Toronto Star
Haroon SiddiquiSTAR COLUMNISTIslamists have emerged as winners in all three post-Arab Spring elections — Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. This has spooked some people — “Islamists ascendant” and “Muslims on the march.” This is unwarranted, based on known facts.
Truth be known, the Islamists sound far less scary than the American presidential candidates for the Republican party.
Islamists have invoked God far fewer times than Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and, until his recent departure due to revelations that he broke his Christian wedding vows, Herman Cain.
The candidates have been competing in proclaiming fidelity to Jesus. Whether they are sincere or merely striking poses for the benefit of the party’s fundamentalist core constituency is moot, for the purposes of our discussion here.
Romney’s Mormonism has emerged as an issue as well.
While the Republicans are obsessed with religion, the Islamists are downplaying it. While the former are promising to be guided by their spirituality in public life and public policy (abortion, prayers in schools, etc.), the latter are being guided mostly by the voters’ worldly woes.
The winning parties in Tunisia and Morocco have promised not to impose their Islamist lifestyle on others. Bikinis and alcohol won’t be banned. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is also promising not to impose a strict moral code. Whether this reflects their conversion to liberalism or just a nod to the reality of tourism revenues is not clear.
What is clear is the chasm between the western media’s definition of democracy and that of a vast majority of Arabs — the tourists’ freedom to wear bikinis and consume alcohol vs. the local population’s freedom from decades of autocracy, oppression, corruption and poverty.
Unlike the Republicans, leading Islamists are not threatening to bomb or invade any other nation. Romney et al are vying with each other in their belligerency toward Iran. If any of them ever makes it to the White House, he/she will have far more executive authority to wage war than any governing Islamist party ever would in the emerging Arab parliamentary democracies. And given the American arsenal, he/she would have far more power to cause human catastrophe (as in Iraq).
The Islamists have avoided partisan political bickering, unlike the Republicans, who refuse to concede an inch to the Democrats. They’d rather sink Barack Obama than save the American economy. By contrast, the winning parties in Tunisian and Morocco vowed during their campaigns to work together with other parties, including secular ones. They have since formed coalition governments to work jointly at their nations’ economic woes.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is suggesting a similar coalition, representing a range of political forces, once the three-stage parliamentary election ends next month. Interestingly, the only party the Brotherhood has refused to get into partnership with is the hard-core Islamistal-Nour, whose supporters want to bar women and Christians from leadership roles.
The Republican contenders’ reservations about the Arab Spring flow, in part, from two worries: what democracy in Egypt might mean to the peace treaty with Israel; and what the rise of Islamists might mean to Coptic Christians.
The Brotherhood has already said it would honour the peace treaty. Even if one were skeptical, the guiding principle has to be that a peace deal with a democratic state would likely be more enduring and carry greater legitimacy than one forged with dictatorships, especially discredited and corrupt ones.
As for protecting Christians, the notion that they are safer under dictators is false. Copts in droves fled Egypt under the rule of both Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak for Canada and the United States. Now Bashar Assad is invoking the safety of Christians in Syria to win brownie points in the West to prolong his rule. Buying into that is to grant a licence to tyrants to slaughter their populations so long as they protect the minorities of our choice.
Unlike the Republicans, the Obama administration has aligned itself with the democratic aspirations of Arabs, at least as much as it can within the limitations of American geopolitical interests. Washington has called on the interim Egyptian military regime to respect the outcome of the election and turn over power to a civilian government “as soon as possible.” Failing to do so would “plant the seeds for future unrest.”
In contrast, the silence of Stephen Harper is deafening. As so often in the past, he is taking his cue from the Republicans.
Haroon Siddiqui is the Star‘s editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday.
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