“We believe that you can’t reach democracy by elections. We believe in a long process. It should start by education.”—Israel’s Vice Prime Minister, Moshe Yaalon, commenting on the emergence in the Middle East, as a result of the so-called “Arab Spring,” of Islamic fundamentalists through democratic mechanisms. (Associated Press, December 12.)
THE DANGERS OF DEMOCRACY
Bruce Thornton
FrontPage, November 30, 2011
The parliamentary elections in Egypt…will impress only the most starry-eyed of democracy champions. These are the people who think that the “Arab Spring” is all about people demanding lives of democracy, dignity, economic opportunity, and involvement in the modern world. What we’ve seen so far instead is the growing success of Islamist parties demanding a greater role for Islam and shari’a law in running their countries.
Our failure of imagination has reduced events in the Middle East to our own historical paradigms and ideals, [thereby] compromise[ing] our foreign policy in that region, and endanger[ing] our national interests. For example, since we prize freedom, human rights, separation of church and state, and tolerance…we think everybody else values or defines those ideas the same way we do. But what we call freedom, many Muslims see as a soul-destroying license and destructive self-indulgence. As the Ayatollah Khomeini preached in 1979, such Western-style freedom is a “freedom that will corrupt our youth, freedom that will pave the way to the oppressor, freedom that will drag our nation to the bottom.” Decades earlier, Muslim Brothers theorist Sayyid Qutb…likewise had scorned Western “individual freedom, devoid of human sympathy and responsibility for relatives.” Similarly, al Qaeda theorist Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote, “The freedom we want is not…the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriage.” For the faithful, true freedom is the freedom to live as an observant Muslim in harmony with Allah’s precepts, something far different from what we in the West mean by political freedom.…
This failure to imagine the world-view of those unlike us is worsened by our failure to understand that “democracy” is more than just the mechanics of voting. As G.K. Chesterton said, “We shall have real Democracy, when…the ordinary man will decide not only how he will vote, but what he is going to vote about.” The evidence of elections in the Middle East so far––in Egypt, Algeria, Gaza, Lebanon, and Tunisia, which have all seen Islamist parties triumph––suggests that most ordinary Muslims want democracy not to institutionalize Western goods and ideals such as personal freedom, individual rights, or tolerance for minorities, but to integrate more thoroughly Islam and shari’a into government.… Nor are these demands for more religion in government coming just from a well-organized, unified minority. In a Pew poll from 2010, 85% of Egyptians said Islam’s influence on politics is positive, 95% said that it is good that Islam plays a large role in politics…82% favored stoning adulterers, 77% favored whippings and cutting off the hands of thieves and robbers, and 84% favored death for those leaving Islam.
Nor will we see in Egypt the sort of religious tolerance sanctioned by the Western separation of church and state. So far this year, 80 Christian Copts have been murdered…and their churches attacked and destroyed. The intolerance that breeds such violence finds its sanction in traditional Islam, at least according to Sheik Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Cairo’s prestigious Al Azhar University. Gomaa quotes the Koran’s injunction to “Fight…the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] until they pay the Jizya [tribute] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.…” It is hard to see how a liberal democracy as we understand it can flourish in such an environment of intolerance.…
Despite all this evidence for the powerful role of religion in Muslim identity, we continue to understand the Muslim Middle East…in terms of our own categories and ideals. Thus we have tried to explain Middle Eastern political and social dysfunctions of the last 80 years in terms of nationalism, fascism, communism, economic failure, and now illiberal dictators.… But all these Western-imported ideologies and explanations do not find traction with most Muslims, who see their problems as resulting from a crisis in Islam that has allowed peoples who once trembled at Allah’s armies to dominate the world.
As [historian Bernard] Lewis points out, since Islam’s retreat in the 17th century in the face of European penetration of Muslim lands, “the most characteristic, significant, and original political and intellectual responses to that penetration have been Islamic. They have been concerned with the problems of the faith and the community overwhelmed by infidels.” This observation was confirmed recently by the Muslim Brothers Supreme Guide Muhammad al-Badi’: “The Muslim nation has the means [to bring about] improvement and change.… It knows the way, the methods, and the road signs.…” Al-Badi’ further explains that this “change” will be brought about not by democracy, but by jihad: all Muslim regimes “crucially need to understand that the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.” Democratic elections thus are a means to an end, not the end itself. As Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan puts it, “Democracy is like a train. We shall get out when we arrive at the station we want.”
Starting with Iran, for over 30 years we have misunderstood the Middle East because we have refused to acknowledge the role of Islam as the central dynamic of most Muslim hearts and minds. Now we are indulging the magical powers attributed to “democracy” and “freedom” to continue avoiding that truth.…
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD SPRING
Mshari al-Zaydi
Al Arbiya News, November 6, 2011
Shock is acceptable if one is surprised by something completely unexpected. This is something that does not apply in any way, shape, or form to some Arab and non-Arab writers, media figures, and political analysts, who are today expressing their shock and disappointment with regards to the course that the so-called Arab Spring has taken.
Today, those who supported the Egyptian revolution are in a state of denial with regards to the domination of the political arena by religious parties and currents. This is something that has expanded beyond the Egyptian scene. Indeed what we are seeing is a political Islamist tsunami [which is consuming] the “civil” youth. In Libya, we find [religious] fundamentalists of all backgrounds, from those who have taken up arms, to those who are making speeches and giving sermons, inside the country and abroad.… In Tunisia, the [Islamist] al-Nahda party, and supporters of its leader Rashid Ghannouchi, are in the political ascendency. As for Yemen, we have the Islah party, not to mention the Muslim Brotherhood and the Huthi rebels.
I recall how many Arab writers at the beginning of this year—the year of the Arab Spring—prophesied that we were witnessing uprisings staged by non-political civilians and youth, and claimed that not a single radical or ideological slogan was chanted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, or any other Arab public square. They said that this proves that the Arab regimes were lying to the world…when they said that should their regimes be toppled, this would result in Islamists and religious fundamentalists coming to power. Those who supported the Arab Spring always countered that this was nothing more than a lie fabricated by these regimes to remain in power, and that the Arab Spring youth had proved their mettle and their belief in civil values.
Now, these same well-intentioned writers…have returned to warn against the Arab Spring being hijacked and despoiled. They have expressed their confusion about the presence and popularity of these radical Islamists who are overwhelming the political scene, and are asking: where did the Facebook youth go?
These writes are perplexed. Some have claimed: this situation [hegemony of the Islamists] is the work of the remnants of the former regime that have reformed their ranks and are working to abort the revolution. Others have claimed that there are foreign hands tampering with the revolution and attempting to alter its course, however, they then go on to disagree as to just which foreign party is responsible for this. Is it Iran or Israel? The US or Saudi Arabia? Perhaps it is China, or maybe even the Comoro Islands? Who knows? It’s all just a shot in the dark!… Of course those same writers and media figures were not voicing such opinions at the beginning of the year. In fact, they were attacking anybody who expressed any suspicion or scepticism regarding the outcome of these chaotic uprisings.
The realists amongst those who are now “shocked” by the outcome of these uprisings and revolutions, are now saying: fine, let the Islamists try their luck…they will fail and we will be spared their evil in the future! In my view, this last argument is misleading because it is based on a faulty assumption that Islamists in the Arab World have never been in power, and that this is their first opportunity to do so. However the facts show that Islamists have ruled Sudan and Iran.…
Rather than expressing shock and surprise, the question that should be asked is: how should we deal with this critical period which should be called the Muslim Brotherhood Spring, not the Arab Spring?
(Mshari al-Zayd, a Saudi journalist and expert on Islamic movements
and Islamic fundamentalism, is Asharq al-Awsat’s opinion page Editor.)
ISLAMISM: 21ST CENTURY COMMUNISM
Barry Rubin
Jerusalem Post, December 11, 2011
Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world’s in birth!—opening words of “The Internationale”…The First International (International Workingmen’s Association) was founded in 1864; the Second, known as the International Socialist Congress, in 1889; the Third International, of Communist Parties, in 1919; and the Fourth Internationale, of Trotskyist Parties, in 1938.
Now, though nobody will use this terminology, it’s time for the Fifth Internationale—that of the Muslim Brotherhoods. For although the precise relationships among various Brotherhood groups have always been shadowy, and despite the fact that there is no centralized organization of Brotherhood groups, there is a lot of coordination, including financial aid, among them.
Today, as always, the Egyptian branch is the largest and most powerful. Founded in 1928, having collaborated with Nazi Germany, then carried out terrorism in the 1940s and early 1950s, the Brotherhood was suppressed by Egypt’s radical nationalist regime.… Now it has emerged as the strongest political force in Egypt, seemingly headed toward state power for the first time.
It is not alone. The Jordanian branch has run with some success in elections but the monarchy has always used gerrymandering and vote counting to ensure the group couldn’t win. The Syrian branch was repressed in a bloody crackdown in 1982 but continued underground for years. Now, the group has reemerged as a significant power in opposition to the Assad regime. Indeed, the US government and its Turkish allies constructed and now recognized an exiled opposition leadership that is dominated by the Brotherhood. The Palestinian branch, called Hamas, rules the Gaza Strip. The Tunisian branch is forming a government and the Brotherhood is emerging in Libya, where it might be able to take power some day. Smaller groupings exist in other Arabic-speaking countries.
Of special significance, the Brotherhood has spread to Europe and North America. There, thanks to both naïve government policies and not-too-bright media coverage, the group dominates Muslim communities.
Is the Muslim Brotherhood moderate? Think of the Brotherhood as having the same relationship to Islamism as the Communist Party has to Marxism. In other words, the Brotherhood is the political realization of Islamist theology, which potentially makes Egypt the Red Crescent equivalent of the Hammer and Sickle. Oh yeah, it also makes 2011 into the equivalent of 1917. Or, in the words of the man who I think is just about the best political analyst in the Arab world, Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid: “The Islamist party leaders hastened to embellish their image for the Western countries.… Of course, these speeches are public relations acts, and could only be believed by someone ignorant about the region or by the logic of the religious parties.…”
Now the movement is emerging in the form of a transnational alliance between governments and powerful opposition movements in various countries..… Think about this: By the end of 2012 the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East—in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Turkey, about a quarter-billion people in all—will be governed by radical Islamist regimes that believe in waging jihad on Israel and America, wiping Israel off the map, suppressing Christians, reducing the status of women to even lower than it is now, and in their right as the true interpreters of God’s will to govern as dictators. That doesn’t mean they are doing all of these things right now, but they intend to do so when they fully consolidate power.
ARAB SPRING BLESSING IN DISGUISE FOR HAMAS
Sami Moubayed
Gulf News, November 22, 2011
On November 11, entire neighbourhoods in the Palestinian camps of Damascus were decorated with photos of Yasser Arafat, marking the 7th anniversary of the Palestinian leader’s death.… Paying homage to Arafat, it must be remembered, is uncommon in Syria, given a historic feud between him and the Baathists in Damascus. If anything, that small symbolic gesture spoke plenty about how much Hamas influence in Syria has dropped, and how furious the Syrians are with the Palestinian group that was once considered a strategic ally and main ‘Syrian card’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The writing for heartbreak, after a long honeymoon, has been on the wall since mid-March when, days into the Syrian uprising, Hamas and Hezbollah were reminded of how far Syria had gone to support them since the 1990s. Hamas was explicitly reminded of Syria’s unwavering support during the Gaza war of 2008. Now was ‘payback time,’ the Syrians seemed to be saying, asking both parties to come out with strong statements of support for the Syrian regime. Taking its cue from Iran, Hezbollah responded affirmatively via Hassan Nasrallah. It echoed Syrian officialdom, saying that a conspiracy was indeed being hatched against Damascus because of its commitment to the resistance in “Palestine,” Iraq and Lebanon.
Hamas, however, was more reserved, refusing to shower the Syrian government with praise, claiming that as a non-Syrian party, it needed to remain neutral and not take sides with the Syrian government against the Syrian street.…
Many expected Hamas to panic when the Arab Spring came to Syria. Some went as far as to speculate that Hamas fighters would fight alongside Syrian troops if confrontations broke out in different Syrian cities. What happened was actually the exact opposite; Hamas saw the Arab Spring as a blessing in disguise. Although allied to Damascus for years, Hamas was clearly more committed to political Islam. First came the toppling of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February, which Hamas celebrated vigorously, due to their loud criticism of the man because of his relations with Israel. Hamas leaders hailed Mubarak’s ouster as an achievement for the mother party, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt was transformed, almost overnight, from a country that persecutes Hamas into one that welcomes them with open arms.… Then came victory of the Al Nahda Party in Tunis, an Islamic party that was also inspired by the Brotherhood.… Despite their alliance with the Syrian government, seeing the Islamists come to power in Damascus would be a dream come true for Hamas.
Hamas has an agenda today that is rather different from that of the Syrians. The Syrian regime’s number one priority is survival, whereas Hamas’ objective now is to win the upcoming [Palestinian] parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled for May 2012. Additionally, they are waiting to see whether the Syrian regime will survive, and preparing for a Plan B in case it doesn’t. Qatar has opened its arms wide for Hamas, and so have Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood making Cairo a natural and welcoming environment for Hamas leader Khalid Mesha’al. It was the Egyptians after all who brokered the recent Hamas-Fatah rapprochement and it is the Qataris who are now trying to turn a new page in Hamas-Jordanian relations. Both deals, it must be noted, were done without help or advice from the Syrians.…
The Syrians might be furious with Hamas, feeling that the Palestinian group has been ungrateful. Meanwhile, the Qataris, the Turks and the Egyptians are all scrambling to win Mesha’al’s favour, realising that once the Arab Spring waters settle, it is quite clear that the Islamic street in different Arab cities will need to be listened to and respected.
(Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward magazine in Syria.)
MUSLIM ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE ARAB SPRING
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield Blog, November 29, 2011
Western columnists eager to bestow their blessing on the democratic impulses of the Arab Spring are troubled by its darker side, the bigotry, the sexual violence and religious fanaticism. Rather than admit that they may have gotten the Arab Spring wrong, they look at its dark side as an external factor, rather than an internal one.
Case in point, Jeffrey Goldberg’s recitation of “Anti-Semitism in the Arab Spring” leads to the same baffled attempts to understand. “On the surface this makes no sense: Arabs are rising up against Arabs, so what does this have to do with the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’?” he asks.
The question isn’t all that baffling if you look back at the historical context of the Protocols which emerged from the poison pens of two secret police agents…seeking ways to stifle reform by associating their opponents with a vast Jewish conspiracy. It took place in a century where the left and the right spent a good deal of time accusing each other of working for the Jews. That century gave way to the next one where they stopped writing essays and began running death camps.
The Muslim world is still…besotted with the worst lunacy of the period, the Masonic conspiracy is an article of faith for most Islamists, Mein Kampf is a bestseller and Fascism and Communism are admired in a way that horrifies the Eurocrats who visit from time to time. Grand conspiracy theories explain everything and everyone is assumed to have a complex secret agenda.
But those aren’t the sources of the Anti-Semitism in the Arab Spring. Nor is Israel. The fundamental error that is made over and over again is to assume that Muslim attitudes toward the Jews emerge out of politics rather than theology. While Israel certainly looms large in the Muslim imagination, the image of the Jews as the nemesis of Islam is of ancient theological provenance dating back to Mohammed’s efforts to ethnically cleanse the region of non-Muslim minorities.
When Arab Spring mobs paint the Star of David on pictures of dictators or call them Jews, they are using an old insult. To call someone a “Jew” in the Arab world is the equivalent of calling him a dog. There is no special racial slur needed, “Jew” is already enough. The reason for this isn’t Israel or Gaza or Lebanon—it’s that Jews were a minority in the Muslim world. While the Islamists and the Arab Nationalists, along with their Western useful idiots, insist on spreading their revisionist history of a golden age of tolerance that ended abruptly in 1948, the truth is that being a minority in the Arab Muslim world was dangerous and degrading. And long after the Muslim world has been emptied of Jews, “Yahood” still remains an insult.
When Thomas Friedman heard that a nickname for many American soldiers in Iraq was “The Jews”, in his usual clueless fashion he wrote up an extended column about Sharon, Israel and the peace process. But Friedman missed the point. Arab Muslims have been calling people they don’t like “Jews” long before the modern State of Israel.…
The prototype for the accusations that the dictators are Jewish was Kemal Ataturk. His supposed Jewishness remains a special obsession for Turkish Islamists, albeit one that is still illegal for them to articulate. That obsession also spells out the difference between the United States and the Muslim world. If it were to be discovered that George Washington had a Jewish father, it wouldn’t delegitimize the United States. But Muslim states are still based on ethnic or religious grounds. And the best way to undermine Ataturk’s attempt to drag Turkey into the modern age is to not merely claim that Ataturk wasn’t a Turk and an enemy of Islam (both true)—but that he was a Jew.
If accusing Ataturk of being Jewish doesn’t seem that crazy, try the Saudi royal family whom the Lebanese Minister of the Environment accused of secretly being the Jewish tribe that had been ethnically cleansed by Mohammed. From the standpoint of Islamic theology this makes perfect sense. It recycles the ancient Jewish enemy into a current foe. Hate the Wahhabis? Then just go ahead and claim that Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s grandfather wasn’t really Suleyman but Shullman.
What about Mubarak? He must have had a Jewish mother. Gaddafi’s mother being a Jew is now a common belief in Libya. Those wonderful democratic Syrian protesters are shouting, “Alawi Jews” referring to the Alawi quasi-Shiite minority sect that rules the country. Even Ahmadinejad got hammered with accusations that he was a Jew. No matter how rabidly Anti-Semitic a Muslim leader may be, he cannot escape the possibility that sooner or later someone will accuse him of being a secret Jew. If the Saudis and Ahmadinejad aren’t safe, then no one is.
Goldberg and Friedman both mistake a preexisting situation for a new phenomenon. Conspiracy theories to explain everything have been widespread for a long time, not just as a tool of dictators. Blaming outsiders for whatever goes wrong and then connecting those outsiders to a political faction you hate is as common as sand. But the larger mistake is that they fail to grasp what the Arab Spring is. It’s a series of populist movements based around theocratic and nationalistic ideology. Such movements naturally position ethnic and religious minorities as outsiders and enemies. Which is why churches in Egypt began burning and friendly mobs showed up outside a synagogue in Tunis to recount what happened back when Mohammed began his campaign against the Jews.…
From the time of Mohammed onward, the Jews have played the role of the “outside force” that is out to undermine Arab and Muslim unity. When Arab leaders tell Western diplomats that Israel is the source of regional instability, that is what they mean. In Islamic terms they are charging the Jews with “Fitna” and Western diplomats and journalists strip away the theology from the accusation and pretend that it’s a serious policy statement.…
There is no reason to be surprised by Anti-Semitism in the Arab Spring. The Muslim Middle East has failed to break with the poisonous religious and ethnic politics of the past. The Arab Spring is a continuation of those same toxic politics under the banner of democracy. The fragility of Arab and Muslim identity, its insecurity and instability, the unworkability of its structure, always requires enemies to serve as a focus and shoulder the blame. And in every season, spring, summer, winter or fall, that group has been the Jews.
