Fear Not Democracy

Now that the desire for democracy is spreading like fire in the Arab World, some Westerners are having second thoughts. It is the same questions that have been asked for the last fifty years but unfortunately, people don't learn from their past mistakes and inevitably keep repeating them. Again American and European intellectuals are wondering aloud whether the new democracies will be fanatical and anti-West. Again these same intellectuals are asking if we are going to replace dictators by Iranian backed mullahs in Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and worse yet Hamas in Palestine. But if there is anything the world should have learned in the last fifty years from the Middle East, it is that democracy and political participation are moderating forces. Beside the obvious fact that Arabs should have the right to chose their leaders, it is also good for the world that they do. The more the autocratic regimes in the region block political dialogue, repress human rights, oppose free expression, and ignore sectarianism and racism, the more monopoly the preachers, imams and mullahs have in being the opposition to these failed regimes. Islamist political parties have the edge in the autocratic Middle East because they have a pulpit from which to propagate their message.

The Muslim Brotherhood is so popular in Egypt because they are the only party of opposition. Same goes for all the strong parties in Iraq like the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. However, already an Egyptian secular alternative is offered in Ghad Party, which means Tomorrow in Arabic, and it has mobilized the opposition so much that its leader, Ayman Nour, is now imprisoned by the Mubarak government. In Iraq countless secular Kurdish and Arab parties have sprung in the last two years since the American invasion. During the last fifty years Islamist political groups have flourished in the Middle East under the guise of being religious groups while any secular alternative was not allowed to flourish.

We should help Arabs reclaim their region through democracy. There will be oscillations between religious and secular movements and governments but they will have to answer to their populations which will make them reconsider fanaticism and extremism. We have examples in Iran and Turkey, while Iran now is loosening its fundamentalism in response to public pressure, Turkey's Islamists are ruling with great care not to awaken a secular backlash.