When analyzing politics and society in the Arab and Islamic world, it is admirable and important to break away from a Western-centered analysis. This move is not sufficient though. There is a temptation to continue to fall back on theories and rhetoric that have emanated from the west and have informed exactly that from which one attempts to break away. Furthermore, when discussing public discourse in the Arab world, it is imperative that one addresses the importance of Islam and its continuing vital role in Arab and Middle Eastern politics, despite Western scholarship’s tendency to suggest a historical end that involves the marginalization of religion. I appreciate Professor Challand’s posts in Deliberately Considered and the admirable move of breaking away from Western-centered analysis, but I think his posts suffer from theoretical temptation and an insufficient appreciation of the role of Islam.

It is true that civil-society is more than “NGOs and the developmental approach which imagines that the key to progress is when donors, the UN or rich countries, give aid to boost non-state actors, in particular NGOs, in the ‘developing south'” as Professor Challand asserts in his post “The Counter-Power of Civil Society in the Middle East.” I believe, though, that one must also conceive of civil-society and democratic institutions as more than a source for “collective autonomy” using other than secular slogans in the tradition of Tocqueville and Hegel.

Writing a history of democracy would have to include analysis such as de Tocqueville’s, but we should also remember that de Tocqueville wrote:

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Quran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

Tocqueville criticized Islam for allowing no deviation from its laws which to his mind covered all aspects of private and public life. But he failed to recognize the diversity of civil-society and the capacity for democratic institutions embedded in Islam’s structure and its ability to adapt to changing times, in part because it does not possess the characteristics of Catholicism. Ernest Renan later argued that Islam is not able to develop its own modernity, diverging from Tocqueville, but making the same mistake of essentializing Islam in a static history, laying ground for much of today’s claims that Islam and democracy are incompatible. These assertions often mobilize a rhetoric that promote tired tropes of “separation of church and state” and that democracy is contingent on secularism.

In fact, secularism has a much different meaning in the Arab world than it does in the West for two reasons. Islam never had a clerical hierarchy (although this phenomenon developed in Shi’ism later, albeit in a much different way than Catholicism) and therefore never had to answer the same questions regarding state-church relations that were prevalent in European political history. Despite this fact, Islam and the state did evolve separately due to negotiations of autonomy and the political domains of Islam and the state. “Secular” as European vocabulary to describe the dichotomy between Christ’s heavenly body and earthly body, once represented by medieval kingship and later by the Church, is not the same in Islam. In fact, the lack of a hierarchical authority in Islam and its partial reliance on consensus, or ijma’, is precisely what lends to it the ability to foster civil-society and diverse political groups, as well as various “schools” of law. An example is the mass proliferation of diverse Sufi brotherhoods in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. According to Richard Bulliet, “By the eighteenth century, there were thousands of Sufi brotherhoods reaching into every Muslim community and spreading knowledge of Islam into new lands.”

Furthermore, “secular” as a modern political concept in the Islamic world has come to mean the marginalization of the clergy and Islam in favor of modern military organizations, state-run schools, and state-sponsored religious institutions. The secular Arab dictatorships, which are currently undergoing fundamental changes, have implemented these practices and have been some of the most brutal regimes in the world. The attempt to relegate Islamic politics to the sidelines, a process which included the state’s co-opting of previously autonomous religious institutions, such as Islamic universities (al-Azhar University in Egypt is an example) and charities (waqf), only resulted in the alienation of segments of society that have been forced to take up alternative political methods, which sometimes include violence.

It is also untrue that the language of current opposition movements in the Arab world is a “secular re-imagining of the people as a united nation,” as Professor Challand calls it, presumably meaning that religious language is abandoned in favor of modern political vocabulary. Currently in Jordan, protests involve a number of groups, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood (or the Islamic Action Front, as it is called in Jordan), as well as many other opposition and counter-opposition groups. Many of these parties use discourse that is couched in Islam and ethnicity (especially Jordanian vs. Palestinian ethnicity and nationality).

In closing, Castoriadis’ analyses and modern political thought that relies heavily on Marxist theory, though they make valuable contributions to interpreting revolution and revolt, are simply inadequate to explain Islamic politics. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 serves as a lesson as to how intimately connected revolution, democracy and religion are now connected in the Muslim world. While secularism supposedly goes hand-in-hand with the development of democracy and the modern state, it was Islam that opened revolutionary potentials, democratic and anti-democratic. The Iranian experience revealed how transformational potential can be and has been heavily steeped in Islamic political theology. The revolution was not only a watershed in Islamic and Iranian politics but also a wake-up call for critical observers, who previously expected an unfolding of modern history that would increasingly push religion out of politics. In order to effectively understand the Islamic world, scholars and analysts must not only re-evaluate the theories on which they rely, as well as history and historiography, but also their rhetoric and the words that they mobilize.

The weather has been absolutely spectacular this week in Paris. Clear, sunny skies, low humidity, moderate temperatures. Yesterday, Naomi and I enjoyed having lunch at the Palais-Royal and walking through the city with our friend Daniel Dayan. Each day, we have been spending time in a park with our grandson, Ludovic. Especially nice was a family excursion to the Arab Institute, where we had wonderful pastries and panoramic views of of the city from its rooftop café. Being in Paris, thinking with a European perspective about the Arab world has been my theme of the week, as I, with the help of the editorial team at Deliberately Considered, have been keeping the magazine going.

I observed in my first letter from Paris that the common action of Coptic Christians and Muslims at Tahrir Square created a new pluralistic reality in Egypt. These days, this new reality is challenged, to say the least. There are great fears that sectarian conflict will rule the day in Egypt and in the region, as was reported in Tuesday’s New York Times. According to this report, a clause in the constitution formally identifying Egypt as a Muslim country deriving its laws from Islam, passed during the era of Anwar Sadat, and laws dating back to the late colonial era that stipulate specific restrictions on and privileges for the Coptic church have inflamed tensions. There is a marked increase in sectarian violence, with wild stories about abduction of Muslims, even reported in a historically liberal newspaper. These are very serious matters.

Formal political measures to address these issues are urgently needed. An idea floating that a Bill of Rights ought to be established as a precondition of electoral politics, as advocated by Mohamed El Barade, makes considerable sense. But just as important are indications that the power of definition, what I call the politics of small things, is being marshaled to combat dangerous anti-democratic developments.

A Copt (left) and a Salafi Muslim (right) debate politics and the revolution in Tahrir Square during a break from cleanup efforts, Feb 12, 2011 © Sherif9282 | Wikimedia Commons

There was also a minor subplot in the Times story. As the new political configuration is emerging, competing political parties are acting in interesting “opportunistic” ways. The Muslim Brotherhood is proving to be the powerful political force and is working to consolidate its power. Yet, it continues to be self-limiting. (Poland’s great democratic transformation was often referred to as a self-limiting revolution). Not only is it indicating that it will not present a Presidential candidate, it is contesting only a half of the Parliamentary seats. It purposively couches its Islamic project in terms that are supportive of liberal democracy. A prominent leader of the Party, Essam el-Erian maintains: “We are calling for a civil state,” promoting elements of Islamic law that are common to other world religions, including, “freedom of worship and faith, equality between people, and human rights and human dignity.” Further, the Brotherhood named a Christian a deputy leader of its political party.

Meanwhile, Christian and secular liberal parties are not directly seeking changes to the article in the constitution that recognizes Egypt as a Muslim nation with laws based on Islam. While individuals may privately dislike the article, they recognize its popularity among Muslims and the parties minimally propose only minor changes.

“Our position is that it should stay, but a clause should be added so that in personal issues non-Muslims are subject to the rules of their own religion,’ Naguib Sawiris, a secularly oriented, wealthy, Christian businessman who has established a liberal party. He would prefer the separation between religion and state in accord with Western customs, but realizes that this is now impossible given Egyptian realities.

The Brotherhood’s gestures to liberal democratic values, and the liberal and Christian gestures recognizing Egypt as a Muslim nation, may be simply a matter of cynical political calculation, meant to convince the naïve that the Brotherhood does not pose the threat about which skeptics are most concerned, concealing the Brotherhood’s potential long term complicity in the disturbing anti-Christian actions and attitudes that are on the rise in Egypt, very much a part of the sectarian strife of the region. And the Christian and liberal acceptance of the idea of Egypt as a Muslim nation may simply be a rather desperate necessary, political calculation to maintain viability against an Islamist tide. I am sure such concerns are warranted.

But, I believe something more important is going on, as well, that is supporting the prospects for democracy in Egypt, with clear parallels to the development of democracy in Poland. Real pro-democratic Christians, liberals and Muslims together are muddling through a common definition of their society as one with pluralism and with majority and minority rights. There is a struggle against powerful currents of hatred, fears and suspicions, and major political actors are presenting themselves as moving in this direction. They may not succeed, but it is important to notice that this movement is happening. Given the nature of belief in Egypt, there could be no democracy without the inclusion of Islam in its politics (think of the Turkish experience). Given the richness of the Islamic tradition, there is reason to think that this move is possible, even if not likely.

Democrats of all sorts have skin in this game, as Michael Corey would put it. He suggests, in his latest post, that when I put it this way we should ask: What is being asked by whom, and for what purposes? I think the purposes are pretty clear. A liberal democratic peaceful North Africa and the Middle East would be safer, more prosperous and more just place, and this would contribute to greater safety, prosperity and justice beyond the region. The people asking are those who are most clearly dedicated to human rights, liberal democracy and an open society. And what is being asked is generally minimal, perhaps some economic aid, but mostly a commitment to discontinue the support of repressive force. Minimal support, getting out of the way, engaging in serious dialogue on the basis of shared principles.

One final note about his week on Chris Eberhardt’s post on China: It also reminded me of Poland past. His notion of China as a kind of “Truman Show” resembles the “Poland Show” in which I used to live and visit, although I think the “China Show” is a much more subtle game. Key to the unreality aspect of these real reality shows, i.e. Communist Party directed and controlled societies, is the distance between the official language, which was necessary to get on with public responsibilities, and the language of everyday experience.  More about this when I get back home.

In a post submitted before Osama Bin Laden was eliminated, Gary Alan Fine poses a question that is especially pressing after this latest development in the ongoing global wars. –Jeff

Coming out of a bar late one night, a patron finds his friend on his hands and knees searching desperately beneath a streetlamp. “I lost my keys under my car and I must find them,” moans his friend. “But why, if the keys are under a car, are you searching under this lamp?” “Well, the light is much better here.”

This is an old chestnut, none too clever, but one that has powerful political resonance, helping to explain flawed policy decisions. Why, if we worry about the menace of Al Qaeda, have we gone to war against two states – Iraq and Libya – that have distant, even hostile, relations with our terrorist foes. The light is better there.

A student of mine, Michaela DeSoucey, currently at Princeton, wrote her doctoral dissertation about the battles to ban foie gras. She asked the question why is it that animal rights activists chose to make the banning of foie gras a central issue, despite the small amount of foie gras consumed by Americans, as opposed to veal, much more common on American tables – or chicken. Neither baby cows nor poultry sleep under 300-thread count sheets. Her argument is that battling foie gras producers is a far easier task than the cattle or poultry industry. Yet, each battle provides a rich vein of publicity. Foie gras is what DeSoucey labels an easy target: it is, if one can pardon the culinary-mixed metaphor “low-hanging fruit.” Activists hope, but do not expect, that such targets can provide a wedge for other bigger enemies. Not yet.

But my concern is not with the pantry, but with the atlas. Here we are battling in Libya, while Syria falls into chaos. Americans and our NATO allies have determined that it is crucial that we overthrow the Qaddafi regime, even though that regime is opposed to Al Qaeda as are we. And, frankly, it is becoming a vexing pattern. We are only slowly retracing our steps from the mess that we made in Iraq, another Arab state, largely secular, that had little truck with our enemies.

It is surely true that few Americans have any love for either Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi; even The Donald could trump them in a free and fair election in our blue precincts. But this does not explain our involvement. Why do we give those Islamic leaders who are sympathetic to our enemies a pass, while we go all in to destroy secular Arab dictators? Why are we passive – even at times generous – toward governments in Syria and Pakistan?

The answer is that we feel the need to do something, and some somethings are easier than others. The brutality that we are seeing daily from Damascus and throughout the Syrian countryside reveals this clearly. It is true that Qaddafi bluffed that he would kill his opponents, but Assad has shown that actions talk louder than words. Following Teddy Roosevelt, the Syrian regime, supported by the Iranians, speaks softly and carries rapid-fire machine guns.

The danger is that by going after easy targets we undercut our policy goals, no matter how many “mission accomplished” banners we produce or how few allied military are killed. Can anyone claim that the invasion of Iraq benefited American interests in the Middle East? Can anyone claim that the NATO attacks on Libya, while ignoring Syria, will make the Middle East more stable? The outcome in Egypt and the plausible outcome in Libya seems most of all to provide a foothold for a kind of radical Islam that we despise. Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood will not come to power in either Egypt or in Libya, but it is easy to understand the anxiety in Jerusalem.

Perhaps we are wise to be very cautious in selecting hard targets, but that doesn’t mean that we should be any less diligent in our choice of easy targets. Sometimes those easy targets have unintended consequences that make them very difficult after all.

It is not that American diplomats are blind when it comes to our self-interest; it is simply that they search for the key to global politics where the mission appears effortless, and not where that key might actually be found.

The great changes in the Middle East didn’t come from the usual sources. Religion was not nearly as important as many expected.  Class was far from the center of the action, as youth stole the show.  And internationally backed civil society was not nearly as important as Western donors would hope. In fact, Western aid may have been more of the problem than the solution.

Religion

The Islamic movement, in particular in Egypt, is in a state of relative weakness, very much connected to economic change. When Egypt embarked on structural adjustment programs and started privatizing its state-owned enterprises in the late 1970s, the economic reform was a façade, masking the enrichment of a handful of high-ranking officials who were the only ones who could do business. In the process, state and welfare services were dismantled, and the regime encouraged non-governmental charities. In this context, the Ikhwan (the Arabic name for Muslim Brotherhood) was able to build many private mosques and new charitable organizations, leading to significant social support. Yet, in the 1990s, when the Ikhwan started running for elections (culminating with the 20% of the seats in 2005), it paid the price of this political engagement by having no choice but to let people close to the government gradually take control over their charities. The movement became complexly connected to the regime and began to lose its credibility, increasingly so when it refused to boycott the 2005 elections and, more recently, because it took on positions that were viewed negatively by the viewpoints of the lower classes. One example is the Ikhwan’s condemnation of the strikes of Muhalla al-Kubra in the textile sector in 6 April 2008. Similar anti-union positions from Islamists are documented in Gaza and Yemen, creating a rift between the working class and the Islamists. Interestingly, in his 2005 book the sociologist Patrick Haenni, calls this new strand of Muslim businessmen ‘the promoters of Islam of the Market.’

As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood has become both politically and socially a much more fragile actor than it was in the past. Only the lack of alternative opposition and the regime’s stigmatization of the Ikhwan as a Taliban-like movement kept an otherwise fragmenting organization united. Daniela Pioppi has explained this with great detail and accuracy in her article, Is There an Islamist Alternative in Egypt?.

Class

The traditional sociological force of class was present but not at the center of the recent struggles. Although the main trade union in Tunisia played the role of an important triggering agent of the revolt, it was a loose combination of educated people and liberal professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, who gave the decisive boost to the popular protests. The same can be said of Yemen. To be sure, the class dimension should not be written off completely, as the daily strikes and newly formed trade unions in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak show. But another factor, the use of Internet and other media technology is overshadowing the old-fashioned influences.

Youth

A girl in Benghazi holding a paper, it reads:"Tribes of Libya are one group" © Maher 2777 | Wikimedia Commons

Especially significant is the young age of the new media-savvy protesters. More than half of the population in the Middle East is below the age of 25. And many of these young people are disgruntled for several reasons. One cause is their struggle to land a real job after earning their degrees. Mohamed Bouazizi epitomized the ordeal of this generation. He was the Tunisian street vendor in the small town of Sidi Bouzid who set himself on fire last December,

Another reason of the youth’s unhappiness is their disillusionment with Islamist ideology.  An insightful article appeared in the New York Times (NYT on Imbaba) on a slum in Cairo where the Ikhwan gradually lost control over the local youth.  In Egypt, the old Ikhwan leadership procrastinated its decision to join the first main protests on Tahrir square on 25 January. Its youth wing eventually participated, but the organization was in the hands of the trade unions and the youth. Also, in the Palestinian territories we see how the younger generation is growing resentful of the political games played by both Hamas and the nationalist party Fatah.  The young have also been fed up with the opportunistic behavior of the left and their NGO partners. And this brings us to the third factor that has made the outbursts in the Middle East unique.

N.G.O.s and International Aid

I believe Western aid has had a negative impact on the development of democracy in the region, even when it apparently is meant to support this development.  It negatively affects the formal civil society as aid both promotes and excludes.

It promotes a professionalized form of activism, which has been lost when it comes to the extraordinary and spontaneity of the demonstrations. Aid also contributes to exclude those resisting both the institutional and discursive isomorphic pressure, by encouraging a managerial version of civil society. You want to receive money as a civil society organization? Then you have to speak the same language and buzzwords as donors and also be a fully institutionalized organization, matching donor standards. But once you have done that, you are more like a business, than an organization able to respond to the autonomous and fluid claims of your constituency.

To be sure, aid for democratization and civil society is only one tiny portion of the overall envelope of aid disbursed to the region – for Egypt, Yemen or Palestine. Here are some data to illustrate my point: between 1971 and 2001, the US has given about $145 billion of aid to the Near East, the vast majority to Israel (79 billion) and Egypt (52 billion) (see February 2009 and June 2010 reports for the Congress). Aid becomes a tool to support strategic interests (stability for and around Israel being in this case is the top priority). The ideals of democracy, empowerment, human rights, etc. are only nice words wrapped around the Realpolitik nature of US aid.

Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Anwar Sadat in Camp David © Bill Fitz-Patrick | Wikimedia Commons

After signing a peace treaty with Israel at the Camp David agreement in 1978, Egypt has received large annual envelops of aid from the USA. In the last ten years, Egypt has cashed in an average of $1.3 billion per year, 85% of which is military aid. The same is true for the Palestinian territories, where the US with the EU support increasingly subsidize the West Bank Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Budgetary support means that (western) governments are paying the PNA employees, about half of whom are police and security forces.  Rather than supporting autonomy, this type of aid increases Palestinian dependency.

This source of aid is focused on security matters out of fear that the State itself could become the object of predation by non-state actors. The threat of Islamic fundamentalism or Al-Qaeda, as in Yemen and now in Libya, is usually invoked to justify such a high level of aid for security purpose only.  Perhaps now that Qaddafi has also accused al-Qaeda of orchestrating the revolts in Libya, we will realize the vacuous nature of such arguments.

The result of this aid pattern leads to a form of Bonapartism, a regime with a very strong executive largely ignoring the legislature and based on very strong police.  The aid actively contributed to this kind of regime in and around Egypt as Juan Cole, in a blog last month, explained in detail:

“The US-backed military dictatorship in Egypt … exercises power on behalf of both a state elite and a new wealthy business class, some members of which gained their wealth from government connections and corruption. The Egypt of the Separate Peace, the Egypt of tourism and joint military exercises with the United States, is also an Egypt ruled by the few for the benefit of the few.”

Unless we see another revolution (in the approach of the main donors to the region), western aid is likely to thwart the self-organization of these extraordinary popular movements and kill the spontaneity of the counter-power of civil society.