How to engage political Islam (I)

But how should one engage the actors of political Islam or the "Islamists" as they are called in the West? There are three perceptions regarding political Islam and the Islamists: they are a threat to democracy, a threat to the West and they are violent.

The first assumption is that the Islamists are Trojan horses and will use democracy to establish a Shariah state, which would be tyrannical and undermine democracy. Keeping the Islamists out of the political process is seen as necessary to protect secular democracies. It is even assumed that one is justified to take anti-democratic measures to protect democracy from its enemies. What happened in Algeria in the 1990s and what has been happening in Egypt are two examples of democracy being undermined through efforts to protect it from political Islam. While there is no empirical evidence that the Islamists will replace a democracy with a theocracy when they come to power through democratic means, there is widespread suspicion about their real intentions.

The second assumption is that Islamic political parties are a threat to the West. They represent the "anti-West" and threaten Western interests in countries with a Muslim majority. The European and American interests are best served by governments that are friendly to the West. Here "friendly" means a number of things: submissive, cooperative, non-critical of Western policies, secular, oppressive of its own people, inept, etc. It is not clear how the Western interests are defined, but in a broad sense they include economic, political and military interests. This definition assumes a homogenous set of Western interests whereas in reality the policies and interests of different Western governments vary and even at times clash with one another. American and European interests, for instance, are not always the same in Palestine or in Lebanon. Furthermore, Western interests, however one may characterize them, are defined in terms of short-term gains and badly formulated alliances. Supporting oppressive regimes in the Muslim world may secure lucrative oil deals and blind submission to Western policies, but they cannot establish sound and sustainable relationships in the long run.

The third assumption is that Islamist groups are violent and that they use violent means to achieve their goals. Subtle distinctions that exist on the ground are usually ignored and the Islamist groups are presented more or less as al-Qaeda-like organizations. The circumstances in which legitimate sociopolitical movements turn to violence are also largely ignored. As Jurgensmeyer has shown in his "Terror in the Mind of God," justifying violence through religion is one among the many types of legitimating violence for religious, political, national, class or ideological purposes. Linking religion and violence is wrong not only in relation to Muslim societies, but to others as well. Talal Asad notes in his "Formations of the Secular" that religious justification is not always needed to perpetrate violence. In fact, religion is most often a secondary factor in the formulation and execution of violence. The Nazis did not need the Bible to kill the Jews. Hafez al-Assad did not need the Quran to kill more than 30,000 members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in Hama. Saddam Hussein did not need fatwas to gas thousands of Kurds in Halapja.

If we are to understand the political realities of Muslim societies and chart a new course in political reform, all three of these assumptions need to be challenged. The Gallup Poll of the Muslim World provides a huge database on the perceptions and attitudes of Muslim societies on democracy, the West and violence. "Who Speaks for Islam" by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed shows that the ideas of representative democracy, pluralism, dialogue, respect for the other and using the ballots rather than bullets have taken root in Muslim societies. This suggests that there is ground for gradual and peaceful transformation of the political landscape in countries with a Muslim majority. The Islamist political movements along with other nonreligious and liberal forces are part of this social and political landscape. As the society at large embraces the ideas of pluralism and openness, they too will be transformed into complex and pragmatic movements. These facts ought to be taken into consideration when dealing with the multifaceted realities of Islamic political actors.