Egypt's Postmodern Revolution

This short interview of Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abd El-Fatah clearly shows how important the internet has become in mobilising for political change.



"What we need now is a transition government anyway, not one that is going to last forever. Whoever comes after that is going to rule in mortal fear of the people. They are going to remember these scenes forever. So I don't think anyone is worried about who will rule. If we don't like them we will change them, if not through elections then through another revolt." - Alaa Abd El-Fatah

Wikileaks - leaking power in the 21st century?

Power in the olden days was constituted by those who had the ability to muster means to make people comply to their wishes. The ability to hold life and death in one's hands, i.e. military might, was power. The acquisition of military power, in turn, meant being able to organise society in ways so as to extract economic surplus to fund war machines, which can then be deployed to engage in wars of expansion and the amassing of more wealth to fortify power-holders.

Naked displays of power are still apparent today. However, overt displays of violence and coercive force are now frowned upon, unless you are the preponderant hegemon (the United States). It is perhaps no accident that Julian Assange and the entire motive force animating Wikileaks have targetted the US in their 'exposes'. The 'US' is not so much a territorial entity here as an ideational construct representing who and how power is wielded in the world. Since entities such as Wikileaks cannot contest the 'US' in terms of the old definition of power, they find ways to diminish newer ways in which power is exercised today.

A Year Ago: The Ampatuans

Human Rights Watch recently published a report on the Ampatuan Massacre last year:

This 96-page report charts the Ampatuans’ rise to power, including their use of violence to expand their control and eliminate threats to the family’s rule. It is based on more than 80 interviews, including with people having insider knowledge of the Ampatuan family security structure, victims of abuses and their family members, and witnesses to crimes.

See the full report here.

Inequality is literally bad for your health

I should like to get a "copy" of The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Alas, the pirates of the internets have yet to make them available online.I will have to wait to get to a library :-)

The blurb:

It is well established that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. Now a groundbreaking book, based on thirty years’ research, takes an important step past this idea. The Spirit Level shows that there is one common factor that links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Not wealth; not resources; not culture, climate, diet, or system of government. Furthermore, more-unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them—the well-off as well as the poor.

The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level reveals striking differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem—ill-health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness—is more likely to occur in a less-equal society. This is why America, by most measures the richest country on earth, has per capita shorter average lifespan, more cases of mental illness, more obesity, and more of its citizens in prison than any other developed nation.

Wilkinson and Pickett lay bare the contradiction between material success and social failure in today’s world, but they do not simply provide a diagnosis of our woes. They offer readers a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. The Spirit Level is pioneering in its research, powerful in its revelations, and inspiring in its conclusion: Armed with this new understanding of why communities prosper, we have the tools to revitalize our politics and help all our fellow citizens, from the bottom of the ladder to the top.

Here is an excellent review.

And here is a podcast with the authors discussing the book along with Barbara Ehrenreich and Harry Holzer.

Notes from Fanon

“Intellectual alienation is a creation of middle-class society. What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery.” – Frantz Fanon

Is it not possible to celebrate the self without false aggrandizement? To celebrate the self without auto-castigation for perceived overreach or exaggeration?

For the young to be so full of cynicism is a sin committed by those who have come before. For received claims of knowledge to be recycled, and with which to pummel ourselves in perpetuity is my generation’s greatest tragedy. Would some have us in a rotoscope loop to live and re-live the same piece of narrative over and over and over?

To make these claims would have our people frozen in time. If we cannot tell new stories, new stories of and for ourselves, then we should lay down our arms and cease to write.

I’d rather thought this anguish over self-identity was dated. But for it to be exhibited in a 21 year old shows me it is not.

Capital's limitless growth

David Harvey suggests global capitalism's long-term survival is premised on a mathematical impossibility. He presents a truly radical idea - the world should aim for zero growth and distribution of wealth.

He distinguishes growth from development. "Development is about investing in people's creative capacities and powers. You don't need growth to do that. So you can have zero growth and at the same time you can also have radical transformation..."

I don't think the world has exhausted growth possibilities quite yet. There are still places on earth we have yet to plunder and emerging markets with new consumers. Imagine the huge Chinese and Indian markets. There are still virgin forests in Latin America and Africa. Plenty more oil to drill in Eurasia. And who knows what new treasures the ocean might offer once the technology becomes available?

I'll give it a century more. Then humanity will have to reckon with what it has created. We'll all be dead by then, so who cares.

Exporting Labor

A new typology in an era of transnationalized "flexible" labor is emerging in literatures as varied as sociology, anthropology, economics, international studies and political science. Scholars have called it the "labor-exporting state." Robyn Magalit Rodriguez calls it the "labor brokerage state."

In Migrants for Export she writes:

"Labor brokerage is a neoliberal strategy that is comprised of institutional and discursive practices through which the Philippine state mobilizes its citizens and sends them abroad to work for employers throughout the world while generating a profit from the remittances that migrants send back to their families and loved ones in the Philippines. The Philippine state negotiates with labor-receiving states to formalize outflows of migrant workers and thereby enables employers around the globe to avail themselves of temporary workers who can be summoned to work for finite periods of time and then returned to their homeland at the conclusion of their employment contracts."

It may well be that the period of migration-for-settlement is coming to an end. In the United States, by far the world's largest migrant-receiving nation, the debate rages whether they should expand their "guest-worker" programs. This would allow flexible labor in but would deny citizenship."Guest-worker" or contractual labor programs have long been the practice in the Middle East, the Asia Pacific and recently in Europe. Citizenship confers political rights. Temporary worker status does not. Should this trend continue, increased precariousness of immigrant workers should be expected.

In the literature on international migration the Philippines is considered the most organized labor-exporting state in the world. And there is evidence that our state institutions and practices are being copied elsewhere. As yet, there is no global regime that would oversee "trade in workers" as the WTO does trade in commodities and investments. But it is not improbable. As the Doha Round finds the WTO regime at an impasse, a spate of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements have been inked. In some cases they include provisions for worker mobility, as with the recently inked Australia-ASEAN-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement.

(Kamundohan) Anatomy of high-tech suicide at Foxconn

China is now the world's largest producer of electronic products. In its industrial zones, all along the coastline, reside high-tech factories which supply the world’s largest multinationals. American-owned Hewlett-Packard and Dell, Taiwanese-owned Acer and Chinese-owned Lenovo all make up nearly half of the global PC market. From mobile phones, motherboards, computer chips and optical mice, Chinese workers produce them all for an increasingly hungry global market. They ship to other Asian countries, to North America, Europe and even Africa. China has become the world’s factory, producing everything from milk to shoes to flat screens. But at what cost?

Read the rest at the Philippine Online Chronicles.

In Celebration of the World Cup

Like many Filipinos, I don't really follow the sport. But in solidarity with peoples of the Earth, I'll do the next best thing - look for World Cup hotties. Ugh. What a chore.

Here they are in no particular order.....

Argentina's Mario Bolatti

So many good-looking Argentines. His eyes match the color of their flag!

New Zealand's Winston Reid

Without a doubt the most good-looking Kiwi I have ever laid my eyes on.

(Kamundohan) Gaza Strip Blockade: Security vs. Humanitarian Imperatives

Israel and Palestine have been at an impasse for over half a century, their hot and cold wars a rich source of human misery. As the oil flows all around these two nations, so too, it seems, does the blood. All too easily the conflict might be misconstrued to be rooted in religion, as often protagonists invoke the name of the Almighty in all its permutations. In the name of Allah, in the name of Yahweh, in the name of God, flags have been waved, battles waged. These kinds of assumptions do not form the whole picture however, and may even be precarious assumptions to make. Because in dealing with absolute faith, it would be difficult to find a resolution based on reason.

Read the rest over at the Philippine Online Chronicles.

(Kamundohan) North Korea: Fighting to Stay on the Axis of Evil?

In an age of unprecedented cross-border exchange of goods, capital, people and ideas, North Korea is something of an anachronism. Where Cuba at least welcomes clandestine tourists from all over, Kim Jong Il’s little kingdom remains tightly sealed from the outside world. Here is a living, breathing relic of the Cold War era, widely regarded as a loose cannon this side of the Pacific. It is led by an icon of sorts, much derided for his oversized sunnies, his bouffant hair-do and his penchant for elevator boots.

Read the rest over at the Philippine Online Chronicles.

Picking on Esperanza Cabral

Recently I went to a conference and met an awe-inspiring Thai pharmacologist, Dr. Krisana Kraisintu. For the last eight years she has been helping peoples all over Africa to produce and distribute essential medicines that would combat Malaria and HIV/AIDS. Without a doubt, of all regions of the world, Africa is devastated the most by HIV/AIDS. There are over twenty million people now living with the disease in the poorest countries. Liberia, Burundi, Mozambique, Botswana. Dr. Kraisintu also served in the Thai Ministry of Health.

As pictures of her flashed on the screen I couldn’t help remember the predicament of our own Department of Health Secretary, Esperanza Cabral. Here was a Thai doctor, from a still developing country, now able to transfer knowledge on how to combat a fatal disease to even poorer countries. In the Philippines, Sec. Cabral was excoriated by the Catholic Church for daring to give out condoms last Valentine’s Day in an effort to raise AIDS awareness. When she refused to back down, the bishops wanted her axed.

Mobile Reproductive Labour

Now that foreign women are doing much of domestic work in countries all over the globe, perhaps the "domestic" will now cross into the realm of the public domain. The person cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry is, after all, no longer mommy, auntie or older sister. It is a Filipina, a Bangladeshi, an Indonesian, an African. And of course a foreign worker could not be bound by invisible ties of love, filial or maternal duty to provide the gift of free service. She must be compensated. And as an autonomous provider of domestic work now commodified, is surely as deserving of rights and protections as one who labours in traditional sectors of the economy.

Providers of reproductive labour - that is, labour necessary to "reproduce" life - now comprise half of the world's migrants to date. The kind of work women do in many societies has traditionally not been accounted for in the measure of productivity. But as women in rich, industrialized countries continue to move from domestic spaces to participate fully in the labour force, someone still has got to take care of hearth and home.

As more and more women seek their fortune by taking care of the children and the elderly of countries not theirs, they suffer a double handicap. First, they have neither the privileges nor the rights conferred by their nationality. Second, the very nature of their work, bounded by the veil of privacy of the home, makes abuse all but a foregone certainty.

For more information, read the Human Rights Watch report on the "Protection of Migrant Workers in Asia and the Middle East."

-----

Read also:
Fruits of Her Labour

Unpacking Choice and Reproductive Rights

Forces of Good?

In this televised debate on the BBC, Stephen Fry probably best captures how I feel about the church.



The kicker is this bit: "It’s the strange thing about this church, it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we with our permissive society and our rude jokes, we are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude, we like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly, because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult, it’s a bit like food in that respect only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell."

Democratize the Catholic Church

By god, I never thought of the Church this way. But this is so spot on. Thanks to Emily on FB for the link!

The Catholic Church is an authoritarian institution, modelled on the political structures of the Roman Empire and medieval Europe. It is better at transmitting instructions downward than at facilitating accountability upward. It is monolithic. It claims the unique legitimacy of a line of succession going back to the apostolic circle of Jesus Christ. Its leaders are protected by a nimbus of mystery, pomp, holiness, and, in the case of the Pope, infallibility—to be sure, only in certain doctrinal matters, not administrative ones, but the aura is not so selective. The hierarchy of such an institution naturally resists admitting to moral turpitude and sees squalid scandal as a mortal threat. Equally important, the government of the Church is entirely male.

Reading Che

This is one of the books I'm reading at the moment. Unlike most biographies, Jorge Catañeda's Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara is an engaging account of a near-mythical figure in revolutionary times.

Che clearly wishes to help others (usually patients) and concurrently sketches a broader vision of 'the order of things.' He is appalled by the poverty and desperation stemming from inequality and helplessness of the poor, but has reached a level of sophistication where he establishes a causal link between the deplorable destiny of 'the proletariat around the world' and an 'absurd sense of caste' - that is, the economic, social and political status quo.

Yet the remedy he proposes is still quite limited. It is a typically middle-class lamentation, within the most simplistic common-sense approach. Governments must stop spending on their own exaltation (like Peron), and pay more attention to the poor. Little is said of why governments act as they do, or what can be done beyond the ritual incantation that they should stop acting as they habitually do. Che's appeal is moral, not really political, arising from an individual, ethical stance against the way things are. With time, his political acumen would become more focused and complex, as befits a leader. But it would never entirely lose that original innocence, springing from the young medical student's encounter with pain and suffering, and strangely but also lastingly, from a certain distance, a deliberately assumed marginal position.

Thanks to B for pilfering this from his school's lost and found. Hehe.

Pat Robertson's Message of Love Love Love

To achieve some sort of balance, the rabidness of American atheists on Youtube seems to be directly proportional to the rabidness American bible-thumpers.



"The true genius of this message by Pat Robertson is that he is using the vast superstition, the vast paranoia that exists amongst the Haitian people to propagate the Christian message."

The Philippines in the Red

This is a map showing areas in Southeast Asia most vulnerable to climate change. The mapping study was commissioned by a Canadian research center and was published last January.

Surprise surprise the whole country is in the red. Click the image to enlarge.

Islam and Democracy

Sections of a paper I wrote many moons ago, when the agenda-setters in world politics were crucifying anything and everything that had to do with Islam. I think it funny now that the color green connotes hope and resistance when some years back the 'red menace' was replaced by the 'green peril.' Too, the cry 'God is great' is no longer deemed a cry of terrorists but of freedom fighters.

Of course this assessment refers specifically to the Arab Muslim world, and I wonder now whether the uprising in Iran is making old timers in the Middle East quake in their boots. Revolution - it is catching.

Post 9/11: Selling Democracy

Just as the collapse of the Soviet Union was unforseen by the leaders of the “free world,” so too were the events leading up to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The 1990s were marked with sub-state instability and civil wars. It was clear that while the likelihood of inter-state conflict may have been diminished with only the United States remaining the lone superpower, insecurity would come from a-territorial elements. The 9/11 attacks showed that stable autocratic allies, while ensuring “stability” in the Middle East and secure access to energy, had not led to a blemish-free Pax Americana.

Discounting questions of the legality of invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and how the United States went about these wars undemocratically, the new foreign policy seems intent on finally integrating “soft” measures with “hard” ones. In an uncharacteristic turnabout from the war rhetoric of a few years back, Condoleeza Rice has admitted that the US has a sixty-year record of supporting “stability at the expense of democracy in...the Middle East.”


Addressing the National Defence University in Washington, President George Bush reiterated the vision of a democratic Middle East.

We know that freedom, by definition, must be chosen, and that the democratic institutions of other nations will not look like our own. Yet we also know that our security increasingly depends on the hope and progress of other nations now simmering in despair and resentment. And that hope and progress is found only in the advance of freedom. This advance is a consistent theme of American strategy -- from the Fourteen Points, to the Four Freedoms, to the Marshall Plan, to the Reagan Doctrine.

Given the history of US intervention in the Arab world, scholars from either side agree that the new American tact suffers greatly from a credibility gap.

The Arab intellectual elite, often educated in the West, express deep suspicion of the US’ democratisation rhetoric. It is troubling that this influential group who are most able to sway public opinion doubt US intentions. US aid to incumbents in the region totalled $250 million in the 90s. These were designed not to rock the status quo as American security concerns required stable (if autocratic) allies.

Some of the foreign policy initiatives meant to foster democratisation include the Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI) unveiled in 2003. It was meant to assist democratisation “indirectly” through the support of civil society movements advancing education and women’s rights. The initial funding of MEPI at $29 million certainly seems a paltry sum compared to the $250 billion spent on the Iraq war effort thus far.

While the US is prepared to deliver hard solutions alone, it is taking a more inclusive tact on its democratisation drive by bringing up the agenda in multilateral talks and institutions. The United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report of 2002 was downloaded one million times in its first year of release.

Also, another program, the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMENA) was unveiled by the US in the G8 Summit of June 2004 (Hobson 2005). On the cultural front, the launch of Radio Sawa ("Together") and the Al Hurrah ("The free") was meant to initiate young Arabs to American culture.

All these initiatives lead us to the question of whether a democracy can be created through external pressure. The danger in this scenario is that while a polity may be induced to acquire the trappings of democratic institutions, elections being the most visible and readily doable, it remains a question whether “the people” have the capacity to exercise their democratic rights.

“Democracy” and a transition to democracy need to be unpacked. Substantive definitions should go beyond mere electoralism, which essentialises democracy as a ceremony with ballot boxes. A substantive conceptualisation of democracy has to address the state apparatus’ accountability to its people and any “transition” to democracy necessitates changes in the institutionalisation of broad political participation. However, democratisation in the Middle East (and indeed many developing countries today) depend not only on domestic agency and local socio-historical contexts. Increasingly, it also hinges on the enabling or stunting role of external agents in a global context. This leads us then to examine the relationship of internal and external conditions in the Arab world that may open avenues and present obstacles to a transition to democracy.

Crafting Rule of the People

The dominant doctrine for political development in American scholarship today has abandoned questions of political philosophy and theory. Minimalist recommendations are easily measurable and polities can be mapped on a linear progression, moving towards or away from “democracy.” (O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead 1986). Paul Cammack calls this normative commitment to democracy “procedural”:

…A system of government that meets three essential conditions: meaningful and extensive competition among individuals and organized groups (especially political parties) for all positions in government, a highly inclusive level of political participation in selection of leaders and policies (at least through regular and fair elections), a level of civil and political liberties (1997: 219).

“Democracy” is fundamentally a political system that legitimises decisions on the basis of formal, procedural, legal correctness without distinction of content except in respect for civil liberties and the equality before the law of all citizens. There is no reference to substantive justice and no link to a system of ultimate values.

This kind of minimalist prescription has led to a “low intensity democracy” in many newly-democratic societies since the “third wave” (Huntington 1991).

A low intensity democracy is a result of both external and internal pressures. But more than anything, authors Gills and Rocamora claim it is an opening meant to facilitate penetration of global capital. It is an unstable political system as it opens up the political space for mobilisation of elements from both left and right while the state apparatus itself, and the incumbent regime, struggle to maintain political order (1992). Seen through the linear progression of transitologists mentioned earlier (O’Donnell et al), then a low intensity democracy is but a few paces away from “transition.”

The 2005 elections in Iraq revealed that fractures of society are divided along ethno-religious lines. Political liberalisation in a sovereign territory which has not reflexively defined itself as one “nation” can only be susceptible to disintegration or a remapping of borders. Democratic institutions, as they have evolved in the Western model, are meant to foster competition. In a country that has not functioned as a single politico-cultural unit, minimalist democracy exacerbates internal imaginary divisions based on different identities.

A nuanced conceptualisation of democracy and democratisation takes a more multi-dimensional approach. The work of Jean Grugel (2002) and Rueschemeyer, Stephens & Stephens (1992) take into account the economic and societal prerequisites of democratisation and their impact on politics.

While democracy is a political order, its efficacy depends on certain preconditions. In the developing world some modicum of citizens’ economic stability directly impinge on their ability to exercise their democratic rights and duties. Operating on a “one-cannot-eat-one’s-right-to-vote” principle, “citizens” are more than willing to trade the sanctity of the ballot for a week’s worth of grocery money.

In Capitalist Development and Democracy, Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens offer a more textured and complex relationship between capitalist development and democracy. While the authors are cognizant of the democratising powers of capitalist development, they do not simply attribute this to the creation of a middle class, the improvement of education or an increase in the numbers of televisions or telephones per household, “measurables” in modernisation theory.

Transition and consolidation of democracy, according to their framework are contingent on the following:

1. Balance of power among different classes and class coalitions
2. Structure, strength and autonomy of the state apparatus and relations with civil society
3. Impact of transnational power relations (on 1 and 2)

The authors claim that ultimately, the contradictions of capitalism generated pro-democratic forces in their case studies in Latin America and Asia. More importantly, Rueschemeyer Stephens and Stepehens emphasise the fundamental requirement for any functioning democracy to take place - that of a strong institutional separation or differentiation of the realm of politics from the overall system of inequality in society (1992: 42).

Grugel’s Democratisation: A Critical Introduction also favours a conceptual framework on democratisation which examines the dynamic between the political and the economic. Similar to the previous authors mentioned, Grugel also uses three levels of analysis:

1. The State
2. Civil Society
3. Globalisation

A democratic state apparatus is one which has undergone institutional change, representative change and functional transformation (what the state actually does and its functional responsibilities). Some obstacles to the democratisation of the state concern national identity, issues on sovereignty, poor state capacity, authoritarian legacies and political fallout from economic reform.

A viable civil society able to mobilise is based on a strong middle class. Historically, the creation of a middle class was crucial in putting pressure on the state apparatus to maintain its “autonomy” (i.e. relatively insulated from capture by certain factions).

Lastly, economic globalisation is an external pressure to facilitate global trade, production and investment as well as intensify integration of global markets. Globalisation impacts local democratisation in various ways. As countries integrate into the world economy, this reduces political and economic options for countries, especially ones with a weak state apparatus. Globalisation is also a process institutionalised by global regulating bodies, such as the international financial institutions (IFIs), the WTO (even the United Nations), which aim for global liberalisation…Trade liberalisation was expected to create free markets which, in turn, would facilitate the creation of citizenship, a middle class and a civil society (Grugel 2002: 118).” This is certainly the theses of Huntington (1991) and even the likes Thomas Friedman (2005).

On the other hand, globalisation has losers along with the winners:

More influential…in shaping the project of global democratisation, are the pressures generated by the global economy, leading to new patterns of dependence, marginality and exclusion. Along with the creation of a global communications network, these guarantee the diffusion of a stylised image of democracy, alongside the penetration of capitalism, the creation of new markets and trading relationships and the establishment of new modes of consumption. More than anything else, the emergence of a global political economy is responsible for the prevalence of democracy as discourse and ideal, because it is able to penetrate dependent societies and influence mentalities and aspirations (Grugel 2002: 138-139).

While the role of external forces are important in the transition to democracy, the authors mentioned domestic conditions above all must be conducive to political pluralism. External support for democratisation only plays a complementary role to domestic pressures.

Islam, Islamists and Islamic Democracy?

Religion/Culture

Some authors argue for an “exceptionalist” explanation as to why the Middle East and North Africa have been laggards in democratising. A quick survey of the region certainly illustrates this.

Eight out of twenty-two Arab states are ruled by monarchs, including all 6 in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Jordan and Morocco. Countries not ruled by monarchies are similarly run by quasi-monarchs - Saddam Hussein of Iraq stayed in power for thirty-five years, Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya for thirty-seven years, Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen for seven presidential terms (thirty-five years if he finishes the current one), Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for twenty-four years, Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia for thirty years while successor Ben Ali has been in power for nineteen, Hafiz al Asad in Syria for thirty years and his son-successor Bashar now in his sixth year of rule.

In a survey conducted by World Values Study of nine countries with Muslim majorities and their political and social values, the results showed these did not differ much with Western states with regard to approval of democratic performance, approval of democratic leaders and disapproval of strong leaders. What they do differ on are values regarding women, homosexuality, procreation and divorce. Which means the fundamental difference between Islam and the West is not over democracy at all (as Huntington's thesis asserts).

Within the religious text themselves can be found core concepts and bases on which to build a modern yet authentic Democracy. While the commitment to the ideals of modern democracy is underpinned by “moral values” located in a “post-Reformation, market-oriented Christian Europe," this does not necessarily mean that these values are hopelessly irreconcilable with Islam.

While the Qur’an does not provide a specific form of political organisation, it provides guidelines into which political values are desirable – social justice, non-autocratic and consultative governance as well as institutionalising “mercy and compassion in social interactions (Abou El Fadl 2004: 5).” Further, Islam in principle is against absolutism as it draws strength in diversity:

Absolutism in principle is alien to Muslim political thought. Indeed, Muslim society has historically been marked by a high degree of what we would today might call civil society…Ironically these principles of limited governance were broken primarily in the twentieth century by new authoritarian regimes based on Western nation-building principles in which the Leviathan state assumed maximum control over all areas of life to build the all-powerful state (Fuller 2003: 32).

The Islamists who established authoritarian regimes in countries like Iran who insist on a top-down approach of Islam, is a violation of the Qur’anic principle – “there is no compulsion in religion.” (Fuller 2003: 32).

The question of whether “the people” or God should be sovereign can be reconciled by the religion’s own political philosophy. Islam accepts that humans are “vicegerents” i.e. representatives of God on earth, which carries with it the idea that humans are responsible for carrying out God’s justice (as enshrined in Shari’a law for example). Even then, this little conundrum was circumvented by Iran by establishing a theocracy. The Iranian state was supposed to have been “bestowed by God” and as such, matters of the state override religion because the former is already legitimised by God.

This shows that the religious texts are flexible enough to be open to various interpretations. The ulama, or religious leaders, enjoy political legitimacy from their scholarship of religious matters. Ehteshami claims they serve as unique political class (2004: 93). It seems enormous work need to be done by these religious scholars to reclaim their Islam and to work on reconciling what has been written centuries past with the realities of today.

Some indigenous elements for democratisation also include the shura or consultative council (although monarchies such as Saudi Arabia say the consultation is “non-binding”), ijtihad or independent reasoning and ijma or consensus, baica or approval of leaders by the umma, ash-sharica or deliberation of worldly matters and religious matters where god did not make a reference.

In sum, with regard to religio-cultural aspects, there is nothing inherently opposed to Democracy in Islam.

The State

A legacy of colonialism in the Middle East is the mukharabat - a strong state apparatus to safeguard the gains of independence as well as a reaction to the creation and continued existence of Israel. Alkadry calls this “defensive modernisation,” that is, the nation and state building process takes place in the context of external intervention. This kind of nationalist modernisation privileged stability over broad democratic participation.

Another problematic is - what, where and who constitutes the state? There are still border issues as a result of arbitrary colonial partitioning. The most notable ones are between Pakistan-India-Bangladesh, Iraq-Kuwait, Israel-Palestine, Yemen-Saudi, Kurdistan-Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

A result of the forced fragmentation into a multitude of small weak states was the persistence of sub- and supra-state identities that weakened the identification with the state that was needed for stable democracy. In such conditions, where political mobilisation tends to exacerbate communal conflict or empowers supra-state movements threatening the integrity of the state, elites are more likely to resort to authoritarian solutions.

Aside from defensive modernisation and nation-building taking precedence over openness of the polity, a unique socio-political formation in the Middle East is the oil-exporting rentier state. As oil rents finance day-to-day governance and even welfare measures such as free health care and subsidised education, there is little need or pressure for the rentier state, also a monarchy, to agree to power sharing.

However in recent years there are pressures on the stability of rentier monarchies, especially on the fiscal side. Since the 1990s, the Gulf States have been experiencing economic crises coupled with a booming population.

The timeline varies depending on the scientific study one consults, but once the oil disappears, so too will the rentier state. The only option for these countries today is to steadily diversify their economies or pool their resources in a regional grouping. In the end the economy may well be a precipitating factor in reuniting the heart of the Muslim world.

Islamists and Civil Society

A survey of the Arab world and the different socio-economic groupings do not show a promising context for democratisation. Even with interim colonial occupation the social structure of the 19th century remains intact. For example in 1958 Iraq, 68 percent of agricultural lands were owned by 2 percent of total landowners. In Lebanon 2 percent of landowners owned 2/3 of the cultivated lands. In Syria, 2.5 percent of landowners held 45 percent of irrigated and 30 percent of rain-fed land while 70 percent of the total population held no land at all. In Egypt, 2/3 of the land was owned by 5.7 percent of the population (Halperin 2005: 1137).

With regard to the middle class, mostly professionals, its survival is dependent on the state’s munificence. It is a coopted middle class. As there is little diversification in industries, the government is, in many cases, the only employer. For example in Qatar and Kuwait 95 and 99 percent of nationals work for the State. Non-rentier monarchy Egypt, still has 6 million civil servants. There is no labour force to counter traditional elites as these countries also import labour. Saudi Arabia alone employs 6 to 7 million foreign workers.

Since the state apparatus will not broaden access to political power for reasons already given, and there are no “moderate” social forces that can hold the state accountable, then it can be said that Islamists are the closest approximation of “civil society” in the Middle East. Islamic movements gain legitimacy from the local populations by championing them and providing help for the economically marginalised and by consistently pointing out the artificiality of the current state-system and its entrenched elites.

Denied access to political participation, some have even resorted to radical and violent measures to advance their agenda. Increasingly Islamists have been advocating democracy simply because they are easy targets due to its absence. Islamists, as the major opposition to entrenched regimes, languish in prisons in the Muslim world more than any other political group.

Opening access to political participation has consistently given rise to Islamist parties as the strongest opposition as in the case of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Saudi Arabia. Islamists have participated in elections in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco, Palestine and Yemen.

Just as the United States suffers from a credibility gap, so too do Islamists who have actually gained power – the Sudan, Afghanistan and to an extent Iran. There is a legitimate worry that once an Islamist movement is able to take over the state apparatus, that it will abandon its democratising project and reveal its “true colours.”

The Arab World, the United States and Democracy

Evaluating the chances for democratisation in the Middle East has shown that there are no social forces strong enough to exert pressure from the bottom up. The only groups which can be seen as pro-democratic have traditionally been marginalised by US-friendly autocratic regimes and have been put under the spotlight so to speak since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Most peoples in the Middle East see a difference between the Palestinian resistance and genuine terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. It does not help the US cause to unceremoniously lump together Hamas with these terrorist groups.

Some American policymakers have actually admitted that democracy in the Middle East will threaten US interests. Zbigniew Brezinski claims democracy in Egypt will put the Muslim Brotherhood in power. King Fahd's overthrow in Saudi Arabia might put the likes of Bin Laden in power.

The whole region has been in a heightened state of alert and seemingly constant danger since the onset of the Cold War. In such a scenario, it is business as usual for the American military-industrial complex. The US has increased arms sales to its client regime since 2000. 20 of the top 25 recipient countries in 2003 are including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.

Stability in exchange for the supreme control of authoritarian regimes in the region is no longer considered a viable option for US establishment. However its push for democracy in the Middle East seems to be running contrary to its short-term goals of remaining in the region and maintaining stable access to energy. Should the people be allowed to vote, then the marginalised majority will want to put Islamists in the state apparatus. There are currently no non-Islamist internal/local social forces capable of making the transition to a substantive democratisation as evinced in history.

An externally-imposed democracy will be a democracy in name, but not in fact.

Solh

In solidarity.



More photos at TehranLive and on Flickr.