Islamist political groups must be assimilated into any democratising process if it is to be worthy of the name, writes Amr Elchoubaki* Political Islam provides one of the focal concerns in the debate on reform in the Arab world. Aggravating the controversy is the commonly held assumption that democratic reforms will facilitate the arrival in power of the Islamist movement. And once in power they will turn against and abort the nascent democratisation that brought them there. It is my contention that this argument is part of a design to procrastinate, if not bury, political and democratic reforms in the Arab world. In this context the "Islamist danger to democracy" is but another catch phrase, similar to the "rejection of outside interference in our domestic affairs" and the "determination to safeguard our social and cultural specificity". The irony is that the procrastination is inherently self- contradictory. On the one hand, in its pitch to the domestic audience, it invokes patriotic values and principles. On the other these very values and principles are overlooked in the alarmist spin, obviously directed at foreign powers, that if the people were really accorded the freedom to elect the government they deemed best they would probably elect an Islamist group to power. Before acknowledging the validity of such alarmism, we should ask whether there exist some structural flaws in the Islamist movement that impede its openness to democratic principles and processes. Are the problems that impede its assimilation into the process of democratisation somehow "genetically wired into" the essence of its discourse and its scriptural foundations? Or do the problems reside in the political and cultural environment which, if it evolved into a democratic one, would produce a commensurate change in Islamist discourse and behaviour? In the history of political ideas and movements ideology cannot be divorced from its socio-cultural context. It is impossible, for example, to separate the rise of European communist movements in the 1960s and 1970s from the broader context of Western liberalism, which is why the experience of the majority of European communist parties was so different from their Eastern European counterparts under Soviet totalitarianism. This is not to say that the assimilation of the peaceful political Islamist movement into the process of democratisation will be easy. However, there is no alternative if we are institute true democratic reforms. In all events, contrary to the commonly held assumptions, the movement shows a propensity to modern political and organisational structures, and it draws support on the basis of a political-ideological platform rather than on the basis of traditional allegiances and financial influence. In addition, it has succeeded in establishing an influential presence in many professional syndicates through free and democratic elections, and it has shown itself more open to questions of the rights of Copts and women and more tolerant of artistic and literary creativity than some of the groups led by official religious leaders who are part of the state apparatus and official Islam. The difference between official Islam and the political Islamist movement as epitomised in the Muslim Brotherhood does not stem from the fact that the latter was born more open-minded. Rather, it arises from the fact that its grassroots orientation and its need to interact with other political movements and ideas within the syndicates or beneath the dome of parliament have worked to compel it to develop a more enlightened and sophisticated discourse. The same cannot be said of those religious officials who have remained planted behind their desks, acting more like cogs in the bureaucratic wheel for churning out fatwas condemning this or that intellectual or banning their books. Contrary to the general impression, therefore, the battle between the peaceful Islamist movement and the state is not a clash between retrograde demagogues and a bastion of modern civil society. Rather, the crux of the issue is that the former is a political movement and that the state will not brook competition from a political movement it cannot bring under the direct control of its bloated bureaucracy. Meanwhile, many retrograde religious demagogues reside in the folds of the official religious establishment, entitling them to issue their proclamations from the mosque, pulpits and on television. To the state, however, these are acceptable and sometimes even desirable, because they operate outside the danger zone of political activism. Thus, rather than a clash between fundamentalists and secularists, what we have is a clash between political activism and bureaucracy, and between dynamism and stagnation. It follows that the assimilation of peaceful political Islamism into the process of democratisation requires a thorough overhaul of the structure of the state and its ruling party, so as to enable it to compete with the Islamists in parliamentary elections without need for police or administrative intervention. Otherwise put, legitimising a centre party representative primarily of the Muslim Brotherhood would trigger an injection of vital new blood into the establishment and its ruling party. Simultaneously, such a pre-reform shift to a reform footing will establish the necessary clarity of purpose and direction needed to propel the Islamists towards a constructive engagement in the democratisation process and encourage them to develop as a civilian entity with no special sanctity conferred upon their political discourse and capable of accepting criticism as criticism of a platform rather than an attack upon Islam. Democratic reform will neither "create" Islamists nor give them a special advantage. Islamists have been around in Egypt for more than three quarters of a century, and all attempts to uproot and exclude them have failed. What is needed at this juncture is a more dynamic approach to the givens of the domestic political map, a little more imagination and willingness to promote democracy as an ongoing process rather than a decision imposed from above, whether by the US or the Egyptian government. Under such circumstances the assimilation of the Islamists into the national polity becomes an integral aspect of the political reform process. Still, it is important to bear in mind certain distinctions. The term Islamist does not denote a single, uniform trend. Jihad is not the Muslim Brotherhood, and Afghanistan's Taliban cannot be equated with proposed parties in Egypt or existing ones in Turkey. Differences exist because it is the socio-political environment that ultimately generates a democratically oriented Islamism such as that in Turkey or, conversely, the tyrannical and totalitarian brands that emerged in Afghanistan and Sudan. The importance of broaching the Islamist phenomenon face on in the context of existing political and social realities is underscored by the "Turkish paradox". The irony is that presumably secular forces in Turkey are now less democratic in spirit and more resistant to joining the EU, in spite of their history of attempting to profile the European face of Turkey. Meanwhile, the forces that arose around Islamist tenets are today more determined to institute democratic reforms, more enthusiastic over joining the EU and keener to abide by European standards of democracy and human rights. The democratic environment in Turkey, even if it is not yet fully-fledged, has been instrumental in transforming the Islamists into a "conservative democratic" movement that has rallied its social and political resources towards greater democratisation. Meanwhile, the others have remained rooted in place, with banners of "secularism" at the ready to forestall progress and to conceal totalitarian tendencies. * The writer is an analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
