Hazem Saghiyeh

Let us take for granted that Islamic political movements have come to power in a given Arab country through electoral processes. Does this mean a reenactment of the unelected religious regimes, the likes of which we have witnessed and are still witnessing nowadays?

It is probably not the case. The reason is that Islamic movements never fail to assert that they will abide by the electoral process and the peaceful transition of power. They also display an apparent flexibility when talking about the Western forces that will exert pressure in the future to hold on to parliamentary democracy.

There are enough arguments to say that a religious movement coming to political power these days will find itself confronted to questions it cannot answer. Indeed, religion – and any religion at that – has nothing to say regarding inflation, the labor force and the problematic issues of economic cooperation and complementarity, which are put forth by globalization, provided that “religious reference authorities” do have something to say on foreign policies, culture and modern education. The contradiction with elected religious governments is to grow worse as the economy, especially as securing youth employment, will acquire an increasingly central importance across the region in the future. Young men and women and, in general, all sectors that care about freedom and about some form of modernism will not be easily brought back under repression following the experience of uprisings and appropriation of public space.

This assumption does not mean in any way that we should hail the arrival of Islamic forces to power. This, as such, represents a major setback for values and relations we want to impute to ourselves. Yet this setback, which is due to many factors, the latest of which being the extended and deep-ranging repression of current regimes, has come to represent an irresistible popular demand. As it has become known, resistance against this demand in Algeria about two decades ago caused a horrific civil war. At the time, the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of the elections only to have the authorities abrogate the results of the vote. As the latest count shows, one cannot speak of democracy and refuse to allow Islamists or anyone else to come to power through general elections.

The negative results of this setback will undoubtedly emerge as long as Islamic forces are in power. Women and culture will see their freedoms attacked; minorities are likely to suffer, and so are public education and reason. Yet all this would be nothing if Islamists can be persuaded to abide by the principle of transition of power. At the end of the day, this will be the mother of all questions Arabs – and especially Islamists among them – will have to answer.

This article is a translation of the original, which was posted on the NOW Arabic site on Monday January 9, 2012