Why We Don't Understand Political Islam

April 25, 2007

Why We Don't Understand Political Islam
Posted by Shadi Hamid

There's a new foreign policy blog up that's worth bookmarking, the cleverly-named Democratic Piece. One of the contributors is a friend of mine, Andrew Mandelbaum, who also happens to be one of the few people who actually knows something about Moroccan politics. Now, you might ask yourself, what's so interesting about Morocco? Well, two things: first, Morocco is often hailed as being a model for Arab reform (it's not), and second, the leading Islamist party in the country, the Party of Justice and Development (PJD), looks poised to win the upcoming parliamentary elections, which would make that the fourth free election Islamists have won in the Middle East since 9/11 (Turkey, Iraq, Palestine).

In any case, Andrew has a great post up about a recent New York Times article by Craig Smith. It's a pretty bad article and serves as a good example of why Americans still don't understand political Islam, and why reading the Times won't necessarily help. Let's take this sentence for instance:

Every country on the continent’s northern rim, from Egypt to Morocco, has outlawed extreme Islamist parties that would be likely to win large parliamentary blocs — if not majorities — were they allowed to participate in free and fair national elections.

Sounds okay, right? You've probably heard it before. Pretty standard. Well, actually, it's extremely misleading and Andrew explains point-by-point how one seemingly innocuous sentence can totally obscure the reality of Middle East politics:

Lets take Egypt and Morocco. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is clearly the organization he is referring to here, but the MB is not a “party”, nor is it “extreme”. It is a social movement and it is nonviolent and has been for decades. Indeed, one can be “extreme” without being violent, but is Smith implying that since “extreme Islamist parties… would be likely to win large parliamentary blocs… were they allowed to participate…” that the North Africans who – in these non-existent “free and fair national elections” – would vote for these winning “parties” are all “[extremists]”? Your argument is on shaky ground when you are suggesting that large swaths of people are extreme; perhaps there is something missing from this analysis.

Al ‘Adl Wal Ihsan, the “party” to which Smith implicitly refers in Morocco, has never run any candidates. To be sure, it does have some pretty unusual views. Al ‘Adl is rooted in the Sufi tradition of Islam and Sheikh Yassine, its leader, has ‘foreboding’ visions on occasion that insinuate that he will become the ruler of Morocco. At any rate, Al ‘Adl is not your typical “extremist” organization and characterizing it this way, along with your other revivalist Islamic organizations, is misleading. Al ‘Adl has always been nonviolent and professes to believe in democracy. Whether this is actually the case, it refuses to participate in the Moroccan political system because it sees the Moroccan elections as a façade that legitimizes the regime – can’t exactly disagree with ‘em on that one. I don’t have a good grasp of Sufism, but you can see why Smith’s statement is misleading.

In fact, this statement is “extreme”-ly misleading and I can’t get over it. I get the sense that the author thinks it’s ok to outlaw “extreme” Islamist parties when they are going to win elections (for the record, Al ‘Adl is not outlawed because it’s going to win elections - it wouldn’t run if it could.). If this characterization of Smith’s perspective is accurate, the question becomes: when is it acceptable to outlaw organizations that are nonviolent simply because they have some socially conservative views? Both the Egyptian and Moroccan regimes resort to violence, arbitrary arrests, and other human rights abuses at will; but the Islamists are “extreme”. How many decades do you have to be nonviolent before you are no longer “extreme”? When I think of “extreme” I think of bin Laden, not the Muslim Brotherhood. If I’m not alone on this, then I think I’m justified in saying that this article perpetuates the myth that all Islamists are extremists.

April 25, 2007 at 04:38 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451c04d69e200d8349392a969e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Why We Don't Understand Political Islam:

The comments to this entry are closed.

Disclaimer

The opinions voiced on Democracy Arsenal are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of any other organization or institution with which any author may be affiliated.
Read Terms of Use

April 25, 2007