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PARIS, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Politicians and pundits wondering if Islamists will soon take power in Egypt or Tunisia might usefully ask first what the term "Islamist" means and what the Muslim leaders it describes say they want to do.
"Islamist" denotes an ideology that uses Islam to promote political goals. But it is so broad a term that it can apply both to Shi'ite Iran's anti-Western theocracy and to pro-business Sunnis trying to get Turkey into the European Union.
While the politically charged word can evoke violent action, such as that of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, many Islamists say they abhor the use of force and want to work within the law.
"We have to distinguish between different combinations of Islam and politics," said Mustafa Akyol, a columnist in Istanbul for Hurriyet Daily News. "A party can take its values and inspiration from Islam but still accept a secular state."
Noah Feldman, a Harvard University expert on Islamic law, said taking part in democratic politics can change Islamist parties, citing the AK Party in Turkey that came to power in 2002 after scrapping its ideal of creating an Islamic state.
"Once in power, you can no longer rely on slogans or ideology for votes, you actually have to deliver things," he said. "They've done an extraordinary job of that."
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist Ennahda ("Renaissance") party in Tunisia have so far not been able to operate in open political systems, so their professed commitment to democracy has not yet been tested in daily practice.
Their programmes reflect a more moderate approach, however, than those of Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Palestinian Hamas or Iran.
DIFFERENT MODELS
At one end of the spectrum of Islamisms stands Iran, where the 1979 revolution overthrew Shah Reza Pahlevi and made the top Shi'ite religious hierarchy the ultimate power in the country.
The Supreme Leader, now Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is more powerful than the president and appoints heads of the military, judiciary and the Guardian Council that oversees political life.
Hezbollah and Hamas are classified as terrorist groups by the United States, not because they are Islamist but because they advocate armed struggle, especially against Israel.
In the middle of the Islamist spectrum is a variety of parties as politically active as their mostly undemocratic countries allow. Social welfare work, a prominent element in Islamist action, is one way they win popular support. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest of them all, began in 1928 advocating a fully Islamic state. However, it has softened that over the past few decades of banned but unofficially tolerated political activity under President Hosni Mubarak.
As the main opposition party, it is set to play a prominent role in post-Mubarak Egypt, but its cautious leaders say they do not want to lead any new government.
Akbar Ahmed, a Pakistani-born professor of Islamic studies at the American University in Washington, doubted the Brotherhood would hijack Egypt's uprising to create a theocracy.
"An Iranian revolution is not possible in a Sunni country," he said, since clergy play a far smaller role than in Shi'ism.
Another long-established Islamist party, Jamaat-i-Islami in mostly Sunni Pakistan, scores only single-digit results at the polls despite the strong role religion plays in politics there.
Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of Ennahda in Tunisia, has long advocated more liberal policies than the Brotherhood.
He supports full political rights for all citizens, for example, unlike the Brotherhood that wants to bar non-Muslims and women from top posts such as Egypt's presidency.
ISLAMISM IN POWER
Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AK) dominates the other end of the spectrum and has become the leading model for Islamists who want to combine faith and parliamentary democracy.
First elected in 2002, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has focused far more on reforming the economy than on passing laws to please the more Islamist wing of his supporters.
The AK's opponents accuse it of pursuing an Islamist agenda by stealth. But the party, which plans to redraw the constitution if it wins a third term at elections in June, denies any plan to roll back the secularist principles of the state.
Forerunners of the AK Party were more ideologically Islamic, like the Muslim Brotherhood, but Erdogan turned it into a conservative party inspired by Muslim values, something akin to the Christian Democratic parties popular in post-war Europe.
"Islam can't be separated from politics but it should be separated from the state," Akyol said. "A party can take its inspiration from Islam and still work in a democratic system."
Islam is more visible now in officially secular Turkey than before Erdogan -- headscarves are more common, for example -- but that comes more from a new and more religious middle class than any laws the AK Party majority in parliament has passed.
"These cultural differences are related to religion but it's too simple to reduce them to religion," Feldman said. (editing by David Stamp)
FOLLOWED BY FAITHWORLD COMMENTARY:
Part of the problem trying to figure out what Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood or Tunisia’s Ennahda party would do if they got into any future power structure in their countries is knowing what kind of Islamists they are. The label "Islamist" pops up frequently these days, in comments and warnings and (yes) news reports, but the term is so broad that it even covers groups that oppose each other. Just as the Muslim world is not a bloc, the Islamist world is not a bloc.
I sketched out a rough spectrum of Islamists in an analysis today entitled Concern about Islamists masks wide differences. This topic is vast and our story length limits keep the analysis down to the bare bones. But the overall point should be clear that any analysis of what these specific parties might do that ignores their diversity starts off on the wrong foot and risks ending up with the wrong conclusions.
While reading and talking to experts about Islamism these days, I either had the television on (zapping between BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera English) or listened to radio stations like BBC and NPR. When the Muslim Brotherhood came up, there were often suggestions — explicit or implicit — that it would seize power in a Leninist-style coup or whip up the masses to install a theocracy in a replay of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Experienced generals sometimes end up fighting the last war. Clever analysts can reach for the wrong historical parallel to the situation they’re tying to explain. Could it be that reflexes like these are clouding our view of what the Brotherhood and Ennahda actually are?
Our reporting from Egypt and Tunisia, often highlighted on this blog, has said both look poised to play an important role in the emerging political system. What also comes through is the feeling in the region, among many people who have seen these Islamists at work despite the restrictions on them, that the Khomeini pattern is not the one to impose. The example of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, which gave up hopes for an Islamic state in the 1990s in favour of winning broad support by democratic means, seems more likely to be the path to follow.
The experts I interviewed added several insights that couldn’t fit into the analysis. For example, Mustafa Akyol, the Hürriyet Daily News columnist in Istanbul, said AKP members generally thought of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood — which clearly has a more traditionalist view of Islam and society — as being where they were ideologically about a decade or so ago. Ennahda’s more liberal Rachid Ghannouchi, by contrast, was ahead of the Turkish Islamists in the 1990s and several of his books were translated into Turkish and became popular among AKP intellectuals back then.
In washington, Professor Akbar Ahmed said Americans tended to be extremely wary of any role in politics for Islam. "Anyone with the slightest sympathy for Islam is seen suspiciously," he said. "That creates a mental trap," he said, leading to the conclusion that Washington must support the "modernists" who oppose these "fanatics" (Mubarak, Ben Ali, etc) "at any cost." But the problem in the Muslim world is that these "modernists" have clung to power and failed to deliver for the people for so long that many Muslims feel they have no option but to support what Ahmed calls the "literalists."
Noah Feldman, the Harvard law professor who has specialised among other things in Islamic law, pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood would not have to fight for amendments to write sharia into the Egyptian constitution because it’s already there. "The Egyptian constitution as written is perfectly considtent with the Brotherhood’s ideals. It states that Islam is the source of law and that laws cannot contradict the sharia. It is an Islamist constitution — it’s just not applied in a very Islamist way," he said. The new Iraqi and Afghan constitutions, both drawn up while U.S. troops were fighting armed Islamists there after invading in the last decade, are also both Islamic constitutions in that way.
Feldman said he expected the Muslim Brotherhood to work within the democratic system while promoting a socially conservative agenda in accordance with Muslim values. So there would be more mosque attendance, possibly more Islamically inspired legislation like better welfare for the poor. But he saw this as essentially a cultural shift somewhat akin to the change seen in Washington in 2001 when another party with strong religious links took power.
"It’s not very different from when the Bush administration came to Washington," he said. "The culture was subtly affected by this. There were more people of evangelical and southwestern backgrounds. The president was seen going to church on Sunday and actually meaning it. These cultural differences are related to religion but it’s too simple to reduce them to religion," he said.
Noah Feldman, a Harvard University expert on Islamic law, said taking part in democratic politics can change Islamist parties, citing the AK Party in Turkey that came to power in 2002 after scrapping its ideal of creating an Islamic state.
"Once in power, you can no longer rely on slogans or ideology for votes, you actually have to deliver things," he said. "They've done an extraordinary job of that."
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist Ennahda ("Renaissance") party in Tunisia have so far not been able to operate in open political systems, so their professed commitment to democracy has not yet been tested in daily practice.
Their programmes reflect a more moderate approach, however, than those of Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Palestinian Hamas or Iran.
DIFFERENT MODELS
At one end of the spectrum of Islamisms stands Iran, where the 1979 revolution overthrew Shah Reza Pahlevi and made the top Shi'ite religious hierarchy the ultimate power in the country.
The Supreme Leader, now Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is more powerful than the president and appoints heads of the military, judiciary and the Guardian Council that oversees political life.
Hezbollah and Hamas are classified as terrorist groups by the United States, not because they are Islamist but because they advocate armed struggle, especially against Israel.
In the middle of the Islamist spectrum is a variety of parties as politically active as their mostly undemocratic countries allow. Social welfare work, a prominent element in Islamist action, is one way they win popular support. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest of them all, began in 1928 advocating a fully Islamic state. However, it has softened that over the past few decades of banned but unofficially tolerated political activity under President Hosni Mubarak.
As the main opposition party, it is set to play a prominent role in post-Mubarak Egypt, but its cautious leaders say they do not want to lead any new government.
Akbar Ahmed, a Pakistani-born professor of Islamic studies at the American University in Washington, doubted the Brotherhood would hijack Egypt's uprising to create a theocracy.
"An Iranian revolution is not possible in a Sunni country," he said, since clergy play a far smaller role than in Shi'ism.
Another long-established Islamist party, Jamaat-i-Islami in mostly Sunni Pakistan, scores only single-digit results at the polls despite the strong role religion plays in politics there.
Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of Ennahda in Tunisia, has long advocated more liberal policies than the Brotherhood.
He supports full political rights for all citizens, for example, unlike the Brotherhood that wants to bar non-Muslims and women from top posts such as Egypt's presidency.
ISLAMISM IN POWER
Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AK) dominates the other end of the spectrum and has become the leading model for Islamists who want to combine faith and parliamentary democracy.
First elected in 2002, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has focused far more on reforming the economy than on passing laws to please the more Islamist wing of his supporters.
The AK's opponents accuse it of pursuing an Islamist agenda by stealth. But the party, which plans to redraw the constitution if it wins a third term at elections in June, denies any plan to roll back the secularist principles of the state.
Forerunners of the AK Party were more ideologically Islamic, like the Muslim Brotherhood, but Erdogan turned it into a conservative party inspired by Muslim values, something akin to the Christian Democratic parties popular in post-war Europe.
"Islam can't be separated from politics but it should be separated from the state," Akyol said. "A party can take its inspiration from Islam and still work in a democratic system."
Islam is more visible now in officially secular Turkey than before Erdogan -- headscarves are more common, for example -- but that comes more from a new and more religious middle class than any laws the AK Party majority in parliament has passed.
"These cultural differences are related to religion but it's too simple to reduce them to religion," Feldman said. (editing by David Stamp)
(end of article)
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