US Tilts Towards Accepting Islamists Political Role

Rice is seen as the champion of the new policy-shift on US-Islamist dialog

By Shady Hassan, IOL Correspondent

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) - A chorus of voices demanding the Bush administration to listen and talk with popular Islamists in Arab and Muslim countries has reached a crescendo with senior officials recognizing the faulty policy of giving the cold shoulder to a more representative current.

Media reports have suggested that the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) will seek to meet with leaders of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood during its upcoming visit to the country.

The commission advises the US president, Congress and the State Department on international religious freedom worldwide.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is seen as the champion of the new policy-shift on US-Islamist dialogue.

Western diplomatic sources in the Egyptian capital recently told the London-bazed Arabic-speaking Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily that the US State Department has drawn up a memo calling for direct and permanent political dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood.

It recommended inviting the group’s representatives to the US for better communication and common grounds on Egypt’s reform policies and the pressing issues in the region.

The European Union called on Saturday, April 16, for a dialogue with the “more representative” Islamist opposition groups in the Middle East to encourage a transition to democracy.

Illusions

Rice has recently recognized that Washington’s Mideast policy was faulty.

“We had a bigger problem, which was that for 60 years or so, the United States has been associated with a policy of exceptionalism vis-à-vis the Middle East where it came to issues of democracy,” she said.

“We talked about democracy every place else in the world -- Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe -- but not in the Middle East, because there we talked about stability.

“…What we learned was we were not getting stability and we were not getting democracy; we were getting a malignancy that caused people to fly airplanes into buildings on September 11,” Rice recently said.

President George W. Bush had signaled a change of heart.

“The advance of hope in the Middle East requires new thinking in the region,” he said in a recent interview.

“By now it should be clear that authoritarian rule is not the wave of the future. It is the last gasp of a discredited past.”

Emerging Islamists

“The realization of the new moderate Islamist vision requires a degree of openness on the part of the Egyptian government,” said Hamzawy.

The issue of possible US-Islamist dialogue has recently made its way to the US Congress.

Arab pundits and thinkers, invited to a Congressional hearing presided over by Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, saw in emerging Islamist rule in a number of countries a role models for the region.

“…Prominent role being played by moderate Islamists in Turkey and Iran suggests that movements based on some form of Islamic legitimacy may be vital to effect a transition to stable and consensual governance in Muslim countries,” said Abdelwahab El-Affandi, a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, London.

“These democratizing experiments have huge implications for the Arab world, where internal models for such a transition are so far lacking,” he added.

The expert maintained that “political space for Islamists in the Arab world is severely restricted, hindering the ability to press for reform.”

Kada Akacem, professor of economics at the University of Algiers, picked the Algerian example to make a point in his argument.

“Moderate Islamist movements are now a permanent part of the Algerian political landscape,” he told the hearing.

“The so-called eradicators who dream of permanently excluding all Islamists from politics must recognize that such movements are one of the best guarantees of social and political stability because they resonate powerfully with Algeria's rapidly growing young population,” he added.

The expert contended that the Turkish model was the best case scenario Algeria could adopt.

In Turkey, he said, the military is the real guarantor of democracy, and in which moderate Islamists are allowed to capture civilian power through regular elections, as long as they accept the democratic rules of the political game.

Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid, a professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Developing Countries at Cairo University, said government's recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate political party is the central issue in political reform.

“If the regime persists in denying the Brotherhood legal status, not only would any move towards reform lack credibility, but the stability of the country itself could be jeopardized,” he warned.

Amr Hamzawy, senior Associate at Carnegie Institute, said it is an axiomatic fact that non-violent Islamist movements, like the Muslim Brotherhood, are well rooted in a country like Egypt.

“The realization of the new moderate Islamist vision requires a degree of openness on the part of the Egyptian government towards their integration into the political process,” he told the hearing.

Najib Ghadhbian, Assistant Professor of Political Sciences at the University of Arkansas, hailed the Islamists in Syria for their policy shift.

“The Islamists of Syria have dropped extremist elements, endorsed the demand for democratic rule and expressed firm support for minority and women's rights,” he said.

Scarecrow

Saadeddin Ibrahim, Professor of Social Sciences at the American University in Cairo and Director of Ibn Khaldoun Center in Egypt, stressed that Islamists were just a bugaboo used by the authoritarian Arab regimes to head off reform pressures.

He told the hearing that the Arab leaders keep warning the West that reform and democracy might bring the Islamists to power and consequently cause them a headache.

Arab leaders managed for a while to get the US scale back its controversial “Greater Middle East Initiative,” which preaches democracy in the region after using the Islamist scarecrow.

Washington has already re-named its reform plan to “The Broader Middle East and North Africa.”

The new proposal stressed that reform should come from within and should not be imposed from outside.

It also called for respecting the “characteristics and traditions” of each country when it comes to political and social reform.

Wind of Change

Lantos said that only Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen can be rated as free.

US Congressmen at the hearing agreed on the need for change in the Middle East.

“Faced with three fundamental deficits in freedom, knowledge, and women's rights, the current state of human development of the Arab people is a contradiction of their historical contributions and achievements that have been stepping stones to major advancements in Western civilization,” said Hyde.

Rep. Tom Lantos said that only four Arab countries, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen, can be rated as free.

He said, quoting a report by the Washington Institute, that the first three managed to absorb the strong influential Islamists into the political mainstream and they are working well within the outer secular regime.

American officials attending the closing session of the US-Islamic World Forum in Doha on April 12 said the US is ready to “accept” the involvement of Islamist groups like Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hizbullah in the reform process should they understand “the rules of the game”.

“They firstly should put down arms and then take part in the democratic process underway in their country,” Peter W. Singer of the Washington-based Brookings Institution, told the session.