The evolving political future of the Muslim world as a result of the Arab Spring has begun to take some shape. It has three aspects, all of great significance for the world at large. The first is the form of political structures that have begun to evolve in this part of the world. The second is the way the Muslim world will relate to the West. The third is the fact that the revolution that has already brought about so much change is not going to stop at the borders of the countries affected so far; it will reach other shores. Enough clues are available now to paint a fairly accurate picture of the shape of things to come. This article will focus on the political side of the emerging equation.
In order to understand what is happening in the Muslim world, it is useful to divide it into three parts; there is no doubt that one part will influence the other two. The first part is made up of the non-Arab Muslim countries that have had some experience of the democratic form of governance. This group includes Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. The second group is made up of the Arab world currently being convulsed with active streets that have already brought about regime change in three countries while pressuring several others. In between these lie two countries – Afghanistan and Iran – that will also go through political change, which will be influenced by what is happening in the other two parts.
The movement that has convulsed the Arab world is now almost a year old and much has happened since then. The revolution has moved into the second phase in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt where the regimes did not resist for very long the street’s pressure to give way. Tunisia has already held an election to choose an Assembly that will write the country’s next Constitution. Egypt is embarked on a messier process to define its political future. As Charles Levinson wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal, “In an election viewed as a template for emerging Mideast democracies, Tunisians appeared poised to offer a new narrative: an Assembly composed largely of an Islamist party promising a moderate platform, and two secular parties that have pledged to work with it.”
In the elections held on October 23 in Tunisia, the Nahda party captured 43 per cent of the 217-seat Assembly. However, the better-than-expected performance of two other parties, both advocating secular and progressive values but prepared to work with Islamic groups to define a new political order, suggests that the citizens want the country to follow a moderate route in which Islamic principles are embedded in an open political system. Together, the Congress for the Republic Party and Aridha Chaabia (People’s Petition Party) secured 28 per cent of the seats. After the elections both pledged to work with the Nahda. The staunchly secularist Progressive Democratic Party did poorly in the elections, winning only five per cent of the seats. Tunisia, in other words, is following a course very different from the one taken by Algeria in 1991 and the Palestinian territories in 2006. In both, Islamists were not prepared to compromise with the secular movements, with disastrous consequences of course.
The lessons taught by those events were learnt by all groups participating in the political process in Tunisia. Although progress towards establishing a new political order is much slower in Egypt, there too the Muslim Brotherhood is likely to emerge as the most powerful grouping in the new political order. The “brothers” have promised they will associate themselves with the secular parties in writing the new Constitution. Libya, the third country now engaged in defining a new order, is likely to be influenced by the events in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt. However, the path it will follow is likely to be rockier since it is the least politically developed of the three in which change has already begun.
As the process has been defined in both Tunisia and Egypt and is likely to follow the same course in Libya, it will take a couple of years before a more durable political order emerges. Turkey will have the most significant influence on the way the systems evolve in these countries. As is the case with the Arab world, Turkey has also moved away from secularism to a system that recognises the country’s Islamic heritage. However, in gradually abandoning the aggressively secularist approach adopted by Mustapha Kamal, the founder of modern Turkey, the country has not opted for a strict system Islamists are inclined to advocate. The Turkish approach of keeping religion out of the affairs of the state resonates well with the relatively more liberal and urbanised groups that are growing in size and economic presence in all Muslim countries. In fact, it was this class that was at the forefront of the movements that dislodged the long established regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
The direction of change in the parts of the Arab world that are in the process of establishing new political orders is providing some comfort to the West. The West’s approach towards Algeria in the 1990s and the Gaza strip in the 2000s was the product of intense discomfort born out of the fear that it would lose all influence if the Islamists assumed power. While the “grand bargain” between the Arab regimes and the West (discussed in this space last month) has broken down, it need not be replaced by hostility between the two. The Nahda in Tunisia and the Brotherhood in Egypt seem determined to show that their ascendancy need not mean a rupture with the West.
The author is a former finance minister of Pakistan