[Mb-civic] FABULOUS AND WORTH READING: Squaring Islam With Democracy - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Squaring Islam With Democracy

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, February 2, 2006; A21

"I have no idea what the result will be, but I am certain that it will 
lead to a very interesting situation."

<>-- Arthur Balfour, on issuing the 1917 declaration that promised a 
national home in Palestine for the Jews.<>

President Bush has created his own Balfourian times to live in by 
betting his legacy on the shifting sands of Middle East politics and 
religion. Iran's demagogic president, Iraq's Shiite clerics and the 
Palestinian radicals of Hamas have in recent days reminded Bush of the 
audacity of his bet that democracy will transform and stabilize the region.

How much more interesting can it get? Hillary Clinton is running to the 
right of Bush with a call for economic confrontation with Iran. Centrist 
support is growing for John McCain's view that bombing Iran is now in 
the cards. Kofi Annan has joined European foreign ministers in telling 
Hamas to recognize Israel or in effect go hungry.

But these tactical maneuvers are likely to fail in the absence of a 
larger strategy to reconcile democracy as understood in the West and 
Islam as practiced in much of the Middle East. Bush should not abandon 
his push for Middle Eastern democracy because radicals draw temporary 
advantage from it. But he needs to reexamine where that push is taking 
him. This means forging a new Western strategy to engage with and 
support moderate forms of political Islam, rather than assuming that 
democratic elections and other reforms will automatically separate 
religion and politics and devalue the former in favor of the latter.

That theme echoed through the State of the Union address. Bush twice 
condemned "radical Islam" and said it would be defeated by American 
resolve. But he remained silent on mainstream Islam's role in politics 
and in jihad. A stronger commitment to democracy would overcome all, he 
suggested.

This fails to adjust his policies to the changes they have helped 
produce. Political Islam has largely been treated by American and 
European policymakers as an extremist phenomenon since Iran's Shiite 
clerics seized power in 1979. The tendency was reinforced by the 
atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001. Under the Bush doctrine, political Islam 
is to be fought country by country, through counterterrorism programs, 
diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions.

But political Islam finds democracy to be a congenial rather than an 
antithetical force. Calling for the destruction of Israel, as Hamas and 
the Iranians do, is a popular program sold to the masses under an 
Islamic banner. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was warned by 
friendly diplomats last September that his hard-line speech to the U.N. 
General Assembly would cost him international support, he reportedly 
scoffed: "I am getting good news from home" about reaction to the speech.

Or take Hamas's electoral victory over Fatah and other remnants of the 
Palestine Liberation Organization. It is the final nail in the coffin of 
pan-Arab nationalism, which is now as much a relic of history as the PLO 
itself. The obsolescence of pan-Arabism was also underlined by the 
victory of Shiite religious parties in Iraq's recent elections.

It is possible to reconcile democracy, Islam, peaceful coexistence with 
Israel and good governance. Turkey and Morocco are examples of countries 
making significant progress on these fronts. Iraq has the potential as 
well to show that Bush's emphasis on promoting democracy is not 
guaranteed to boomerang on him.

Bush's demand that freedom and democracy become the beacons toward which 
all nations in the region should advance was neither inherently flawed 
nor clueless, as critics maintain. The post-colonial Arab political 
order of militaristic or hereditary authoritarianism was tottering 
toward collapse in any event. American efforts to help channel the 
coming upheaval were, and are, appropriate.

"A democratic election is an exercise in accountability," says former 
secretary of state George Shultz. "It is no surprise the electorate 
threw these rascals out when they got the chance," continued Shultz, who 
in 1988 approved the first official U.S.-PLO dialogue and held the 
guerrilla organization to strict account on its promises.

"I wouldn't automatically say you won't talk to somebody in this 
situation," he added. "What is important is what you say: Tell them what 
you stand for and what you hope will happen. But you sure don't have to 
fund them."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020101836.html?nav=hcmodule
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