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PDF FormatWhat should be done when an Islamist party is elected? A recent example is Hamas’ victory in the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. The U.S. should on the one hand acknowledge the democratic legitimacy of the new government and on the other make it clear that, first, it will relinquish such acknowledgment should the new government attempt to dismantle the very democratic means that brought it to power, and, second, reiterate that it reserves the right to protect itself from regimes that threaten its security, regardless of whether they are democratically elected. The U.S. stance of both endorsing the Palestinians’ right to choose their leaders and refusing to supply the elected terrorist organization with foreign aid was the right one, but it was done, like all U.S. democratization policy in the region, as a reaction to the particular situation, rather than as the impartial implementation of a larger policy.
In the end, political reform cannot be viewed as an insurance policy taken out by the West against the possibility of democracy sustaining some blows. Liberal reform may bring to power irresponsible regimes. It may even bring to power tyrants worse than the previous ones. But if we take the long view, we must conclude that regional processes of democratization, despite the inevitable setbacks, can only contribute to the struggle against fanaticism and violence.
In the final analysis, the American doctrine whose lines were sketched out here will gain credibility only if it is portrayed as a doctrine—that is, not as a series of unconnected actions, but rather as a long-term and binding concept. By presenting it in this way, America will admit its past mistakes and renounce its past errors—a move that will reflect great moral strength, not weakness. Particularly in the eyes of the Arab world, which considers America too arrogant, too patronizing, and too hypocritical, America’s new stance will likely be greeted as refreshing news, and may have the added benefit of liberating latent liberal forces. True, there will always be those who see in this doctrine yet another Western imperialist plot. But given time, it is possible that bold and direct American policy might go some distance toward dispelling that ingrained suspicion.
Opponents of the war in Iraq who call for an admission of failure and retreat perpetuate the concept of Arab “uniqueness,” or the idea that there is something inherent in Arab societies that requires both their inhabitants and the West to accept the illiberal character of their regimes. Yet if they insist on resigning themselves to an anti-democratic, “Islamic civilization,” what do they make of the fact that Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, has had a stable democracy since 1998, in which multiple Islamic parties participate?28 Often these are the same people who point to the lack of a successful democratic tradition in Arab countries, yet ignore the fact that other countries with an authoritarian heritage, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, have nonetheless adopted the democratic form of government with great success. So, too, do they ignore the fact that when Arab societies in different periods were granted the opportunity to participate in free elections, they embraced them. Finally, they may point to the economic hardship suffered by some Arab countries as the reason for democracy’s failure to thrive on their soil, although democratic regimes have risen to power in poor countries just as often as in wealthy ones. In sum, since the global democratic revolution began several decades ago, it has crossed cultures, religions, and economies. If there is one lesson that scholars of democracy have learned, it is that the primary conditions for this form of regime to prosper are external incentives and an internal elite determined to make it work.
President Bush was right, therefore, when he stated that there is nothing unique in the Arab world that prevents it from becoming democratic. He was also right when he insisted that there is no reason why Arab countries should be any different from Japan and Germany, the Latin American republics, the countries of the former Soviet bloc, and the tigers of Southeast Asia, most of whom exchanged tyranny for democracy. His mistake lies in ignoring one phenomenon that is unique to the Arab world-the dominance of a mindset that combines a desire for democracy with a genuine, cross-party fear of Western intentions.29 It is possible that to untangle this Gordian knot, America must persist in wielding its sword. Yet the sword alone will never be enough.
In the end, political reform cannot be viewed as an insurance policy taken out by the West against the possibility of democracy sustaining some blows. Liberal reform may bring to power irresponsible regimes. It may even bring to power tyrants worse than the previous ones. But if we take the long view, we must conclude that regional processes of democratization, despite the inevitable setbacks, can only contribute to the struggle against fanaticism and violence.
In the final analysis, the American doctrine whose lines were sketched out here will gain credibility only if it is portrayed as a doctrine—that is, not as a series of unconnected actions, but rather as a long-term and binding concept. By presenting it in this way, America will admit its past mistakes and renounce its past errors—a move that will reflect great moral strength, not weakness. Particularly in the eyes of the Arab world, which considers America too arrogant, too patronizing, and too hypocritical, America’s new stance will likely be greeted as refreshing news, and may have the added benefit of liberating latent liberal forces. True, there will always be those who see in this doctrine yet another Western imperialist plot. But given time, it is possible that bold and direct American policy might go some distance toward dispelling that ingrained suspicion.
Opponents of the war in Iraq who call for an admission of failure and retreat perpetuate the concept of Arab “uniqueness,” or the idea that there is something inherent in Arab societies that requires both their inhabitants and the West to accept the illiberal character of their regimes. Yet if they insist on resigning themselves to an anti-democratic, “Islamic civilization,” what do they make of the fact that Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, has had a stable democracy since 1998, in which multiple Islamic parties participate?28 Often these are the same people who point to the lack of a successful democratic tradition in Arab countries, yet ignore the fact that other countries with an authoritarian heritage, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, have nonetheless adopted the democratic form of government with great success. So, too, do they ignore the fact that when Arab societies in different periods were granted the opportunity to participate in free elections, they embraced them. Finally, they may point to the economic hardship suffered by some Arab countries as the reason for democracy’s failure to thrive on their soil, although democratic regimes have risen to power in poor countries just as often as in wealthy ones. In sum, since the global democratic revolution began several decades ago, it has crossed cultures, religions, and economies. If there is one lesson that scholars of democracy have learned, it is that the primary conditions for this form of regime to prosper are external incentives and an internal elite determined to make it work.
President Bush was right, therefore, when he stated that there is nothing unique in the Arab world that prevents it from becoming democratic. He was also right when he insisted that there is no reason why Arab countries should be any different from Japan and Germany, the Latin American republics, the countries of the former Soviet bloc, and the tigers of Southeast Asia, most of whom exchanged tyranny for democracy. His mistake lies in ignoring one phenomenon that is unique to the Arab world-the dominance of a mindset that combines a desire for democracy with a genuine, cross-party fear of Western intentions.29 It is possible that to untangle this Gordian knot, America must persist in wielding its sword. Yet the sword alone will never be enough.
Uriya Shavit is the author of A Dawn of an Old Era: The Imaginary Revolution in the Middle East (Keter, 2003) [Hebrew].
Notes
The author wishes to thank Joseph Kostiner and Eyal Zisser for their assistance.
1. The arguments against President Bush’s exploits are not confined merely to leftist groups in America and Europe that were opposed to the war in Iraq and the American democratization initiatives from the outset (usually on the basis of the belief that these were ill-judged imperialist campaigns designed to serve the interests of the oil industry and the defense contractors in the United States). The Bush doctrine came under attack by intellectuals, journalists, and retired government officials of the realist school, as well. This group was not convinced of the logic of the president’s strategy, describing it as unsystematic, and warning that the struggle to democratize the Middle East was liable to plunge the region into chaos. Zbigniew Brzezinski, formerly President Carter’s national security adviser, cautioned that imposed democracy was liable to lead to undesirable results, and warned that in free elections in Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden could well defeat King Abdullah; F. Gregory Gause III, director of the University of Vermont’s Middle East Studies Program, concluded that the democratization of the Middle East could, contrary to George Bush’s declared view, increase terror in the region; and Eric Margolis, a Canadian newspaper columnist, likened the American administration to a bull in a china shop with no real interest in democratization, but concerned rather with the ascendancy of more sympathetic and less despotic regimes, and then only if they served American interests. Margolis estimated that the main problem with Bush’s democratization program was the fact that Osama Bin Laden was the most popular figure in the Arab world. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Wrong Way to Sell Democracy to the Arab World,” New York Times, March 8, 2004, p. A19; F. Gregory Gause III, “Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?” Foreign Affairs 84:5 (September-October 2005), pp. 62-86; Eric Margolis, “Arab Democracy Just an Illusion?” Toronto Sun, March 13, 2005.
2. This view forms the basis for the explanations offered by several senior Orientalists for the lack of democracy in the Middle East. See, for example, Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture, second ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1994).
3. According to this view, which has informed Egyptian historiography, the meeting of the Egyptian ulama (religious scholars) was the first landmark in Egypt’s recognition of political rights, and the establishment of the consultative council was the second. This view can obviously be used to present democratic development in Egypt as isolated from exclusively British influence on the one hand, and more sustained and constant than it is customarily described on the other. On this subject, see Yunan Labib Rizk, “Constitutional Reflections,” Al-Ahram Weekly, October 17-23, 2002.
4. See the discussion of the evolution of the word Shura in modern Arab writing in Ami Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Political Discourse (New York: Oxford, 1987), pp. 110-126.
5. Faisal Ahmad Othman al-Haidar, Documents of the Democratic and Political Movement in Kuwait from 1921 Until 1992 (Kuwait: That al-Salasel, 1995), pp. 9-12 [Arabic]; John E. Peterson, The Arab Gulf States: Steps Towards Political Participation (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 29.
6. Fuad Hamza, Saudi Arabia (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Nasr al-Haditha, 1968), pp. 98-101 [Arabic].
7. On this concept in Nasserist ideology, see Gamal Abd al-Nasser, The Philosophy of the Revolution (Buffalo: Smith, Keynes & Marshall, 1959), pp. 36-37, 43-44; see also Nasser’s speech of July 22, 1959 to mark the seventh anniversary of the revolution, as quoted in Gamal Abd al-Nasser, “The Way of the Struggle,” in This Is Our Way (Cairo: 1961), pp. 34-74 [Arabic]. During the 1940s and 1950s the Baath party operated in Syria as a parliamentary movement in every way. Its constitution determined that the nation was sovereign and the source of the government’s authority, and that the shape of any future government would be “parliamentary and constitutional” (nizam niabi dusturi), in which “the Executive Authority is responsible before the Legislative Authority, which is directly elected by the people.” The promise by the Baath to bring about a revolution in both the consciousness of the Arab nation and its political structure was bound up with the promise that this revolution be a democratic one-that is to say, by winning a majority in parliament. The declaration of intentions written at the request of the party’s founder, Michel Aflak, made it clear that the Baath would take power only when it could achieve its objectives, and that “this will not happen unless the party wins a majority of seats in parliament.” See the fifth paragraph of the general principles in the Baath Constitution and clause 14 in “The Internal Policy of the Party,” as it was printed in the Arab socialist Baath party’s Constitution. The Struggle of the Baath for Unity, Freedom and Socialism (Beirut: Dar al-Talia, 1963), pp. 174-175, 176 [Arabic] or in English at www.baath-party.org/eng/constitution.htm; see also the document of Baath principles by Abdullah Abd al-Dayim and Shaker Mustapha in Zuhair Mardini, The Teacher: The Story of Michel Aflak (London: Riad al-Rayyes, 1988), pp. 349-355 [Arabic]; for the clause cited, see p. 355.
8. For example, in Bahrain in 1975, the Emir Sheikh Isa Ibn Salman Al Khalifa dissolved a parliament that had been elected under the constitution two years earlier. He imprisoned opponents of the regime and suspended the clause in the constitution that made it necessary to hold new elections. One year later, the emir of Kuwait Jabir al-Ahmed Al Sabah dissolved the parliament that had been elected under the constitution adopted in 1962, and suspended the constitutional clauses that required the consent of the assembly to changes in the constitution and forbade its suspension except during a state of emergency. See Rosmarie Said Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf State: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 49-54; Peterson, Arab Gulf States, p. 39.
9. For a discussion of the objectives of American foreign policy after World War II, see Bernard Reich, “United States Interests in the Middle East,” in Haim Shaked and Itamar Rabinovich, eds., The Middle East and the United States: Perceptions and Policies (New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Books, 1980), pp. 53-92.
10. Wahid Abd al-Majid, head of the Cairo extension of the Center for Arab Unity Studies (an independent research center of nationalist intellectuals based in Beirut and the most open forum in the Arab world for discussions on democracy), argued at a conference held in the Egyptian capital in April 1990 under the title “The Future of Democracy in the Arab Homeland,” that as a result of events in Eastern Europe, adherents of the view that there are different models of democracy lack the most convincing proof of this claim, because the nations that overthrew the Leninist-Marxist regimes wanted only the Western model of democracy. Wahid Abd al-Majid, “On the Future of Democracy in the Arab Homeland (background document),” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 138 (August 1990), pp. 80, 86-92. Another prominent spokesman for this view is Ismail Sabri Abdallah, Nasser’s minister of planning and, in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the foremost voices for the establishment of a social democracy before a political democracy. In a lecture he delivered in London in May 1990, he argued that Arab societies no longer have to wait for certain conditions to be created in order to switch to democracy, because “democracy is not a gift that will be granted one of these days; it is achieved through struggle, and as a result of the struggle, which is sometimes violent and sometimes conciliatory.” Moreover, he insisted that democracy “always requires the presence of an internal strength in society that will protect it until it becomes a general demand that people are willing to rebel for.” The lecture was published as an article in Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi. See Ismail Sabri Abdallah, “The Future of Democracy in the Arab Homeland,” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 137 (July 1990), p. 9.
11. Turki Abdullah al-Sudairi, “An Exceptional Democracy,” Al-Riyadh, August 23, 1989.
12. For example, the editor of the culture section of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar, Elias Khouri, claimed that the real reason for the Gulf War was not to be found in the invasion of Kuwait, for when, he asked, did the United States ever wage a war of liberation? In his view, to understand the causes of the war you have to return to the two central pillars of imperialistic behavior, which have remained unchanged since the nineteenth century: The first is the desire to prevent Arabs from creating a strong army, and the second is the desire to thwart Arab unity, born of the belief that a fragmented Arab nation will not be able to realize the potential of its national resources, or create a modern culture. Similarly, Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian lecturer in political science at the Sorbonne (and future head of its Center for Studies of the Contemporary Middle East) concluded that the real cause of the Gulf War was not the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, but American and European hostility towards Arabs-a hostility that is greater than the West’s hostility towards any other nation, and arising inter alia from the competition between their two distinct cultures and the recognition that Islam is the strongest power opposing Western hegemony in the post-Soviet era. See Elias Khouri, “Independence and Democracy,” in Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajani, ed., The Gulf Crisis and Its Implementations on the Arab Homeland, second ed. (Beirut: Marcaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-Arabiyya, 1997), pp. 39-40 [Arabic]; Burhan Ghalioun, “The Gulf War and the Strategic Conflict in the Arab Area,” in Gulf Crisis, pp. 17-20.
13. For example, the Syrian intellectual Abdullah Abd al-Dayim, who resides in France, wrote that in spite of the liberal pretensions of the West and “its false claim concerning the values of the liberal-democrat, international civilization,” what really interested him was the seizure of the natural wealth of the southern world, which includes the Arab world. Similarly, the international relations researcher at the American University of Beirut, Nasif Yusuf Hata, argued that the West’s victory over communism “is in no way ‘the end of history’ as Fukuyama had described it,” because this victory is no more than a partial achievement over a value system that belongs to the same utilitarian philosophical framework whose origin is in Europe. See Abdullah Abd al-Dayim, “The Arab Nationalism and the New World Order,” Shu’un Arabiyya 69 (March 1992), pp. 22-34; Nasif Yusuf Hata, “Changes in the World Order and the New State of Mind and Its Reflections on the Regional Arab Order,” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 165 (March 1992), pp. 29-44.
14. For the complete text of the interview, see Ukaz, March 29, 1992.
15. For the complete text of the interview, see Tishrin, March 13, 1992.
16. Bin Laden’s movement is neither “post-modern” nor “amorphous,” as some commentators have taken to describing it. Throughout the 1990s, Bin Laden gave voice to a desire that resonated among the Saudi religious youth and that became, in the wake of the invitation of American troops to Saudi Arabia in August 1990, cause for a mass protest movement-the desire to drive out all American forces from the Arabian Peninsula in particular and from Muslim lands in general. The difference between Bin Laden and his counterparts in the Saudi opposition was his determination to give armed expression to this idea, a determination inspired by the ideas of Abdallah Azam, the Palestinian leader of the jihad movement in Afghanistan who was killed in 1989. Bin Laden was expelled from Saudi Arabia to the Sudan in 1991, and there, thanks to his family wealth and the links he had forged during the time he spent with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, he began to establish a terrorist network intended to drive out the West from the Middle East. This network’s purpose was best articulated in the World Islamic Front declaration of “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders” drafted under Bin Laden’s leadership in February 1998. The declaration stated that the American presence on Saudi territory, in the Gulf, and in Iraq was “a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims,” and therefore every Muslim is obliged to “kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military” anywhere they can. For a draft of the declaration see Al-Quds al-Arabi, February 23, 1998; www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/98022-fatwa.htm. For a concise discussion of the development of the Bin Laden movement and its ideology see Uriya Shavit, “Al-Qaida’s Saudi Roots,” Middle East Quarterly 13:4 (2006), pp. 3-13; Joshua Teitelbaum, “Osama Bin Laden: The Saudi Background,” in Esther Webman, ed., In the Wake of September 11: Islam and the West—Clash or Coexistence (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center, 2002), pp. 43-48 [Hebrew]; Esther Webman, The Writing That Was on the Wall: Osama Bin Laden, The Man and His Deeds (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center, 2002) [Hebrew].
17. The belief that the neo-conservatives acted as the political planners of the current American administration—among other reasons, because they succeeded in setting out a clear view concerning the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 attacks, when the administration was in need of just such a view—is held in common by both neo-conservative thinkers and their most bitter opponents. See Joshua Muravchik, “The Neo-Conservative Cabal,” Commentary 116 (September 2003), pp. 26-33; Stephan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2004), pp. 112-156.
18. For an analysis of President Bush’s speeches in which the principles of this doctrine were set out (on the eve of the second Gulf War and after it), see www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030226-11.html; www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/26019.htm.
19. In the same vein, Egyptian writer Hussein Ahmad Amin argued in an article he published in the journal of the Arab League, Shu’un Arabiyya, that America went to war to bring down Saddam Hussein after the failure of its previous attempts to secure complete and unshakeable hegemony in the world, inter alia through global institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and to rule it “economically, politically, and culturally.” The war in Iraq is no different, in his view, from the conquests of Alexander the Great; the only difference is that Alexander the Great did not discuss the rights of man when he set forth to expand the area of his rule. See Hussein Ahmad Amin, “The Place of Democracy in the American War Against Iraq,” Shu’un Arabiyya 113 (Spring 2003), pp. 55-67.
20. Khair al-Din Hasib, “The Probable Forecasts in Iraq,” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 307 (September 2004), pp. 6-30.
21. Turki al-Hamad, “Walking in a Minefield,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, March 7, 2004.
22. See, for example, Mubarak’s speech at the opening of the conference on “Arab Reform: Vision and Implementation,” held in Alexandria on March 12, 2004. Mubarak stated that democratic reform had to be based on “agreement and harmony between Arab governments and their people” and that “all Arab countries were making enormous efforts to achieve structural and organizational reforms in all areas of political, economic, and social life within the framework required to achieve a delicate balance between the positive and negative effects of reform, taking into account the variety of cultural, religious, and demographic sensitivities of each society and the need not to upset its stability.” See “Mubarak Stresses That the Arab World Begins a New Stage,” Al-Ahram, March 13, 2004. See also an article by Ahmad Salim al-Bursan in the Al-Ahram journal on strategic studies according to which the objective of the “Greater Middle East” plan presented at the conference of industrialized nations was to break down the Arab cultural structure and alter the social framework of the countries in the region in a way that would serve American interests. Ahmad Salim al-Bursan, “The Greater Middle East Initiative: The Political and Strategic Dimensions,” Al-Siyasa al-Dawliyya 158 (October 2004), pp. 42-47; in addition, Khaled Daoud published a series of articles of unusual scope in Al-Ahram, in which he analyzed Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), and explained that the declaration by the United States president that this book reflected the DNA of his presidency showed that he had adopted a hypocritical and unbalanced policy that purports to promote democracy in the Middle East, but in fact serves Zionist interests. Al-Ahram, February 15, 2005; February 16, 2005; February 17, 2005; February 22, 2005; February 28, 2005; March 1, 2005. One commentary published in Al-Ahram even described Mubarak’s decision to hold multi-party elections as an act that attested to the president’s great accomplishments, which in turn made it unnecessary to choose any other candidate: Hatem Sidqi, “Therefore… I Will Not Elect Mubarak,” Al-Ahram, August 30, 2005.
23. Voter turnout was particularly low, considering that the government employed all its resources to draw its faithful to the polling stations. In fact, it could even be said that the vast majority of the Egyptian public chose to boycott the elections, or simply ignored them.
24. Joshua Muravchik, “A Democracy Policy in Ashes,” Washington Post, June 27, 2006.
25. For an analysis of the rise and fall of the “Damascus Spring,” see Uriya Shavit, A Dawn of an Old Era: The Imaginary Revolution in the Middle East (Jerusalem: Keter, 2003), pp. 193-214 [Hebrew]. For an interview with and profile of the leader of the Syrian liberal opposition movement, Riyadh Seif, see Lina Sinjab, “Seif’s Release Renews Hope for a Damascus Spring,” The Daily Star, January 23, 2006.
26. Shavit, Dawn of an Old Era, pp. 164-189.
27. For a discussion of the establishment and political doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood, see Haidar Ibrahim Ali, The Islamic Streams and the Democratic Issue (Beirut: Marcaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-Arabiyya, 1996), pp. 54-65, 164-166, 193-210 [Arabic]; for the opinion of the movement’s founder, Hassan al-Bana, on the necessity of revitalizing the rule of Islam and repelling the West, see Hassan al-Bana, “The Tendency of the New Revival in the Islamic World Toward Islam,” in Toward a Muslim Generation: The Fundaments of Islam and the Social Order (Cairo: al-Markaz al-Islami lil-Dirasat wal-Buhuth, 1991), pp. 5-12 [Arabic].
28. It is interesting to note that the success (at least for the present) of the democratic revolution in Indonesia is scarcely referred to in writings about the future of democracy in the Middle East. Parties that identify themselves as Muslim have been part of the democratic process in Indonesia for the last eight years; both their ascension to power and their relinquishing of it are remarkable for a country that has (like all Arab countries) no robust democratic tradition. The Indonesian experience may provide proof that a reliable democratization process, including systems of checks and balances and supported by vigorous (but non-violent) pressure to preserve and promote it, may successfully integrate Islamic movements. It is possible, of course, to point to differences between the Indonesian political Islam and the Arab one; but even these differences simply demonstrate that “Islam” is not a monolithic, meta-historical entity.
29. Drawing a connection between adopting the Western form of government and surrendering to Western values is not only the work of the Arab world. Such arguments were prevalent in the past and, to some extent, still are in the Iberian and Southeast Asian countries. The fundamental difference is that it is difficult to find Spaniards or Singaporeans who truly believe that the West is desirous-or capable-of ruling their countries by force and enslaving them to its own interests. On the other hand, the fear of democratic imperialism is common to many groups in the Arab world. This fear has become even more profound following the war in Iraq. Hence the Gordian knot discussed in this article, which is indeed, at least in this form, unique to the Arabs.
Notes
The author wishes to thank Joseph Kostiner and Eyal Zisser for their assistance.
1. The arguments against President Bush’s exploits are not confined merely to leftist groups in America and Europe that were opposed to the war in Iraq and the American democratization initiatives from the outset (usually on the basis of the belief that these were ill-judged imperialist campaigns designed to serve the interests of the oil industry and the defense contractors in the United States). The Bush doctrine came under attack by intellectuals, journalists, and retired government officials of the realist school, as well. This group was not convinced of the logic of the president’s strategy, describing it as unsystematic, and warning that the struggle to democratize the Middle East was liable to plunge the region into chaos. Zbigniew Brzezinski, formerly President Carter’s national security adviser, cautioned that imposed democracy was liable to lead to undesirable results, and warned that in free elections in Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden could well defeat King Abdullah; F. Gregory Gause III, director of the University of Vermont’s Middle East Studies Program, concluded that the democratization of the Middle East could, contrary to George Bush’s declared view, increase terror in the region; and Eric Margolis, a Canadian newspaper columnist, likened the American administration to a bull in a china shop with no real interest in democratization, but concerned rather with the ascendancy of more sympathetic and less despotic regimes, and then only if they served American interests. Margolis estimated that the main problem with Bush’s democratization program was the fact that Osama Bin Laden was the most popular figure in the Arab world. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Wrong Way to Sell Democracy to the Arab World,” New York Times, March 8, 2004, p. A19; F. Gregory Gause III, “Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?” Foreign Affairs 84:5 (September-October 2005), pp. 62-86; Eric Margolis, “Arab Democracy Just an Illusion?” Toronto Sun, March 13, 2005.
2. This view forms the basis for the explanations offered by several senior Orientalists for the lack of democracy in the Middle East. See, for example, Elie Kedourie, Democracy and Arab Political Culture, second ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1994).
3. According to this view, which has informed Egyptian historiography, the meeting of the Egyptian ulama (religious scholars) was the first landmark in Egypt’s recognition of political rights, and the establishment of the consultative council was the second. This view can obviously be used to present democratic development in Egypt as isolated from exclusively British influence on the one hand, and more sustained and constant than it is customarily described on the other. On this subject, see Yunan Labib Rizk, “Constitutional Reflections,” Al-Ahram Weekly, October 17-23, 2002.
4. See the discussion of the evolution of the word Shura in modern Arab writing in Ami Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Political Discourse (New York: Oxford, 1987), pp. 110-126.
5. Faisal Ahmad Othman al-Haidar, Documents of the Democratic and Political Movement in Kuwait from 1921 Until 1992 (Kuwait: That al-Salasel, 1995), pp. 9-12 [Arabic]; John E. Peterson, The Arab Gulf States: Steps Towards Political Participation (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 29.
6. Fuad Hamza, Saudi Arabia (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Nasr al-Haditha, 1968), pp. 98-101 [Arabic].
7. On this concept in Nasserist ideology, see Gamal Abd al-Nasser, The Philosophy of the Revolution (Buffalo: Smith, Keynes & Marshall, 1959), pp. 36-37, 43-44; see also Nasser’s speech of July 22, 1959 to mark the seventh anniversary of the revolution, as quoted in Gamal Abd al-Nasser, “The Way of the Struggle,” in This Is Our Way (Cairo: 1961), pp. 34-74 [Arabic]. During the 1940s and 1950s the Baath party operated in Syria as a parliamentary movement in every way. Its constitution determined that the nation was sovereign and the source of the government’s authority, and that the shape of any future government would be “parliamentary and constitutional” (nizam niabi dusturi), in which “the Executive Authority is responsible before the Legislative Authority, which is directly elected by the people.” The promise by the Baath to bring about a revolution in both the consciousness of the Arab nation and its political structure was bound up with the promise that this revolution be a democratic one-that is to say, by winning a majority in parliament. The declaration of intentions written at the request of the party’s founder, Michel Aflak, made it clear that the Baath would take power only when it could achieve its objectives, and that “this will not happen unless the party wins a majority of seats in parliament.” See the fifth paragraph of the general principles in the Baath Constitution and clause 14 in “The Internal Policy of the Party,” as it was printed in the Arab socialist Baath party’s Constitution. The Struggle of the Baath for Unity, Freedom and Socialism (Beirut: Dar al-Talia, 1963), pp. 174-175, 176 [Arabic] or in English at www.baath-party.org/eng/constitution.htm; see also the document of Baath principles by Abdullah Abd al-Dayim and Shaker Mustapha in Zuhair Mardini, The Teacher: The Story of Michel Aflak (London: Riad al-Rayyes, 1988), pp. 349-355 [Arabic]; for the clause cited, see p. 355.
8. For example, in Bahrain in 1975, the Emir Sheikh Isa Ibn Salman Al Khalifa dissolved a parliament that had been elected under the constitution two years earlier. He imprisoned opponents of the regime and suspended the clause in the constitution that made it necessary to hold new elections. One year later, the emir of Kuwait Jabir al-Ahmed Al Sabah dissolved the parliament that had been elected under the constitution adopted in 1962, and suspended the constitutional clauses that required the consent of the assembly to changes in the constitution and forbade its suspension except during a state of emergency. See Rosmarie Said Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf State: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 49-54; Peterson, Arab Gulf States, p. 39.
9. For a discussion of the objectives of American foreign policy after World War II, see Bernard Reich, “United States Interests in the Middle East,” in Haim Shaked and Itamar Rabinovich, eds., The Middle East and the United States: Perceptions and Policies (New Brunswick, N.J. : Transaction Books, 1980), pp. 53-92.
10. Wahid Abd al-Majid, head of the Cairo extension of the Center for Arab Unity Studies (an independent research center of nationalist intellectuals based in Beirut and the most open forum in the Arab world for discussions on democracy), argued at a conference held in the Egyptian capital in April 1990 under the title “The Future of Democracy in the Arab Homeland,” that as a result of events in Eastern Europe, adherents of the view that there are different models of democracy lack the most convincing proof of this claim, because the nations that overthrew the Leninist-Marxist regimes wanted only the Western model of democracy. Wahid Abd al-Majid, “On the Future of Democracy in the Arab Homeland (background document),” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 138 (August 1990), pp. 80, 86-92. Another prominent spokesman for this view is Ismail Sabri Abdallah, Nasser’s minister of planning and, in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the foremost voices for the establishment of a social democracy before a political democracy. In a lecture he delivered in London in May 1990, he argued that Arab societies no longer have to wait for certain conditions to be created in order to switch to democracy, because “democracy is not a gift that will be granted one of these days; it is achieved through struggle, and as a result of the struggle, which is sometimes violent and sometimes conciliatory.” Moreover, he insisted that democracy “always requires the presence of an internal strength in society that will protect it until it becomes a general demand that people are willing to rebel for.” The lecture was published as an article in Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi. See Ismail Sabri Abdallah, “The Future of Democracy in the Arab Homeland,” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 137 (July 1990), p. 9.
11. Turki Abdullah al-Sudairi, “An Exceptional Democracy,” Al-Riyadh, August 23, 1989.
12. For example, the editor of the culture section of the Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar, Elias Khouri, claimed that the real reason for the Gulf War was not to be found in the invasion of Kuwait, for when, he asked, did the United States ever wage a war of liberation? In his view, to understand the causes of the war you have to return to the two central pillars of imperialistic behavior, which have remained unchanged since the nineteenth century: The first is the desire to prevent Arabs from creating a strong army, and the second is the desire to thwart Arab unity, born of the belief that a fragmented Arab nation will not be able to realize the potential of its national resources, or create a modern culture. Similarly, Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian lecturer in political science at the Sorbonne (and future head of its Center for Studies of the Contemporary Middle East) concluded that the real cause of the Gulf War was not the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, but American and European hostility towards Arabs-a hostility that is greater than the West’s hostility towards any other nation, and arising inter alia from the competition between their two distinct cultures and the recognition that Islam is the strongest power opposing Western hegemony in the post-Soviet era. See Elias Khouri, “Independence and Democracy,” in Ahmad Sidqi al-Dajani, ed., The Gulf Crisis and Its Implementations on the Arab Homeland, second ed. (Beirut: Marcaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-Arabiyya, 1997), pp. 39-40 [Arabic]; Burhan Ghalioun, “The Gulf War and the Strategic Conflict in the Arab Area,” in Gulf Crisis, pp. 17-20.
13. For example, the Syrian intellectual Abdullah Abd al-Dayim, who resides in France, wrote that in spite of the liberal pretensions of the West and “its false claim concerning the values of the liberal-democrat, international civilization,” what really interested him was the seizure of the natural wealth of the southern world, which includes the Arab world. Similarly, the international relations researcher at the American University of Beirut, Nasif Yusuf Hata, argued that the West’s victory over communism “is in no way ‘the end of history’ as Fukuyama had described it,” because this victory is no more than a partial achievement over a value system that belongs to the same utilitarian philosophical framework whose origin is in Europe. See Abdullah Abd al-Dayim, “The Arab Nationalism and the New World Order,” Shu’un Arabiyya 69 (March 1992), pp. 22-34; Nasif Yusuf Hata, “Changes in the World Order and the New State of Mind and Its Reflections on the Regional Arab Order,” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 165 (March 1992), pp. 29-44.
14. For the complete text of the interview, see Ukaz, March 29, 1992.
15. For the complete text of the interview, see Tishrin, March 13, 1992.
16. Bin Laden’s movement is neither “post-modern” nor “amorphous,” as some commentators have taken to describing it. Throughout the 1990s, Bin Laden gave voice to a desire that resonated among the Saudi religious youth and that became, in the wake of the invitation of American troops to Saudi Arabia in August 1990, cause for a mass protest movement-the desire to drive out all American forces from the Arabian Peninsula in particular and from Muslim lands in general. The difference between Bin Laden and his counterparts in the Saudi opposition was his determination to give armed expression to this idea, a determination inspired by the ideas of Abdallah Azam, the Palestinian leader of the jihad movement in Afghanistan who was killed in 1989. Bin Laden was expelled from Saudi Arabia to the Sudan in 1991, and there, thanks to his family wealth and the links he had forged during the time he spent with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, he began to establish a terrorist network intended to drive out the West from the Middle East. This network’s purpose was best articulated in the World Islamic Front declaration of “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders” drafted under Bin Laden’s leadership in February 1998. The declaration stated that the American presence on Saudi territory, in the Gulf, and in Iraq was “a clear declaration of war on Allah, his messenger, and Muslims,” and therefore every Muslim is obliged to “kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military” anywhere they can. For a draft of the declaration see Al-Quds al-Arabi, February 23, 1998; www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/98022-fatwa.htm. For a concise discussion of the development of the Bin Laden movement and its ideology see Uriya Shavit, “Al-Qaida’s Saudi Roots,” Middle East Quarterly 13:4 (2006), pp. 3-13; Joshua Teitelbaum, “Osama Bin Laden: The Saudi Background,” in Esther Webman, ed., In the Wake of September 11: Islam and the West—Clash or Coexistence (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center, 2002), pp. 43-48 [Hebrew]; Esther Webman, The Writing That Was on the Wall: Osama Bin Laden, The Man and His Deeds (Tel Aviv: Dayan Center, 2002) [Hebrew].
17. The belief that the neo-conservatives acted as the political planners of the current American administration—among other reasons, because they succeeded in setting out a clear view concerning the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 attacks, when the administration was in need of just such a view—is held in common by both neo-conservative thinkers and their most bitter opponents. See Joshua Muravchik, “The Neo-Conservative Cabal,” Commentary 116 (September 2003), pp. 26-33; Stephan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2004), pp. 112-156.
18. For an analysis of President Bush’s speeches in which the principles of this doctrine were set out (on the eve of the second Gulf War and after it), see www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030226-11.html; www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/26019.htm.
19. In the same vein, Egyptian writer Hussein Ahmad Amin argued in an article he published in the journal of the Arab League, Shu’un Arabiyya, that America went to war to bring down Saddam Hussein after the failure of its previous attempts to secure complete and unshakeable hegemony in the world, inter alia through global institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and to rule it “economically, politically, and culturally.” The war in Iraq is no different, in his view, from the conquests of Alexander the Great; the only difference is that Alexander the Great did not discuss the rights of man when he set forth to expand the area of his rule. See Hussein Ahmad Amin, “The Place of Democracy in the American War Against Iraq,” Shu’un Arabiyya 113 (Spring 2003), pp. 55-67.
20. Khair al-Din Hasib, “The Probable Forecasts in Iraq,” Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi 307 (September 2004), pp. 6-30.
21. Turki al-Hamad, “Walking in a Minefield,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, March 7, 2004.
22. See, for example, Mubarak’s speech at the opening of the conference on “Arab Reform: Vision and Implementation,” held in Alexandria on March 12, 2004. Mubarak stated that democratic reform had to be based on “agreement and harmony between Arab governments and their people” and that “all Arab countries were making enormous efforts to achieve structural and organizational reforms in all areas of political, economic, and social life within the framework required to achieve a delicate balance between the positive and negative effects of reform, taking into account the variety of cultural, religious, and demographic sensitivities of each society and the need not to upset its stability.” See “Mubarak Stresses That the Arab World Begins a New Stage,” Al-Ahram, March 13, 2004. See also an article by Ahmad Salim al-Bursan in the Al-Ahram journal on strategic studies according to which the objective of the “Greater Middle East” plan presented at the conference of industrialized nations was to break down the Arab cultural structure and alter the social framework of the countries in the region in a way that would serve American interests. Ahmad Salim al-Bursan, “The Greater Middle East Initiative: The Political and Strategic Dimensions,” Al-Siyasa al-Dawliyya 158 (October 2004), pp. 42-47; in addition, Khaled Daoud published a series of articles of unusual scope in Al-Ahram, in which he analyzed Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), and explained that the declaration by the United States president that this book reflected the DNA of his presidency showed that he had adopted a hypocritical and unbalanced policy that purports to promote democracy in the Middle East, but in fact serves Zionist interests. Al-Ahram, February 15, 2005; February 16, 2005; February 17, 2005; February 22, 2005; February 28, 2005; March 1, 2005. One commentary published in Al-Ahram even described Mubarak’s decision to hold multi-party elections as an act that attested to the president’s great accomplishments, which in turn made it unnecessary to choose any other candidate: Hatem Sidqi, “Therefore… I Will Not Elect Mubarak,” Al-Ahram, August 30, 2005.
23. Voter turnout was particularly low, considering that the government employed all its resources to draw its faithful to the polling stations. In fact, it could even be said that the vast majority of the Egyptian public chose to boycott the elections, or simply ignored them.
24. Joshua Muravchik, “A Democracy Policy in Ashes,” Washington Post, June 27, 2006.
25. For an analysis of the rise and fall of the “Damascus Spring,” see Uriya Shavit, A Dawn of an Old Era: The Imaginary Revolution in the Middle East (Jerusalem: Keter, 2003), pp. 193-214 [Hebrew]. For an interview with and profile of the leader of the Syrian liberal opposition movement, Riyadh Seif, see Lina Sinjab, “Seif’s Release Renews Hope for a Damascus Spring,” The Daily Star, January 23, 2006.
26. Shavit, Dawn of an Old Era, pp. 164-189.
27. For a discussion of the establishment and political doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood, see Haidar Ibrahim Ali, The Islamic Streams and the Democratic Issue (Beirut: Marcaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-Arabiyya, 1996), pp. 54-65, 164-166, 193-210 [Arabic]; for the opinion of the movement’s founder, Hassan al-Bana, on the necessity of revitalizing the rule of Islam and repelling the West, see Hassan al-Bana, “The Tendency of the New Revival in the Islamic World Toward Islam,” in Toward a Muslim Generation: The Fundaments of Islam and the Social Order (Cairo: al-Markaz al-Islami lil-Dirasat wal-Buhuth, 1991), pp. 5-12 [Arabic].
28. It is interesting to note that the success (at least for the present) of the democratic revolution in Indonesia is scarcely referred to in writings about the future of democracy in the Middle East. Parties that identify themselves as Muslim have been part of the democratic process in Indonesia for the last eight years; both their ascension to power and their relinquishing of it are remarkable for a country that has (like all Arab countries) no robust democratic tradition. The Indonesian experience may provide proof that a reliable democratization process, including systems of checks and balances and supported by vigorous (but non-violent) pressure to preserve and promote it, may successfully integrate Islamic movements. It is possible, of course, to point to differences between the Indonesian political Islam and the Arab one; but even these differences simply demonstrate that “Islam” is not a monolithic, meta-historical entity.
29. Drawing a connection between adopting the Western form of government and surrendering to Western values is not only the work of the Arab world. Such arguments were prevalent in the past and, to some extent, still are in the Iberian and Southeast Asian countries. The fundamental difference is that it is difficult to find Spaniards or Singaporeans who truly believe that the West is desirous-or capable-of ruling their countries by force and enslaving them to its own interests. On the other hand, the fear of democratic imperialism is common to many groups in the Arab world. This fear has become even more profound following the war in Iraq. Hence the Gordian knot discussed in this article, which is indeed, at least in this form, unique to the Arabs.
