In this weekend’s Week in Review (4/15/07), Craig S. Smith wrote an article under the heading of “Islam and Democracy” entitled “North Africa: Under Attack, and Relying on Repression”. Aside from the headline, it’s quite sympathetic to North African regimes and oddly evasive when it comes to Islamists. This article is embarrassing; I’m embarrassed to admit enjoying the New York Times. A couple of examples before I get to the main point:

The first sentence refers to “… North Africa’s secular social veneer…” I’m not sure what this means. Secular? In North Africa? Even many of the leftists are not “secular” in North Africa. “Secular” is a curse to most North Africans. While there is a “secular elite”, this phrase only describes a very small fraction of the population. Perhaps particular wealthy districts of wealthy cities have a “secular social veneer”, but this is not an accurate description of the reality across North Africa.

Shortly thereafter, Smith states:

“Every country on the continent’s northern rim, from Egypt to Morocco, has outlawed extreme Islamist parties that would be likely to win large parliamentary blocs — if not majorities — were they allowed to participate in free and fair national elections. (Libya bans political parties altogether.)”

Lets take Egypt and Morocco. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is clearly the organization he is referring to here, but the MB is not a “party”, nor is it “extreme”. It is a social movement and it is nonviolent and has been for decades. Indeed, one can be “extreme” without being violent, but is Smith implying that since “extreme Islamist parties… would be likely to win large parliamentary blocs… were they allowed to participate…” that the North Africans who – in these non-existent “free and fair national elections” – would vote for these winning “parties” are all “[extremists]”? Your argument is on shaky ground when you are suggesting that large swaths of people are extreme; perhaps there is something missing from this analysis.

Al ‘Adl Wal Ihsan, the “party” to which Smith implicitly refers in Morocco, has never run any candidates. To be sure, it does have some pretty unusual views. Al ‘Adl is rooted in the Sufi tradition of Islam and Sheikh Yassine, its leader, has ‘foreboding’ visions on occasion that insinuate that he will become the ruler of Morocco. At any rate, Al ‘Adl is not your typical “extremist” organization and characterizing it this way, along with your other revivalist Islamic organizations, is misleading. Al ‘Adl has always been nonviolent and professes to believe in democracy. Whether this is actually the case, it refuses to participate in the Moroccan political system because it sees the Moroccan elections as a façade that legitimizes the regime – can’t exactly disagree with ‘em on that one. I don’t have a good grasp of Sufism, but you can see why Smith’s statement is misleading.

In fact, this statement is “extreme”-ly misleading. I get the sense that the author thinks it’s ok to outlaw “extreme” Islamist parties when they are going to win elections (for the record, Al ‘Adl is not outlawed because it’s going to win elections - it doesn’t respect Morocco’s “sacred institutions,” which include the king). If this characterization of Smith’s perspective is accurate, the question becomes: when is it acceptable to outlaw organizations that are nonviolent simply because they have some socially conservative views? Both the Egyptian and Moroccan regimes resort to violence, arbitrary arrests, and other human rights abuses at will; but the Islamists are “extreme”. How many decades do you have to be nonviolent before you are no longer “extreme”? When I think of “extreme” I think of bin Laden, not the Muslim Brotherhood. If I’m not alone on this, then I think I’m justified in saying that this article perpetuates the myth that all Islamists are extremists.

My final knit-picky critique (I have plenty more, but you get the point) focuses on Smith’s very next sentence: “Each of those countries (again with the exception of Libya, where the small society is tightly controlled) has suffered terrorist attacks from local groups that have emerged from the repressed extremists.”

Wow. Smith implies that the groups that have committed terrorist attacks are related to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Al ‘Adl (“the repressed extremists”). This is false. I’m not sure I’ve heard of a single group affiliated with either of these organizations committing a terrorist attack in a very, very long time. As long as we’re grouping all Islamists together now, I wonder if Craig S. Smith is related to Steve Smith the football player and Mr. Smith, my gym teacher in middle school (one’s black and one’s white but interracial marriage is really on the rise!).

One final statement I have to critique prior to getting to the point. Referencing the North African youth, Smith states:

“The Islamist movement easily influences those people. The Internet and Arabic satellite TV stations from the Middle East have filled the void left by bland state-run media outlets at home, helping spread fundamentalism and a militant political message.”

Ma sha’ Allah!! First, I’m not quite sure which Arabic satellite stations Smith is referring to… presumably… Al-Jazeera? Probably, but since he uses the plural noun “stations” I assume that there’s at least one more… does he mean Al-Arabiya? Clearly, Smith has not watched either of these channels before. Al-Arabiya is considered pro-American in the Middle East, and it’s certainly not “militant”. If Al-Arabiya is “fundamentalist”, I guess we’re all fundamentalists.

Al-Jazeera’s commentators and guests might make anti-American arguments with frequency, but Al-Jazeera is hardly “fundamentalist”. Can any of the New York Times editors tell me what a “fundamentalist” is? I’m not even sure what having a “militant political message” implies from a person (Smith) who has displayed such poor judgment of character in the past.

The state-run media are not simply “bland”. They are propaganda outlets. In most Arab countries (in Egypt and Jordan, for example, which are our allies), the state-run media are oftentimes far more “militant” than Al-Jazeera. And even if Al-Jazeera airs some “militant” views, it broadcasts leftist and pro-American voices as well – including those in the Bush Administration. Of course, the administration’s policy for a long time was to ignore the Arabic satellite media, but it eventually backtracked on this policy just like it backtracked on democracy promotion.

Last point on the media issue. Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya should not be overlooked for the role they play in providing a forum for a plurality of perspectives. When states controlled the media there were no outlets for the expression of dissent. Al-Jazeera has call-in shows and heated debates that do not just criticize the US, but Arab regimes too. This was unthinkable in the late 1990s. The ascent of satellite television in the Middle East is one of the more positive developments over the past decade.

Now that I’m all riled up I’ll get to the meat of my post (if you’ve made it this far, send me an email so I feel better about having stayed up all night to start and almost finish this). Smith ends with quotations of Entelis and Zartman on the merits of participation. Entelis argues that Islamists should be included in politics, while Zartman suggests that hardliners within the winning Islamist party would take over and, perhaps, lead to something like Russia after the Czar fell. Neither of these experts are incorrect per se, but the question is problematic. Algeria’s not my specialty, and I could talk about Egypt, but I’ll pick on Morocco because Westerners who don’t study the region tend to think that it is ‘on the path to democracy’.

We can debate all day whether the inclusion-moderation hypothesis has any value when applied to electoral politics in autocratic systems. I’d venture to say that inclusion does not necessarily result in ideological moderation, but it oftentimes leads to strategically calculated decision making. Once political actors perceive participation to be in their best interest, they join the game when permitted. Many of the founders of the Moroccan PJD (the only Islamist political party in the country and the part that is favored to win the next elections) had been trying to enter politics as members of an unrecognized organization since 1983. They were not admitted until the late 1990s. For participation to remain worthwhile it must be incentivized. In democracies, the incentive is the opportunity to rule. Even when a party loses, it does not buck the system because it knows that it will have the opportunity to rule at the next round of elections.

In autocracies, political parties are often lured in with negative and positive incentives. Negative incentives include knowing that they will experience less repression as a legal, participatory organization. Positive incentives, such as the opportunity to govern, are only partial in autocratic countries because there are constraints placed on the amount of authority that can be acquired via the electoral process. In many autocracies, like the kingdoms of Morocco and Egypt (you are what you are, and you is what you is), a country’s leader may be unelected altogether.

Morocco lacks positive incentives for participation (so does Egypt). Governing is not a possible outcome of elections - even for the winning party - because the parliament is endowed with very little authority. Several PJD officials have stated accurately that winning the 2007 elections, which the PJD is likely to do, is a curse. If the PJD is victorious, it will probably remain in the opposition while allowing the second, third, and possibly fourth place parties to join the government. Without authority, the “ruling” party can do little more than share blame for Morocco’s abysmal living conditions, rampant corruption, high unemployment and underemployment, etc… Because they cannot govern, Islamists who choose to participate cannot alter the status quo. So why should permitting Islamists to participate lead them to moderate their positions? Even if these Islamists do participate, why would people continue to vote for them if they don’t experience tangible changes in their living conditions??

Including Islamists in this type political system serves multiple of the regime’s interests, but in the long run, it will not cut down on terrorism. Whether there are Islamists participating or not, the needs of the population will not be met as long as the status quo persists. At some point, the real extremists will recover their capacity to recruit people who may, at one point, have been swayed by the chance to seek their interests through participating in politics. The youth in the PJD and its social movement, the MUR, do tend to be more extreme than the middle generation – the organizations’ leaders at present. Don’t blame Al-Jazeera for this; blame the lack of economic opportunity, lack of legitimate political opportunity, the massive wealth gap, a poor education system, and a multitude of other problems most of which start with the king.

Smith and Zartman seem to think that Islamists either a) need to become more liberal prior to democracy can take hold, or b) need to be slowly guided into democratic systems by the powers that be. But Islamists are no different than the rest of us. They would prefer to have everything their way, but they know that it’s probably not going to happen. They are strategic actors; after all, their willingness to participate in electoral politics is a clear indication of this absolute fact. (“Extreme” Islamists DO NOT take part in elections.) If the Moroccan regime does not provide positive incentives for participating then it runs the risk of causing the Islamists to back out.

Why don’t other parties back out? The Moroccan regime has co-opted just about every political actor – except the PJD. Although the PJD has definitely had its fair share of contact with the palace (some analysts, like Mohsen-Finan and Zeghal, are adamant that the PJD was created by the state), it does not seem to be engaged in the clientelist politics that has trapped other political actors. As long as the PJD remains largely untainted, the regime is going to have to find a way to pacify it… hopefully it will be through positive incentives.

Please note: there are other reasons for the PJD to participate. After all, Islamists don’t necessarily want control of the state apparatus; they want control of society. I’ll save this aspect of the argument for a rainy day.