tragedy for this North African nation if its first-ever democratic election led to a break with that tolerant tradition, and an Arab Spring intended to sow the seeds of freedom instead gave way to an Islamist winter that crushed it.
WELCOME TO THE ISLAMIST MIDDLE EAST
AND IT’S NOT GOING TO BE MODERATE
Barry Rubin
Pajamas Media, October 25, 2011
Ladies and gentlemen, liberals and conservatives, Obama-lovers and Obama-haters, no matter what your race, creed, gender, national origin, or level of unpaid college loans, two things should be clear to all of you:
First, to describe the Obama administration’s Middle East policy as a disaster—I cannot think of a bigger, deadlier mess created by any U.S. foreign policy in the last century—is an understatement. Second, the dominant analysis used by the media, academia, and the talking heads on television has proven dangerously wrong. This includes the ideas that revolutionary Islamism doesn’t exist, cannot be talked about, is not a threat, and that extreme radicals are really moderates.
I won’t review all the evidence here, but it amounts to a retreat for moderates, allies of the West, and American interests coupled with an advance for revolutionary Islamists.
On the morning of July 23, 1952, the Middle East entered a new era. The Free Officers Movement took over Egypt and there followed more than a half-century of war, anti-Western hysteria, terrorism, repression, social stagnation, and the basic Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse type stuff in the Middle East. That was the Era of Arab Nationalism.
On February 11, or October 23, or November 28, 2011, the Middle East entered a new era. Whether you date it to the fall of Mubarak, the Tunisian election, or the [upcoming] Egyptian election, what do you think is going to happen in the next half-century in the region? This is now—I call it officially—the Era of Revolutionary Islamism.
There is a great deal that will ensure the Islamists aren’t triumphant in the end, but there’s nothing that can stop them now from being dominant ideologically in the region and politically in the majority of countries between Tunisia and Iran, probably Afghanistan, and possibly Pakistan.
As early as the 1980s these trends were visible but the outcome was not inevitable. There were four key elements in this victory for the Islamists.
First, the long, failed reign of Arab nationalist regimes went on in a downward spiral of increasingly less effective demagoguery, losing wars, and poor economic development performance as a demographic explosion took place. Yet as late as 2000 the prospects for the Islamists looked poor. Almost a quarter-century after Iran’s revolution, they had not taken over in any other country except remote Afghanistan.
Then, second, the September 11 attacks revitalized the movement. Osama bin Laden lies moldering in the sea, but his movement goes marching on. But while bin Laden lacked strategic flexibility, other Islamists were more effective.
And so, third, from Turkey came the idea of what might be called “stealth Islamism”: just pretend to be moderate and the suckers will buy it. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood guru, also contributed here: bin Laden is a fool, he said in effect, of course we should run in elections. We’ll win.
Reinforcing this, and fourth, came the idea of adapting Western rhetoric and public relations methods. After decades of bragging about how they would conquer and murder all their enemies, nothing changed in Arabic. In English, however, they spoke about being pitiable victims of imperialism, Zionism, Western racism, and so on. A key pioneer here was Edward Said, a man who hated the Islamists. They proved to be his best students.
And finally, there were disastrous Western policies and misconceptions, with the presidency of Barack Obama being the crowning catastrophe. For whatever reason, the Obama administration has empowered America’s enemies and the new oppressors of the local people. Appeasement is one thing; giving those who hate you most a boost into power goes far beyond that.
To summarize, I will merely say: Egypt, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. Six countries or entities [that] have come—or are likely to come—under Islamist rule. Each is different, but in all but the case of Turkey (where the administration ignored State Department reporting and has continually honored and excused an Islamist regime) and the Gaza Strip (where the administration helped entrench Hamas’s rule by forcing Israel to slash sanctions) they happened almost completely on Obama’s watch. Turkey and the Gaza Strip have become far worse on Obama’s watch.
The seventh, Syria, might merely remain under a repressive, pro-Iran, anti-American regime. And while there is a chance for a moderate democratic revolution, the White House is supporting the Islamists. If the State Department hadn’t revolted and the Saudis acted decisively, Bahrain would probably have been added to the above list.
There is no way to conceal this situation in October 2011, although it has been largely hidden, lied about, and misunderstood until this moment. Even now, the nonsense continues. The article you are reading at this moment probably could not have been published in a single mass media newspaper. Libya’s new regime calls for Sharia to be “the main” source of law. That is what the Muslim Brotherhood has been seeking in Egypt for decades. Yet we are being told that this isn’t really so bad after all.
The title of the Washington Post’s editorial, “Tunisia again points the way for Arab democracy,” can be considered merely ironic. It certainly points the way—toward Islamist dictatorship. And then there are the New York Times and BBC headlines on the Tunisian elections telling us it is a victory for “moderate Islamists.”
They aren’t moderate. They’re just pretending to be. And you who fall for it aren’t Middle East experts, competent policymakers, or serious journalists. You’re just pretending to be.
I’m putting those headlines in my file alongside Moderate Islamists Take Power in Iran; Moderate Islamists Take Power in the Gaza Strip, Moderate Islamists Take Power in Lebanon; and Moderate Islamists Take Power in Turkey.
Without taking any position on climate issues, let me put it this way: Why are people frantic about the possibility that the earth’s temperature might rise slightly in 50 years but see no problem in hundreds of millions of people and vast amounts of wealth and resources becoming totally controlled by people who think like those who carried out the September 11 attacks?
And that brings us to the Tunisian elections. In the words of the song “New York, New York,” if the Islamists in Tunisia can be “top of the list, king of the hill” in Tunisia, they can say, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”
Next stop, Egypt.
FROM ARAB SPRING TO ISLAMIST WINTER
Editorial
The Washington Times, October 25, 2011
When the Arab Spring uprisings broke out earlier this year, many foreign-policy experts were alarmed that the revolts took the White House by surprise and concerned by the Obama administration’s lackadaisical response. Washington adopted a hands-off policy toward the sweeping political changes, arguing that the people of the region should be free to chart their own destiny. “There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity,” President Obama said in May. In his typically weak manner, he also cautioned that, “we must proceed with a sense of humility.”
Consequently, the humble U.S. administration abrogated any strong leadership role in guiding the change that was under way. Muslim extremists realized they were being presented with an opportunity to assume power and began that process. Obama administration cheerleaders watched unconcerned from the sidelines, maintaining either that radical takeovers would not happen, would not matter or would be a positive outcome. The idea that Islamists would not come to power is quickly being disposed of.
In Tunisia, the once-banned Ennahda or Renaissance Party, which promotes Shariah-based rule, won the plurality of the vote in Sunday’s elections to the new Constituent Assembly. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which earlier had said it would stay out of electoral politics, is favored to dominate the parliamentary and presidential races scheduled for the coming months. In Libya, National Transitional Council leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil repaid NATO’s support for his revolution by declaring, “Any law that violates Shariah is null and void legally,” reintroducing polygamy and banning interest payments in banks. The State Department lamely wrote this off to “Islamic-based democracies wrestl[ing] with the issue of establishing rule of law within an appropriate cultural context.” The proper U.S. response would have been to strongly denounce these moves and threaten to withhold all of the approximately $30 billion in frozen Libyan government assets in the United States.
The rise of the Islamists constitutes a major step backward for modernization and progress. Arab women are seeing their rights reduced, reversed or destroyed. Middle-class businessmen will find it more difficult to interact with the global economy. Religious minorities, primarily Christians, are being subjected to increasing violence and intimidation. When Foggy Bottom simply natters about “cultural contexts,” the signal to the extremists is “full steam ahead.”
There is no strategic upside in any of this change for the United States. The new post-authoritarian Islamist governments will have no particular affinity for America or its values. Regional partners, particularly Saudi Arabia, are alarmed that the Obama administration was so willing to throw longtime allies like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak under the bus. The Israelis are watching as more than 30 years of carefully constructed and rigorously maintained stability are being washed away. Meanwhile, those governments Washington would like to see fall, in Syria and Iran, are persisting. The Arab Spring is rapidly turning into an Islamist Winter.
DEMOCRACY IN TUNISIA
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, October 25, 2011
In his 1991 book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that Tunisia was a prime candidate for democracy.… The country’s impressive economic growth, educated middle class, high rate of female literacy, strong sense of a unified national identity, non-politicized military, and relatively active civil culture of labor unions and Bar association seemed to position the Maghreb country particularly well for a democratic system of government.
Huntington’s assessment now seems to have been vindicated.
Starting December of last year, Tunisia became the first Arab country to rebel against and then overthrow its autocratic leadership, without any significant outside intervention. In the process, Tunisia’s masses set in motion the Arab Spring. Grassroots uprisings that took the world by surprise swept through Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.
On Sunday, Tunisia became the very first of the Arab Spring nations to hold a free, democratic election. Yet, while voting was remarkably well organized and turnout was exceedingly high, the victory of the Islamist Ennahda, or “Renaissance” party, which garnered a plurality of about 40 percent, according to preliminary vote tallies, is a worrying sign.
If Islamists have succeeded in Tunisia, a country widely considered to be the most secularized and democracy-inclined Arab country, the prospects for Egypt and Libya, both preparing for their own elections, are far from promising.…
Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s head, said in an interview with Al Jazeera after returning to Tunisia from exile that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party was closest to Ennahda’s in its outlook. Though he was attempting to point to Ennahda’s relatively moderate political approach, Ghannushi’s analogy was hardly comforting.
Turkey regularly represses the press and intimidates secular military and business figures at home, while forming an anti-Western axis in the region with the likes of Iran and Egypt’s up-and-coming Islamists.
Ghannouchi is also rabidly anti-Israel. Following the end of the Gaza War in January 2009, for instance, Ghannouchi praised Allah who “routed the Zionist Jews,” and labeled the Israeli withdrawal/disengagement from Gaza in 2005 as “the first step in the complete victory of all of Palestine and the holy places of the Muslims.”
Living under former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s autocratic regime was undoubtedly unpleasant for most Tunisians. The man was regularly reelected, sometimes getting more than 90 percent of the vote—a sure sign that human beings’ natural propensity for dissent had been either bypassed by ballot fraud or repressed by intimidation. Security forces regularly patrolled Internet cafes and other supposed hotbeds of sedition. The reason cited for the state’s intrusive policing was the need to counter Islamic extremists.…
Ben Ali’s regime was not all bad, however. When the ancient synagogue on Djerba Island was truck-bombed by al-Qaida in April 2002, for instance, the government rushed to express solidarity and to rebuild.
It has been two decades since Huntington accurately assessed Tunisia’s potential for developing a democratic regime. His prediction has come true. It would be a tragedy and a sober lesson about the dangers of democracy if the very democratic process envisioned for Tunisia by Huntington ended up bringing to power an Islamist political party that will use its democratic mandate to roll back the positive reforms implemented under Ben Ali’s autocratic regime.
