Contemporary Anti-Muslim Politics by Kenneth J. Long

Author:Kenneth J. Long
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

For a nation that seems to teach its population that human history is an unrelenting march toward more democratic governments, it is a bit deflating that Americans seem so pessimistic about democracy’s chances elsewhere, and it may be reflective of more than a little racism that Americans are particularly pessimistic about those chances in Muslim majority nations.

Prashad describes the situation with an appropriate harshness: “Both the West and the Gulf Arabs suggest that the terrorism they dislike against themselves is acceptable for others. The history of their policies . . . leads inexorably to the creation of police states (as in Egypt) and terrorist emirates. A lack of basic commitment to people’s movements—anchored in unions and in civic groups—will always lead to such diabolical outcomes.”[7] Much more “moderate” scholars aren’t offering perspectives all that different, even if they express it very differently. Jeremy Pressman, for example, noted that American foreign policy under Obama, as it has ever since World War II, prioritized security over democratization. He argued, “the environment in which the United States is setting policy has been unstable, violent, and not moving in a democratic direction” and he contends US policy “is much more driven by events on the ground in the specific countries than by US decisions.”[8] However, there is no distinction between “prioritized security” and support for police states where security has been equated with strategies to contain Arab states generally and where America ultimately places bets on tyrants and a repressive order. It is also worth remembering that grossly unpopular regimes are almost by definition evidence of divided nations—nations divided against themselves in the split between hated rulers and public discontent. American policy may be recalibrated in reaction to some of the more provocative actions of hated allies, such as the Egyptian and Saudi dictatorships, but the basic tenor and direction of US policy remains fairly hostile to any substantive reordering of the region.

Even where the Arab Spring rebellions seem to have settled into unrelenting warfare, as in Syria and Libya, it seems near-sighted to conclude that this cannot be part of the process of the radical transformation of the region and the nations in it. The geopolitical time bomb to which Kagan and Dunne refer involves not just Egypt; it also includes the atavistic monarchies of the GCC. Current events in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya are about as peaceful as the Jacobin terror of the French Revolution. But even the French Revolution failed near-term insofar as it led seemingly only to Napoleon. Longer term, however, the ideals of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity helped transform most of Europe and much of the world. Who could reasonably expect Arab Spring to be an “overnight” success, more efficient than Europe’s still incomplete democratization efforts, which continued from 1789 to 1844 and 1870 and beyond? What may surprise most, at least so far, may be the relative and prompt apparent, if uncertain and partial, success of Tunisia’s revolution. Offering a play on words with the slogan of the

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