The Myth of "Moderate" Islamists

FrontPageMag.com:

The following may soon be true: the good news is that Islamists are not committing terrorism; the bad news is that they are running the governments. READ MORE

Welcome to the latest Western debate: should Islamists be helped to run in elections in order to moderate them. Both in Washington and Europe this idea is seizing people's minds. The European Union advocates dealing with Hizballah and may decide the best way to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace is to strengthen Hamas. In Washington, the main example is to help the Muslim Brotherhood run in fair Egyptian elections.

The easy answer is that radical Islamists will not be moderated by participating in elections or gaining power. The Bolshevik (Communist) party in Russia and the Nazi party in Germany ran candidates for parliament. But there is only one point in responding to the latest bad idea--there certainly seem to be a lot of them, don't there?--in the Middle East debate. For example:

Remember the Oslo peace process was based largely on the idea that once Yasir Arafat and colleagues governed Palestinians and dealt with daily problems they would be more moderate, responsible, and abandon terrorism.

In Algeria an imminent Islamist electoral victory sparked a military coup and bloody warfare. Even if Islamists play fair encouraging them means more civil wars and instability.

Many American experts predicted in 1978 that once Islamists gained power in Iran they would be easy to live with.

This does not mean pious Muslims cannot be real democrats. A Middle Eastern equivalent of European Christian Democratic parties might eventually emerge.

Turkey, however, is quite different from Arab countries, having a more moderate brand of Islam and entrenched democracy. Its governing Islamic party knows it must act moderately enough to avoid antagonizing the secular-oriented majority and army.

In addition, in Turkey three vital preconditions creating Islamist democrats don't exist in the Arab world:

• There must be a clear split between radical Islamists and moderates.
• A charismatic leader must have the courage to reshape Islamism.
• An explicit and real change in ideology is required.

An obvious but vital point is that radical Islamist groups don't commit terrorism for its own sake. Their objective is to seize power and use it for their own purposes. Once in power, Islamist parties would change laws and society to produce more Islamists. Such regimes will use foreign policy adventurism--attacking the West and Israel in words and perhaps with guns--to mobilize support and distract attention from failures at home.

The result will be to replace one repressive authoritarian regime with another, adding two more generations to the process of real moderation and democratization for the Arab world.

What is going to stop this from happening, assuming that Islamist parties have enough votes? Here the debate gets silly. To quote a liberal Arab reformer I respect, "This does raise questions about who would guarantee that all parties abide by these rules of the game." He suggests the courts do this, concluding, "There must be faith in the system."

Given the risks involved--a bloody, repressive dictatorship, foreign wars, the Islamization of society, and so on--basing one's future on faith in a system that does not yet exist and on rulings from courts that are notoriously impotent is not quite sane.

Of course, each specific example is important so let's take three:

• Hamas wants to rule a country extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea based on what amounts to an openly genocidal attitude toward Jews. Hamas will use power it obtains--including a large share of the Palestinian parliament--to veto any peace with Israel and create a base for more terrorism, including social and educational changes to ensure a hundred-year-long war with Israel.
• Hizballah wants to take power in Lebanon but cannot since Shia Muslims are only 40 percent of the electorate. It demands proportional representation to give it the largest possible influence. The Christians, Druze and Sunni resist. What Hizballah will win is the right to remain the country's only armed militia and control over the south. It will bide its time looking for future opportunities.
• The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood already participates in elections using front groups. It is barred from running itself because the government insists, not unreasonably, that no party can claim a monopoly on proper Islam. If it is legalized, its ambitions will grow.

Keep in mind two key points. First, the factor most likely to moderate larger Islamist groups is their knowing power is beyond their reach. Hamas never challenged the Palestinian leadership because it knew it would be crushed in a civil war. In Jordan and Egypt, Islamist parties take the quota of parliamentary seats permitted them and cause no trouble because they know beating the regime is impossible. Once they conclude they can win, the result will be instability and more militancy.

Finally, the most likely result of any Western belief that power will moderate radical Islamists will be unilateral Western concessions to such groups. They will be given immunity for past terrorist acts, diplomatic backing against the local regimes, money and other benefits in exchange for promises to be good. They will then break these promises, more likely without cost. Let's not be naive about radical Islamism and make even more problems for the Middle East.

Barry Rubin is Director of the GLORIA Center of the Interdisciplinary Center. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, is now available in paperback and his latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, will be published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online.