These are exciting times! The citizens revolution in Tunisia started a tidal wave of pro-democracy protests across the Arab world, and the resignation of Hosni Mubarak form the Presidency in Egypt proves there is no stopping it.
Fortunately, this wave has not caused the death and destruction tidal waves usually do, because it is the people themselves who are the wave, and it is the elite who are being swept away, not in a bloody coup, but through real people power. Final costs have yet to be assessed. People were jailed and others killed, but violence and destruction to property have been minimal. The police were brutal and ruthless and far too many were killed, but protests continued and the police disappeared quickly. After that, the one significant effort of Mubarak loyalist to crack heads, backfired terribly.
Most Americans are excited by this wave of democracy and have an innate tendency to support it. Others got very nervous when the wave hit Egypt. What happens if the Muslim brotherhood takes over? There are even voices who get far to much airplay in the media and too much ink in the press who say that people in the region are incapable of self governance and need strong arm leadership. The most looney voice has to be Glenn Beck who fears Mubarak’s fall will open the door to a Islamist Caliphate that will spread until it meets and joins forces with a Chinese-led “red” wave on a quest for world domination.

Let’s deal with this absurdity first. The fear of a Communist/Islamist alliance is simply based on complete ignorance of both ideologies. With the exceptions of the emphasis both place on social justice, Communism is incompatible, virtually antithetical to Islamism. Communism is a godless system in which ideology replaces religion, and it is anti-capitalist favoring communal ownership of property. Multiple schools of thought have developed from the original writing of Marx and Engels, and the Chinese Communist party has its own unique brand, but it looks nothing like the ideology upon which Islamist would build their state.
Islamism is, of course, the term we use to demote a political system in which the law claims to be based on Islamic law as laid out in the Qur’an, Hadith and tradition of Islamic jurisprudence. While Islam does prohibit the charging of interest on loans, it embraces a free market system. The Prophet Muhammad himself was a merchant.
Add to that the fact that China has systematically oppressed its Muslim minorities and many other religious groups within its borders, and you have just a few of the reasons why the prediction is unlikely to every come true. It’s no surprise that it was Glenn Beck who espoused this. His hold on reality seems more and more tenuous every day.
The fear of a new pan-national Islamic Caliphate spanning the Islamic world is absurd, anyway. It is, indeed, the wish of a small minority of Islamists, just as it is the wish of a minority of leftists to establish a international socialist state, and even right-wing Christians to unite across borders. But it is hard to imagine Turks (Turkey), Kurds (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey), Arabs (from Morocco to Syria), Iranians (Iran), Kazakhs (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, Russia and Mongolia), Pakistanis, Uyghurs, Hausa (Nigeria), Tuareg (The Sahara desert) and many other peoples, The vast majority of Islamist who want to live under a more Islamic form of government are also nationalists. They may not support the nation state they live under now, but they see themselves as an ethnic identity apart. A very small percentage of Islamists truly favor a pan-Islamic state.
The other fear espoused is that the citizen’s revolution in Egypt (the American media has forgotten Tunisia) will give way to chaos or, even worse, an Iranian style Islamist revolution. Neither Egypt or Tunisia is Iran. Iran was a great center for Islamic thought and learning to be sure. Persian literature and culture has been extraordinarily rich since the long before the arrival of Islam. But by the time of the Iranian Revolution, its influence beyond Iran was limited A few other countries speak Farsi (Persian), but none of great import on the world stage. Arabic, on the other hand, is the language of the Qur’an, an official language of the United Nations, and widely spoken from Morocco to Iraq. In addition, many would argue that Egypt is the artistic, cultural and intellectual center of the Arab World.
The Egyptian film and music industry produces a huge volume of material and it is phenomenally popular throughout the region and it gets much more Western tourism than Iran did. Egypt was the center of Arab Nationalism, a secular, leftist ideology. It also has a large, educated group of people that are not easily led, significantly larger than Iran had in the 1970s.
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Some pundits and politicians were and are suggesting something I find deeply offensive as someone who believes in freedom and democracy. They suggest that we should be careful about siding with the protestors and withdrawing our support from Mubarak, because we don’t know what will come next, and that whatever it is could be dangerous for Israel or nurture terrorism. For years we have been able to finesse our support of dictators by claiming that opposition is anti-democratic. Islamists will take power through elections, then end the transition to democracy, they claim. It will be, “One man. One vote. One Time.” Is that true? Perhaps. But if elections don’t happen we can’t know, and elections in which an outcome is known or in which certain parties are excluded are not real elections.
One thing is clear. When tens of thousands take to the streets for weeks on end, no one can argue that it is not a democratic revolution. When the crowd remains peaceful and organized, they are definitely capable of holding a government to account and of organizing. In such a case, the United States cannot be seen as anything but enthusiastically supporting the wishes of the people. It is precisely our failure to do so that stirs up resentment.
Today on This Week George Will said, “”You have to have some idea of the outcome of freedom before you can endorse freedom.” My jaw dropped! I hope he didn’t mean it the way it sounded!
To limit involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian politics up front will only increase their appeal, essentially make them matter more than they do. You can exaggerate your strength as long as you don’t have to prove it. Not all Islamist parties are radical and very few are violent. There’s actually quite a spectrum of thought within them. There are even Islamist parties with women leaders. Islamism is simply a school broad term for political philosophies that believe in the role of religion in politics, not unlike the Christian Right (or left), the Shas Party in Israel, or certain Hindu parties in India. Most Islamist believe in taking power at the ballot box, and only a small minority believe in seizing it. The Justice and Development Party, a moderate Islamist Party is in power in Turkey, and the world has not ended. They fully intend to participate in elections again.
I do not believe a new Islamist government somewhere in the region would be the worst thing, anyway. It would be particularly good it the United States and other Western countries were to leave it alone. When a party comes to power, it is faced with the difficult task of government. It must compromise with other parties, it will fail in certain tasks, and its luster will fade. It is easier to critique and sell dreams when you are not in power. It is much more difficult to make them a reality. When the West blocks the rise of Islamist parties, puts them under sanctions, or seeks to undermine them in another manner, it gives the government an opportunity to blame the West and, in the process, raise the ire of citizens against it. It is highly unlikely the Muslim Brotherhood would come to power in Egypt. However, if it were to happen, the US must not act preemptively on what it MIGHT do if it come to power, It should wait and see what it does do, then respond appropriately.
Let’s cheer the Tunisian and Egyptian people and what they have accomplished, let them govern and support them when asked. After Mubarak resigned and the demonstrations began to break up, people began to clean the square. This bodes well. If the new governments that take over prove hostile to American interests, then we may have to deal with that.
But democracy means respecting the wishes of the people. How dare anyone who claims to support democracy suggest we do otherwise!