The popular protests in the Middle East in 2011 have created a “seismic shift” in the region, which will reverberate for years to come. This shift covers governance, state-society relations, military-civilian jockeying for power, the use of oil revenues to pacify dissent, and the evolving phenomenon of “people power.” Following the demise of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and possibly Syria, Arab countries will have to respond to their citizens’ basic needs and to contend with newly elected leaders, mostly from Islamic parties.
Some countries will develop democratic governing institutions, which for the most part would be inclusive, tolerant, pluralistic, and respectful of human and civil rights, especially of women and religious and ethnic minorities. Other countries will remain ruled by a variety of autocratic regimes, both benevolent and repressive. Still, other countries will be struggling to keep from becoming failed states. Regional and outside actors—Turkey, Iran, the European Union, China, India, and the US—will remain important players for the next couple of decades.
As Arab Islamic parties enter the electoral political process in post-autocratic governments, and as they become central players in national legislatures, the US Government will have to develop new strategies of engaging them as legitimate policy actors in their societies. Washington already has established working relations with Islamic parties across the non-Arab Muslim world, including in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey but has yet to devise a coherent strategy to engage Arab Islamic parties, especially since the advent of the “Arab Spring” more than a year ago.
Islamic parties that have been part of government in Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Turkey and elsewhere, have not been a threat to their countries’ national security and stability. On the contrary, they have been credible and legitimate defenders of good government and the rule of law, and strong proponents of tolerance, and pluralism. Engaging these parties, including in the Arab world, can only lead to political stability. If these parties are unable to deliver on jobs, education, economic prosperity and transparency in government, they won’t be able to garner pluralities in national elections. In addition to their economic agenda, these parties will have to be committed to tolerance, inclusion, and respect for minority and women rights, and religious diversity and pluralism.
Islamic parties’ pragmatic behavior in national legislatures should be the litmus test as to whether Western governments should engage them during transition to democracy. Their legislative performance, not ideological platforms or interpretations of the sacred text, should be the metric by which to judge their credibility as mainstream political actors. If they fail to create entrepreneurial and job creation opportunities, Arab electorates, especially the youth, will turn away from them.
To remain viable political players, they will have to accept the results of future elections. In Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, and Turkey, Islamic parties have already passed the “one man, one vote, one time” test. The next round of free elections in post-autocratic Arab countries will show whether mainstream Arab Islamic parties have also passed that test.
The key challenge in the next decade will be whether mainstream Islamic parties—including Freedom and Justice in Egypt, al-Nahda in Tunisia, al-Islah in Yemen, Islamic Action Front in Jordan, Justice and Development in Morocco, al-Da’wa in Iraq, and al-Wefaq in Bahrain—are able to thwart the spread of Salafi and other radical ideologies in post-autocratic societies, especially among the poor and the illiterate. Furthermore, they also will have to fight the specter of religious, ethnic, and tribal sectarianism, which continues to trouble post-authoritarian governments.
If Hamas in Palestine and Hizballah in Lebanon renounce terrorism convincingly and demonstrate their willingness to participate in the political process peacefully, they too could become key players in helping their societies move forward. In the long-run, it would be naïve to expect that engaging Palestinian and Lebanese societies could be done effectively without engaging Hamas and Hizballah.
As post-authoritarian Arab governments move forward, several key analytic questions come to mind: Is the shift of mainstream Islamic political parties to participate in the political process tactical or strategic? How will they respond to attempts by remaining authoritarian regimes to push sectarian politics in order to undermine the agenda of inclusion and pluralism? How will these parties view and cooperate with the US-led fight against global and regional terrorist organizations and franchise groups? In light of recent comments from the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt about the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, how committed are these parties to a peaceful resolution of regional conflicts and to dialogue with the United States and other Western countries and civil society institutions in order to bring stability and economic opportunity to their societies?
Emile Nakhleh is a former Senior Intelligence Office and author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.
In his article “Arab Islam and Transitioning to Post-Autocracy,” Emile Nakhleh makes the case for integration with Arab Islamic parties as a matter of adapting to new realities. Whether the protests during the last year have created the “seismic shift” Nakhleh refers to remains to be seen, but he correctly, in my mind, identifies the challenges that these parties face as they ascend to power; such as the challenge from the more radical forces of the Salafists, as well as the day-to-day grind of facing popular demands of work, education, and health services. Nahkleh also says that these parties should be judged by their legislative and parliamentary work, not their interpretation of holy texts. In other words; reality will force a realistic and pragmatic course of action from the Islamists.
It is true that other examples that Nahkleh cites, such as Malaysia and Turkey, show that Islamic parties can run governments and create political stability. He skips over, however, some important differences when comparing the governments of these states with the Arab Islamists now poised to take power in several countries around the Arab Middle East.
There are two opposing lines of argument concerning this key issue. The first line argues that inclusion into a competitive political arena will bring about changes and the Islamists’ recent achievement of goals by peaceful means speaks to the merits of the ballot as compared to the bullet. Proponents of the second line of thought, in contrast, highlight the Islamists’ use of the system without any plans to change long-term goals (which, in some cases, go against the very tenets of basic democracy) and that without external (and perhaps domestic) pressure, there are no real incentives to change.
The logic behind the first, optimistic line of reasoning seems solid enough at first glance There are several examples of non-democratic radical movements taking the leap over the abyss to become respected political players. Examples of this benign evolution of illiberal and often violent movements run the gamut from European socialist parties after WW1 to more recent examples of Ireland and Angola. And in the Middle East itself, a case like Turkey is often mentioned.
But advocates of the second, realist school point to some interesting lessons to be drawn from the same examples. The first lesson is that political participation in itself does not automatically lead to a lasting embrace of democratic means. Rather, that seems to be dependent on certain conditions. Most Islamist movements have not moderated their ideology (by, for example, renouncing violence) of their own volition. This has mostly come about as a result of a lack of alternatives, or as a result of external and domestic pressure.
If and when this democratic transformation does occur, it seems that at least three factors have to be present:
1) Existence of a (relatively) free political system, with a healthy and solid structure into which Islamists can be brought.
2) A situation where there are other political actors, creating a balance of power that, to an extent, forces the Islamists to ‘play by the rules.’
3) Enough time to make political participation have a fundamental impact on Islamists.
When new-born democracies lack basic conditions of stability–including an independent judiciary, a good standard of education, and a free and fair press–the end-result is often times an aggressive regime, both internally and externally. Elections, even if they are free and fair, are not enough to create such a structure. If the political order is unstable and the state cannot or will not enforce a monopoly on authority and violence, there is little reason for a party to disarm (and many reasons for it not to). The cases of the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hizballah are good illustrations of this.
Merely allowing time for conditions to change inside the political structures runs the risk of helping the Islamists to get even more settled, while they pursue long-term, inherently un-democratic and sometimes violent goals. Yet putting pressure on Islamists for faster moderation could alienate more people by exposing them to further Islamist propaganda that ‘the West’ is really out to force them to change.
With time and with the right kind of support from the West, a true change can occur. But for that to occur, these countries and their Islamist parties need to more fundamentally separate their political structures from religious interpretations in holy books. Therefore, as Nahkleh writes, it may be naïve to think that we can engage with Palestinians and Lebanese respectively without eventually engaging Hamas and Hezbollah. But it is not naïve to believe that for that engagement to work, these movements and their parties must change fundamentally, something that is not presently in the cards.
Islamists in Tunisia and Egypt, on the other hand, did leave behind the bullet for the ballot, and gained from it. However, their legislative performance (admittedly rather sketchy so far) has pointed to some illiberal directions: for example, their stands on freedom of the press and the equal rule of law. It therefore takes more than just reaching power to moderate and liberalize, as Nakhleh claims. And therein lies the true challenge, both for Islamic parties and for the West’s decisions on whether and how to engage them.
Dr. Magnus Norell is an adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former Swedish intelligence analyst.
Turkey’s experience with parties subscribing to political Islam —ranging from the radical National Order Party (MNP), established in 1970, to the current reformed Justice and Development Party (AKP) government—provides three lessons for the potential moderation of Arab Islamist parties today: First, moderation takes time. In Turkey, this process has spanned four decades. Second, moderation is likely to happen only if there are strong secularist checks and balances. When Turkey’s Supreme Court shut down various Islamist parties, it forced each successor party of the MNP to be reborn as a more centrist movement. Finally, and more importantly, moderation is likely if political Islam faces competition from the center. This scenario led the Islamist parties in Turkey to adjust their platforms to compete against the country’s dominant center-right. Subsequently, the Islamists moved to the center.
The key to the Turkish Islamists’ moderation is the fact that in Turkey, the Islamist parties have routinely faced stiff competition from center-right parties. The center-right has traditionally formed the plurality, and at times even the majority, of the political spectrum in the country. Parties representing the center right—from the Justice Party (AP) in the 1960s and 1970s to the Motherland Party (ANAP) and True Path Party (DYP) in the 1980s and 1990s—have typically gathered half or more of the popular vote.
Hoping to come to power, Islamists could not logically ignore the fact that the country’s center of gravity lies with the center right. This has led the Islamists to adjust their policies and rhetoric to appeal to the constituents of the center-right, gradually moving them closer to the center.
Another key development in the moderation process was the banning of a string of Islamist parties, including the MNP, as well as its successors, the National Salvation Party (MSP), the Welfare Party (RP), and the Virtue Party (FP), between 1971 and 2001 by the secularist supreme court. With this move, the court forced the movement to moderate itself. Thus, each subsequent version of the Turkish Islamist movement has been more moderate than its predecessor and also closer to the political center. Not surprisingly, each reiteration of the Islamist movement has been more popular than its predecessor. For instance, whereas MSP received only 12 percent of the vote in 1973 elections, its successor, RP, received 21 percent of the vote in the 1995 elections, and the AKP won 34 percent of the vote when it came to power in 2002.
The Turkish experience with Islamist parties provides food for thought in an alternative scenario regarding the potential moderation of Arab Islamist parties today. Consider the consequences should Arab Islamist parties face competition from the extreme right and not the center: Would they still move to the center, or would they move further to the right to defeat their competition and win more votes?
In Egypt, for instance, the Islamist Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) faces stiff competition not from the political center, but from the Salafist Nour Party on the extreme right. Unless the Egyptian political center emerges as a viable alternative to the FJP, in the short-term, the race in Egypt will likely be between the FJP and the more radical Salafists. In Egypt, therefore, the best case scenario is that the FJP will not have much electoral incentive to move to the center, for such a political recalibration is not a vote-getting strategy. The worst case scenario, however, is that the FJP could even move to the right to compete against the Salafists.
It appears, perhaps, that without time and the right competition, the Turkish example cannot be so easily, rapidly, and fully replicated.
Soner Cagaptay is the director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute.