From: waseems@sco.COM (Waseem Siddiqi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Islamic Movements and the West
Date: 13 Aug 92 17:09:30 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.arabic
Organization: SCO Canada, Inc.

Assalaamu alaikum,

THis is the article "Islam, Democracy and the West" published in the last 
edition of "Foreign Affairs." 

Forwarded from MISG net


waseem
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          ISLAM, DEMOCRACY AND THE WEST
               Robin Wright


> Unlike the extremism that typified the first resurgence -in
>political upheavals as well as suicide bombings, hijackings and
>hostage sizures-the new Islamic activism is now character-
>ized by attempts to work within the system rather than outside
>it. Since 1989, for example, Islamists from diverse groups have
>run for parliament in Jordan and Algeria. Indonesia's largest
>Muslim movement, which has support from up to 40 million
>people, has held peaceful rallies this year to urge democratic
>reforms in the authoritarian state. Since the dismemberment
>of the Soviet Union in 1991, Islamists in the former Central
>Asian republics have petitioned for legal recognition, to end
>years as underground movements, so they can run for public
>office.
>
>  Reasons for the new preference for ballots over bullets vary
>within each country and movement, but they generally reflect
>an acknowledgement that the costs of extremism in the 1980s
>proved too high. Iran's isolation, for example, forced it
>backward economically, not forward. So the demise of communism
>starkly illustrated the joint dangers of tolitarian rule
>and confrontation with the West. Islamists have not led to
>recognize that pluralism and interdependence are the catch-
>words of the 1990s.
>
>  Cooperation has by no means fully replaced confrontation.
>But in key regions Islamists are no longer simply striking out
>angrily at what they do not like. After centuries marked mainly
>by dormancy, colonialism and failed experiments with Western
>ideologies, many Islamists feel they have a mandate to
>create constructive alternatives. Further pressed by the same
>factors that have led to political and economic transformations
>globally, a  growing number of Islamists are now trying to
>reconcile moral and religious tenets with modern life, political
>competition  and  free  markets.  Few  Islamists, as yet, have
>suitable or complete answers. The common campaign slogan,
>"Islam is the solution," remains simplistically inadequate.
>
>  The various attempts within Islam, however, also reflect a
>deeper  quest, one  that  could  make  the  Islamists'  impact
>broader  or  more  lasting,  because  Islam  is  the  only  major
>monotheistic  religion  that offers not only a set of spiritual
>beliefs but a set of rules by which to govern society. Besides
>the challenge of finding a place in the new global order, Islam
>is now at a pivotal and profound  moment of evolution, a juncture
>increasingly equated with the Protestant Reformation. The
>traditional role of the faith, its leadership, organization,
>priorities and interpretation, are also under scrutiny.
>The changing focus is reflected even in the names. The first
>phase of the Islamic resurgence was often symbolized by a host
>of groups  in Lebanon, Egypt and Israel's occupied territories,
>named Islamic Jihad, or Holy War, while the latest activism
>is most noted for group  from Tunisia to Tajiistan,
>called the Islamic Renaissance Party. The challenge is as
>much within Islam as in the countries and systems in which
>Muslims live. In many ways Islamic societies now find them-
>selves the opening rounds of what the West went through in
>the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in redefining both the
>relationship between God and man and between man and man.
>
>  The challenge for Islamists is all the greater because the
>political climate at home and in the international arenas
>is hardly conducive to reforms or experimentation, much less
>full expression. The specter of Iran's revolutionary excesses
>and Lebanon's terrorist zealotry continues to color local and
>Western attitudes toward Islam. Despite the growing body of
>evidence  to  the  contrary, Islam is still widely, and again
>wrongly perceived as inherently extremist. Despite the many
>shades and shaps of Islamic activism, it is also still wrongly
>treated as a single or monolithic force.
>
> The spectrum of new Islamist activism is reflected strikingly
>in two geographic extremes of the Muslim world: norh Africa
>and Central Asia. In both areas since 1990 Islam has become
>one of the principal challenges to socialist rule. Both regions
>ent a challenge as the West tries to define its relationship
>with Islam after years of tension.
>
>Algeria has become the primary test case for the compati-
>bility of Islam and democracy. Islamic activism emerged in
>Algeria  when  President  Chadli  Bendjedid  ended  socialist
>-party rule after growing public discontent was capped in
>1988 by riots in which at least 400 people were killed. In the
>first phase of a three-part transition the Islamic  Salvation
>Front (FIS) won a stunning upset in the 1990 local elections,
>capturing more than 60 percent of regional assemblies and 55
>cent of municipal councils. The National Liberation Front
>(FLN), which had ruled since leading Algeria's eight-year war
>against French colonialism, came in an embarrassingly poor
>second.
>
>The election, the first free multiparty poll since indepen-
>dance in 1962, was as much a rejection of the  as a vote of
>port for the Islamists. most three decades of inecient
>increasingly corrupt rule had finally caught up with the
>FLN. By 1992 at least 14 million of Algeria's 25 million
>population were estimated to live below the poverty line. With
>a $25 billion foreign debt that consumed almost 70 percent of
>its oil revenues, the government had little le to address mass
>grievances over chronic  housing shortages, unemployment,
>substandard education and social services and limited devel-
>opment. And with 65 percent of the population under the age
>30, the majority had no memory of, much less nostalgia for,
>Algerian revolution.
>
>In contrast the energetic Islamists offered a legitimate and
>familiar  alternative, if not a very detailed program. Their
>appeal was also reflected in their response to a strike called
>during the election by gas stations, newspapers and even trash
>collectors. After mounds  of garbage  accumulated  on  the
>streets of the Mediterranean capital, Islamists mobilized sup-
>porters to clean up the refuse with their hands. The Islamists'
>commitment was in stark contrast to the malaise within the
>FLN.
>
>  Because of the large rejectionist vote in local elections, the
>second phase of the transition, elections for parliament, was
>expected to be a more accurate reading ofthe public's political
>will. In the first round in December 1991, which fielded more
>than fifty parties, FIS captured  188 of the 231 seats decided,
>only 28 short of a majority. This time the FLN came in third,
>with only 15 seats, trailing after the Berber-dominated party,
>the Socialist Forces Front, which won 25. HAMAS, another
>Islamic party, came in fourth. Although the FIS total was a
>million less than during the local elections, it appeared set to
>win a decisive parliamentary majority in the second round for
>199 undecided seats scheduled for January 16, 1992.
>
>  The  two  elections  represented  a  political  milestone.  No
>Islamic party since the Iranian Revolution had won such an
>overwhelming victory, and no Islamic party had ever defini-
>tively defeated a long-dominant power through democratic
>means.
>
>  But the world's first Islamic democracy never had a chance
>to prove itself. Five days before the second round of elections,
>a "white coup" led by Defense Minister Khaled Nezzar forced
>Bendjedid to resign. He was replaced with a five-man High
>State Council, and elections were then suspended. Over the
>following weeks, the FIS leadership was detained and the party
>banned. At least 8,800 sympathizers or supporters of both FIS
>and HAMAS - some claimed the figure was as high as 3O,000 -
>were also rounded up by late March and dispatched to detention
>camps in the southern Sahara desert. In an attempt to revoke the
>results of the  1990 local elections,  dozens of mayors and many
>regional assembly leaders who had won power on the FIS ticket
>were also arrested; the assemblies were dissolved.
>
>  Islamists were the target, but democracy was the ultimate
>victim. The Algerian junta has hinted that it might follow
>through with the final phase of the transition, presidential
>elections, due in late 1993; but FIS is unlikely to be included.
>Indeed the new government's strategy is to use the interim
>with the help of foreign aid and loans and by selling off oil and
>gas right to address the grievances that led the electorate to
>vote for FIS. The council also reportedly favors rewriting the
>constitution to prevent future attempts by Islamists to enter
>politics. On April 29, Algeria's Supreme Court ordered the FIS
>dissolved.
>
>The junta, however, is unlikely to survive. The Algerian
>coup was in many ways like the abortive Moscow putsch in
>1991; although the process may take longer, it will fail for
>similar  reasons.  Bendjedid's  phased  transition  to  pluralism
>produced more than just multiple parties. From a handful of
>newspapers  under  state  control,  Algeria's  press  soared  to
>dozens  of diverse  and  increasingly outspoken  publications.
>Once-cloistered debate moved into open forums, while public
>interest groups, including a human right movement, began to
>flourish.  Most of all, Algerians, particularly the disaffected,
>tasted empowerment and liked it; its indefinite suppression
>will eventually produce a backlash.
>
>  The junta's tactics have also been crass. To lead the new
>ruling council, the military brought back Mohammed Boudiaf,
>an aging revolutionary hero who fell out with his cohorts in
>1963 and has lived in exile ever since. The detentions were
>ruthless. When security forces were unable to find a wanted
>Islamist, they merely picked up another family member. Many
>detainees have undergone summary trials and  have  been
>sentenced to two to twenty years in prison. The government
>also banned all public gatherings around mosques and even
>moved to replace 40 percent of the leaders of Algeria's 9,000
>mosques;  scores  of imams  (Islamic  religious  leaders)  were
>among those detained. Algerians have not experienced such
>repression since the war for independence.
>
>  But the junta is most likely to fail because it has given new
>legitimacy to the very force it sought to suppress - Islam. After
>the coup, the FLN fragmented into factions for and against the
>putsch,  while  opposition  parties  were  unable  to  mobilize
>effectively against the junta. In the disarray, FIS was left as
>the force pushing hardest for democracy.
>
>  The movement remarkable discipline after the coup helped.
>Despite the riot police and army cordons around key mosques,  FIS
>leaders repeatedly urged restraint."The army has a scenario for
>us, but it is a role we will not play. We will not respond  to
>provocation,"  acting FIS leader Abdelkader Hachani told
>thousands of the faithful at Friday prayers. Although FIS is a
>multifaceted movement with factions that favor diferent levels of
>activism, as well as differing versions of Islamic democracy, it
>was visibly united in trying to prevent bloodshed.
>Even after the mass arrests, FIS demands two months after
>the coup were limited to release of political detainees, an end
>to persecution of Islamists, a dialogue with all political
>parties and resumption of elections. Notably it did not call for
>jihad. Most of the sporadic hit-and-run attacks, particularly
>against Algerian security forces, were linked to a host of small
>and loosely organized Islamic extremist cells not under FIS
>control.
>
>Among them were Hijra wa Takfir, or Sin and Atonement; and  the
>Afghans, so-named for their participation in the Afghan war
>against Soviet occupation in the 1980s; many were reportedly
>trained by the CIA in Pakistan. Despite the temptation, FIS did
>not abandon democracy to achieve its goals.
>
>  For the Arab and Muslim worlds, Algeria is not simply a test
>case of the affinity of Islam and democracy. It is also a test of
>whether the West can reconcile with Islam. On that count the
>West's record is only marginally better than the junta's.
>  After  the Algerian  coup,  Western  reaction  was  notable
>largely for its passivity. The U.S. State Department officially
>"regretted" the suspension of the democratic process in Algeria
>and then fell silent. Several Western governments allowed
>the junta's representatives to pay official visits to explain their
>plans and goals. Some even considered aid. A consortium of
>European and American banks provided $1.45 billion to help
>Algeria spread out the servicing of its debt.
>
>  Before the U.N. General Assembly last fall, President Bush
>said:  "People  everywhere  seek  government  of and  by  the
>people.  And  they want  to  enjoy  their  inalienable  rights
>to freedom and property and person." The United States, he
>added,  supported  those  rights  globally.  If Algeria  is  any
>example, however, there is an implicit exception: any country
>where Islam is the winner of a democratic election.
>  The lack of U.S. response, at a time when the Bush admin-
>istration is active and outspoken in advocating political plural-
>ism, makes it appear that the White House prefers a police
>state to an  Islamic democracy.  Indeed  the absence of an
>internotional outcry of western condemnation - as there was,
>for example, after Peru's president suspended the constitution
>and dissolved parliament in April - has encouraged the junta
>to pursue its course,  a fact FIS has publicly noted. The FIS
>platform remains uncomfortably vague.  Its achievements in
>Algeria's  municipalities  during  08  months  in  power  were
>mixed, in no small part because of disputes with FLN governors
>over  budget  allocations  and  priorities.  Despite  FIS
>reassurances, other Algerian parties feared the Islamists would
>eventually ban them and declare a theocracy, as happened in Iran.
>
>  Yet Algeria was arguably one of the best places to experi-
>ment with Islamic democracy. First, as a Mediterranean coun-
>try, it is still strongly influenced by the nearby West, unlike
>Iran where the West had a strong arm but was physically
>distant. Agerian Islamists have, so far, been unusually sensi-
>tive to the West's fears.
>
>  Second, the core issue in Islamicizing societies is implemen-
>tation of sharia, Islamic law, as either a source or the source
>of law, a step not necessarily incompatible with Western inter-
>ests. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both of which have close ties
>with the West, are but two of many Islamic countries where
>sharia holds sway.
>
>  Third, with presidential elections not scheduled until 1993,
>the transition had a built-in restraint. Whatever majority FIS
>won in parliament, Bendjedid still would have had veto power
>over any drastic changes to the constitution for the first, two
>years.
>
>  Finally, it would have been preferable to have the Islamists
>accountable in public office rather than operating as clandes-
>tine cells outside the system. The coup has encouraged vio-
>lence, ironically, much as French repression against Algerian
>demands for independence ignited one of the longest and
>bloodiest wars in the Third World.
>
>  Unfortunately too much time has now passed to go back. In
>Algeria  the  Islamists  are  virtually  certain  to  prevail.
>The question is what will happen to FIS along the way. Over time
>the junta's draconian  tactics may polarize, even divide,  the
>dominant Islamist movement, giving the upper hand to fiery
>young preachers like Ali Benhaj rather than thoughtful and
>temperate FIS leaders like Hachani, a petrochemical engineer,
>and philosophy professor Abassi Madani. In late March a FIS
>statement said the government's refusal to engage in dialogue
>and its repressive tactics could lead supporters to respond with
>force to "return the riqht of the people to choose those who
>will govern them." The formal order to dissolve FIS virtually
>ensures a more militant response. And what happens in Algeria is
>certain to influence other parts ofthe Islamic world.
>
> For the West the danger is that its reluctance to pressure the
>junta, or even  to speak out against it, will be seen as an
>inherently anti-Islamic sentiment even when Islamists work
>through the democratic process. That perception could have
>long-term consequences beyond Algeria. The end result of the
>Algerian coup is likely to be costly for virtually everyone but
>the military junta.
>
>----------------------------end----------------------------------
-- 
Waseem A. Siddiqi                                 Tel:    (416) 922 1937 
SCO Canada                                        email: waseems@sco.com 
Toronto, Canada                                        uunet!sco!waseems
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