INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
Political Islam and Democracy in International Relations Perspective
Viorica Ghioc SPE II 41695ctd49ohc1g I chose for the paper the theoretical approach. First, I will try to give a definition to the Political Islam and analyse it as ideology as well. Next, I will attempt to discover the relation of the Islamist countries with the democratic ones. Another point of the research will be the analysis of the possibilities of Islamic states to develop external relations with other states, be them democratic or not. I shall begin by defining some key concepts when talking about the Middle East and of the Islamic world. In Arab Islam means “subjection to god”, it is firstly a religious doctrine as much as an assembly of juridical and ethical norms. It belongs to the same family of monotheistic religions as Christianity and Judaism. The spiritual leader of the Islamist people, Mohamed, was not only a prophet but a ruler as well; from this respect, Islamism is similar to the Old Testament Judaism, being different from Christianity. The Islam has no clergy or clerical hierarchy, the ecclesiastical organization missing. Islamism is the term defining the ideology and movement based on the interpretation of the Islamic laws. According to this doctrine, the society must be protected from the Western “decadence”, the Western type society is a corrupted one and true believers must not accept the believes coming from the Occident. This movement took birth in the late 1920’s, early 1930’s, as a result of decolonisation, political deceptions due to the unfulfilment of the nationalist and socialist promises under the climate of the new and rather unstable independent countries in the area, and not to forget the influence of the social and economic realms. Some consider the decolonisation as the main source of the Islamist movement, others find this proccess not as the most important but as the starting point. The first outburst was the so-called “Muslim Brothers” organisation in Egypt. The real up rise took place in the 1960’s. The Islamic ideology has two models: the traditional one embraced by the Saudits, which imposes the control over behavior and ethics; the revolutionary/ Universalist model of Iranian type. Beginning with the 1990’s, a new type of Islamism developed, one having as tool violence, the armed Islamism. Basically, this ideology and movement appeared as a means of defending the traditional society and order against the Western “jeopardy”. The ideology is as well characterized by the rejection of modernity, by the continuous attempt to promote and impose religion in all the spheres of the society, in one word, integrism is feature of Islamism. Jihad is the word for “supreme effort” in Arab. This effort is one towards God. Taken strictly from a religious point of view, it means the effort to refrain the passions. Today, the term is generally known as defining the “holly war” of defending and promoting Islamism, a war that is seen as a religious obligation. The warrior, “mujahedin”, knows that fighting until the death will bring him the eternal happiness. Intifada means “revolt”. It represents a movement that started in December 1987 with “The Rocks Revolt”, when Palestinians from the Ghaza region attacked with rocks the Israelian army. Another feature of Islamism is the religious fundamentalism, the measure religion influences politics. Fundamentalism is a term which in Latin means “base”. The terroristic behavior of the states in the Middle East is nowadays related to this fundamentalism. This feature is as well part of the Islamist ideology. Fundamentalism itself is seen by some as an ideology, as religion is tightly linked to law and politics as much as to the social field. It is so related to Islamism as it is as well a way of defending the tradition. Islamism or Fundamentalism, the two terms almost coincide, are the expression of the so-called “clash of civilizations”, as Huntington stated it. The features of fundamentalism are anti-modernism, an orientation towards the glorious past, “a revolt against modernity”, being at the same time a creation of the modern era, “the illegitimate child of modernity”, as B. Parekh defines it. After the collapse of the Communist block, the new threat became the Islamic Fundamentalism. Despite all the theories about the Islamic countries rejecting modernity, it is to be understood that this doctrine rejects modernization mainly at the level of society or social order, as the countries characterized by Islamic Fundamentalism are no strangers to modern technology in all domains, and as much as the countries in the Middle East are concerned, they surely posses the latest weaponry. Fundamentalism is often seen as feature of countries in the state of crisis. The causes of the Islamic Fundamentalist movement are as I already mentioned, the end of the colonial era, event marked by the Islamic Revolution in Iran, 1978, which brought in this part of the world a strong anti-Western and anti-USA current (USA being referred to as “the Satan”), or the attempts of imposing here the Western patterns in order to reach modernization , such as the secularization, measure not compatible with the Islamic doctrine. The revolutionary Socialism did nothing more but disappoint the people and the attempts of globalization were a deterrent in the path towards finding political identity. This is the moment when religion became the only stabile pillar of the Islamic world, religion was seen as the reflection of the collective identity, taking the role of the nation, fundamentalism being seen from these respects as a branch of ethnic nationalism. Islamic Fundamentalism is regarded as an untypical political ideology, as its main issue is to identify politics with religion. Religion became in this part of the world the base for conducting the personal life, the society at all levels, the economic field, even the politics. This model is far from the Western one, there is no distinction between the private and the public sphere, as long as secularization was not accepted. Parekh finds again a new formula for defining the issue: modernity is limited by religion as much as religion is limited by modernity, meaning that naturally there is a balance between rejecting modernity and conducting according to religion. The militancy is another characteristic of fundamentalist states. It becomes illegal at the moment where violence is seen as only means of solving problems. Terrorism must be taken into account at this point. The justification for terrorist acts is that as long as the bad elements are eliminated, no matter the ways it is done, the will of god is fulfilled. The Islamic countries share a kind of common identity, and some even talk about the “Islamic nation” made out of states with the same religion, language, with similar history. Others consider this kind of approach as the root of the misjudgings concerning the Muslim countries, this “monolithic” approach of all the Islamist countries. There is pluralism in the Muslim world, each country has its own rules and customs, the Islam may be used as a moral guide, but with different intensities. It is no doubt that the religion offers to the Islamic countries a common set of values but, the assumptions that the religion namely replaced the other means of expressing identity seem quite exaggerated. The general view of the Islamic region in the Western eyes is dominated by the identification of the Islam with terrorism, fundamentalism, lack of freedoms of all kinds, in general all that opposes liberal democracy is synonymous with political Islam. However, this part of the world cannot be governed by the desire of being evil. It must be noticed that such principles as freedom, human dignity, equality, social contract between rulers and ruled, popular sovereignty, the rule of law are common to both liberal and Islamic worlds but yet, they are applied differently, holding different meanings for the people. Historically, the Muslim citizens are politically passive. In their languages there are no terms for “citizen”, “citizenship”, as well as for some terms specific to the Western type of politics, such as “secular”, “secularization”, “layman”, “laity”. After the collapse of the Communist block, the Islamic region became the new threat to Democracy and the Western powers took the decision of imposing their model to the Middle East, considering it the best to follow. It is true that the two kinds of regimes are different, even antithetical, but this change should be gradual. Maybe the West forgot that it took to it some centuries to achieve liberal democracy. The economical interests of some Western powers in the area should not be ignored. According to some Muslim scholars, the hostility of the countries in the area towards Western values comes from this fear that by trying to guide the Islamic countries towards liberal democracy, secularization and the western political model in general, the West attempts to impose a new way of dominating the region. Another argument against liberal democracy is that, in spite of the Western belief that the liberal values provide the single way world should be led, this kind of government is adopted by only half of the world population. All these assumptions are formulated by Muslim scholars. They are at least partially pertinent, but as the truth always lays somewhere at the middle, there must be analyzed the opinions of the Western scholars as well. By analyzing the theory of the waves and reversed waves of democratization, there are emitted assumptions that the third wave is over and a reversed one is coming. This hostility of the Islamic countries is perceived as the beginning of this reversed wave, if not its expression. Whatever the Muslims may say, the democratization of the area is the best solution. Democracy still holds the global hegemony on the ideological field, as no nondemocratic or antidemocratic ideology is as powerful as it is. From historical and political point of view, the Islamic region is a difficult ground for liberalism and democracy. Yet, democracy appears as a solution on the long run, on one condition: the means of achieving democratization to be by “gradual and unforced change”, as Bernard Lewis argues, by implementing slow reforms, durable in time. Turkey, the only hope of democratization and of modernization in the area, is still not a stable regime, and the quality of democracy deteriorates. A sudden and/or violent enforcement of democracy may not provide for a stable ground, the result in such a case being the reinstallation of a nondemocratic, authoritarian regime. The case of the present day situation in Iraq is specking for itself; although the regime was a totalitarian one, even one threatening the democracies, namely the U.S.A., the change was too sudden and violent and, beside this, the people here never asked for such a change, at least not now and not in such a way. These kinds of interferences are like a fuel for the fears of the Muslim population. The Western concern for their faith is in their eyes only the concern about how to get access to their resources, for how to control them economically. On this ground of hatred against all idea that comes from the West, the Islamic fundamentalism easily inoculates some interpretations of the democratic model, hiding in reality the illiberal ideas and solutions. The products of the third wave in the Islamic area are Turkey and Pakistan, referred to as “illiberal electoral democracies”. Loose party discipline, no effective judicial system, no real freedom of the media, a corrupted government, human rights violations dominate the political arena in such countries. Referring to the Turkish case in special, the problem with the Kurd minority is representative for the violation of human rights. In this country there is a strange mix of free and repressive realms, of modernity and tradition. Bernard Lewis in his article “Islam and Democracy: A Historical Overview”, presents the relation between the political Islam and democracy. The reality is that for democracy there can be found lots of definitions, even some identifications of totally undemocratic regimes with democracy. In the area, the dynastic principle is still working. The most common type of regime in the Islamic world is autocracy. The Islamic tradition is hostile to the arbitrary rule and that is why from the oldest times there existed a kind of a social contract. The political behavior of the people is governed by passivity. For them counts more the ruler and the other institutions of the state are considered as useless. The first elections for a parliament in the area took place in 1876, in the Ottoman Empire, but the parliament lasted for only one day, the next elections taking place in 1908. Bernard Lewis makes as well a classification of the regimes in the Islamic world. The categories are: traditional autocracies, such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikdoms, with dynastic regimes and authoritarian rule; the modernizing autocracies, such as Jordan, Egypt, Marocco; the “fascist style” dictatorships like in Iraq or Syria; the radical Islamic regimes, as Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan and Algeria being “candidates for this category; and the fifth category is that of the former Soviet states with majoritary Muslim population. The first thing that counts in such a climate is the desire of the population, its political awakening. The values of the liberal world are insignificant for them. Each culture has its values the people respect, and the democratical values do not coincide with the Islamist ones. There are trends of modernizing in the Islamic countries, some of them, such as Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan, Kyrgystan, Albania, Lebanon, Mali really tried to modernize but the point they reached is not yet a stable one. According to Robin Wright religion seems not to play the biggest role in the rejection of the political modernization, as the most undemocratic regimes are secular: Iraq (the former regime of Saddam Hussein), Syria, Turkmenistan. A real problem for the future time as well, should be the lack of democratical tradition. Political Islam can be compatible with democracy, at least up to a certain degree, as it supports interpretation, consensus and consultation. There are also some reformists groups in the Muslim countries, supporting the liberal ideas and blaming the fundamentalism. The Islamic reformation seems for the most the best solution. Huntington defined the gap between the Islamic and the democratic traditions as a “clash of civilizations”. At least as far as the U.S.A. is concerned, the world splits into two: friends, the moderate and peace loving states and foes, the terrorist, evil and radical ones. For most of the Muslims the U.S.A. is the materialization of the Western interest in the area, the projection of he distrust in the non-Islamic states. The radicalism of the Arabs is mainly regional oriented. The U.S.A. involved in the conflicts of the area, providing help for the enemies of the radicals, referring here to the support given to Israel and to the Muslim countries defending the statu-quo. The foreign affairs in the Middle East are conducted according either to written or unwritten regional agreements or according to the international treaties granted by the United Nations, for example. The “clash of civilizations” is best shown by the opposition between the democratic tradition of the Western state the most involved in the area, the U.S.A., and the Muslim radicals. The Islamic radicals are by nature anti-American, the Americans, on the other hand, see this hostility towards them as a result of the Islamic authoritarian politics and violent values, totally opposed to the American values. The Muslims consider the Westerners as backward as the Westerners consider the Muslims. The glorious past of the Islamic region is still alive in their minds. The sources of conflict between the two civilizations concerned ideology, security, ethnicity, political economy, conflicts that affected the regional arena as much as the international realm, not to speak of the internal one. The Islamic countries have the tendency to isolate from the rest of the World, a tendency translated as well in the rejection of the Western style values. In fact, the system they created is effective enough; they successfully combined the strict moral rules, for a liberal very undemocratic ones, with an efficient economy rising at the standards of the successful economies of the Democratic countries. The result of this oddly development, as well analyzed from a liberal point of view, is a gap between economic development and modernization and political, cultural and social “backwardness”. The model they follow is one opposed to the Western Democratic and Liberal one where the economic development is tightly linked to the modernization of the rest of the realms. This difference of shaping the society comes from the very difference between the traditional values of the two civilizations, the difference between the ideologies standing at the basis of the two models. The Iranian Revolution in 1979 was a radical event, attempting to change the political, social and economic realms. This event was the starting point for the general fear that the Islamic extremism will become part of the future international and regional politics, fear confirmed at the beginning of the 1980’s by the birth of the radical group of “Hesbollah”. Until the 1980’s, the real emphasis was put on the assumptions of the inevitability of the modernization and secularization in the Middle East, the real importance of the Islamism as ideology being neglected. It was not until the Iranian Revolution that the importance of ideology in the area became relevant. It is as well important to make the differentiation among the Islamic regimes, not to treat the entire region as a political monolith. The Islamic regimes vary from radical to reformist types. The relations with the West reached a common point in the early 1980’s, when the two “civilizations” allied against the other opponent of democracy, the Soviet Russia. The reason was, among others, the intrusion of the soviets in the Muslim area, namely, the invasion of Afghanistan. This alliance showed that the Islamist foreign politics are not necessarily anti-Western oriented. The trouble was the attempt of the Western powers to interfere and solve the issues in the Middle East. This kind of behavior is specific to the Western powers. From several centuries ago, the European and later the American super powers perceived it like a duty to interfere in other regions and impose their “righteous” model, as if they were the core of the world. On the other hand, the Islamists have their own perception of the world, centering themselves as the most developed and a model to be followed. Indeed, there are reformist trends in the Middle East supporting the liberal democracy but, as much as I observed, the cultural compound is never left aside. Reformation is necessary and desired in the region, but as long as it develops within the framework of the traditions. The Muslims do not reject change, they accept it but never forget to look back to the legacy of the past generations. The Islam is a great compound of the Muslim order and politics but not the only one; yet, the political Islam is and will stay an important part of the Muslim societies. The best solution for these countries is the reformation, but with the conditions that these steps to be taken gradually and in accordance with the customs of each country. 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