Any failure to accurately interpret the Islamic movements, either in part or in full, as a central constituent in the shaping, directing and framing of the political identity of Muslim nations, is certainly a bridge too far. Although the mass opposition that has overthrown some of the centennial Arab dictators off their supposedly ever-lasting forged democratic republics has been catalyzed by and through independently non-aligned movements, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood is obviously irrefutable.
In Egypt, for instance, the heavy presence and persistent intervention of the Muslim Brotherhood and their partisans was the potent lubricant that fueled, sustained and accelerated the size and scope of the protestations in almost all Egyptian Squares. Charles M. Sennot observed, “it was the Muslim Brotherhood that quietly sustained the real fires of protest until they engulfed Egypt in an all-out revolution that would topple the corrupt and brutal 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak.” Such a surprising truth, as Monica Duffy Toft concludes, “would have garnered guffaws among Western intellectuals only four decades ago” since they had all belonged to the “grip of secularization theory: the belief that religion was a dying supernova, enjoying its final glow before disappearing history.”
The then-spread logic behind secularization theory had certainly fed on the emergent postcolonial realities which by definition entailed the establishment of secular (capitalist or communist) but dependent and undemocratic states across almost the entire world, including the Muslim newly decolonized nations. More was that the leaders across the Islamic continent, except for Tunisia, where religion was annihilated from mostly all life walks, and Iran, where religiosity is in the heart of the state, have managed neither to establish secular states nor to emphasize religion in the core of their politics. Instead, they have used secularization and religion as means to balance the interests necessary for the survival of their systems.
It is within these conditions that Western thinkers would believe in the death of God, as Nietzsche had once proclaimed, and in the resurrection of the Northern enlightening modernization basics across the developing Muslim South. However, the insurgencies that have miraculously extracted dictatorships in the Arab world, and the role Muslim Brotherhoods played in them only mean that, as phrased by Toft, God’s Partisans are Back; were it possible to assume that they have been away ever, for Muslim political ideologists were latently awaiting a blatant hunting ground to mobilize their cavaliers in and for the seize of political power.
Their history of hidden and not manifest oppositional resistance against the notoriously secular rogue states, sharing of the same ideology and religious aspirations as the majority of the people, and the incessant failure of the other active political parties to prove their worth have all been factors to pave a quick and sure way for the Brotherhoods to grip the major state offices and departments. It is henceforth quite safe to conclude that democracy has benefited no political party more than it did to the Muslim Brotherhoods. Worth mentioning is that the decision of the Egyptian Army to oust Mohamad Morsy, a president being elected after fair democratic election, is a blow to the heart of democracy and its institutions.
And this refers us to the American-led Western policy where the striking political banner was to justify their recurrently unremitting intervention in the Muslim world from within the perspective of establishing democratic states and terminating, especially, electoral frauds that concentrate the election and reelection of rogue leadership. It is therefore inevitable that spokesmen of the Western capitals during the Arab Spring would every now and then show up reiterating “Mobarak … Saleh … Qaddafi …and al Assad have to quit office.” Whilst they were highly electrical picking the words and phrases to reveal and to conceal their genuine feelings regarding the street protestations, none might have yet forgotten about how supportive they were to the systems of these leaders just a couple of years ago.
Now that history has proved the ability of moderate Muslim Brotherhood to seize power in almost every Muslim country, the West has only one option: it is to act supportively and that is for the following reasons:
The Islamic governments that have been elected at the aftermath of the Arab Spring conform to the Western norms of democracy, and thus, the West has literally no pretext to oppose them.
None of the moderate Islamic parties seems to constitute any strategic threat to the interests of the West in the countries they lead. The main logic behind this is that the Muslim Brotherhood know, understand and act according to the reality that the interests of their nations are indispensable to those of the West.
The failure of moderate Islam will give rise to radicalism. At least, the current moderate Brotherhoods absorb and/ or prevent further fundamentalism amongst the Muslim youth who constitute the roots of "terrorism" inside and outside Muslim nations.
The already experiences in the Arab countries have proved the failure of secularization to ascertain democracy; instead, it has only concentrated despotism. This does, by no means, assure that a Muslim leadership will work for full democratic practices, for there should always be a new political model of the form of check and balance of powers.
The bottom line is that the West has to support in all terms political legitimacy no matter who the authority in hold of the power is. The era of siding with the wills of the leaders, be they military or civilian, against the wills of the peoples is history; power is at the hands of the people - secular or religious - makes no difference in democracy; power is thriving in the mob; power is empowered with righteousness; power is worked for, not mugged in daylight.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy
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