Hazem Saghiyeh

Is there a standard for measuring the success or failure of regimes emanating from Arab revolutions, which are predominantly Islamic in nature one way or another?

The answer is most probably yes, as the difference between manifestations of success and failure will not be too difficult to make out. If the new regimes focus on building political life, restoring the economy and providing job opportunities for the unemployed, these would be signs of success. In contrast, if voices call for al-Quds, the caliphate, perhaps even al-Andalus, in addition to issues pertaining to women, their clothing and their freedoms, and the right to freedom of writing, drawing and expression, this means that those regimes have ended in failure.

The primordial importance of politics and the economy means settling the national issue (thus abrogating this difference, which exists only in the Arab world, between “national” and “nationalist”). It also means the prevalence of a sense of pragmatism over ideological inclinations and inherited prejudices. Islamists must adapt themselves to the pressure exerted by the diktats of reality and gradually relinquish their prior dogmatic biases in order to address their peoples’ pressing needs.

Electoral stability and the actual respect of the peaceful transition of power will certainly be an implicit condition to this adaptation. Electoral parties that are concerned with the voters’ interests should relinquish their ideological burdens, which have a disastrous impact on these interests, and respond to their voters’ true demands.
As for al-Quds, al-Andalus, women, reading and writing, etc., these are merely signs that the new regimes are not working properly and that the Islamist forces that have newly come to power wish to evade their avowed commitment to democracy in favor of a mixture of “fateful cases” and trivial matters. We would, therefore, be witnessing a remake of the era of Nasserism, which extended into the Baath rule, during which time “fateful cases” were a means to evade en masse the tasks of building states and laying the foundations of decent political and economic lives in them.

This broad division does not exclude the existence of a third possibility, which – if it were to happen – would be the absolute worst-case scenario. In that case, local and international circumstances – such as the economic crisis – would undermine chances of building political and economic life in the countries that witnessed uprisings. Under this disastrous scenario, which might be exacerbated in the Levant due to Israel’s scurrility and intransigence, we cannot but expect a populist and demagogical return to al-Quds, the caliphate, al-Andalus, women’s rights and creative freedoms. Should it ever be the case, this return would be consolidated by the resurgence of old ideological instincts, thus blocking the transition to a new and promising future.

This article is a translation of the original, which appeared on the NOW Arabic site on Monday January 30, 2012