HiddenMysteries: Second thoughts

By Salama A Salama

Over the past few weeks, terror attributed to Muslim extremist groups has been on the rise.

In the UK, police uncovered a ring of doctors planning suicide attacks and bombings in London and Glasgow. In Pakistan, students of radical religious schools barricaded themselves, with women and children, in the Red Mosque in Islamabad. In the Middle East, a shadowy group known as Fatah Al-Islam fought it out with the army in Nahr Al-Bared.

The world is being terrorised by splinter groups of Islamic groups that may be affiliated with Al-Qaeda. And whose fault is this exactly? I blame Muslim societies whose ideas and doctrines seem to advocate full obedience to religious leadership. Militant groups are recruiting in our midst. They are recruiting young men who have been driven, through isolation and political frustration, into the hands of fanatical leaders. In our region, any imam can now turn into a political leader. Any cleric can seek power.

But what kind of power are we talking about? In most cases where extremist groups managed to flirt with power, democracy wasn't their main concern, but the implementation of Sharia and the debunking of secular regimes. Even when religious groups wanted to clean up their act, they couldn't remove the ambiguity from their ideas, and they never fully accepted freedom and democracy. In the few cases where political Islam groups contested elections, the governments fought them tooth and nail, trying to keep them out of political life. It was as if the governments wanted those groups to remain underground, to live in isolation and contemplate violence. The regimes prefer illegitimate Islamic groups to legitimate ones. They have no use for Islamic groups that abide by the constitution and the law.

The Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies recently organised a conference on the doctrinal revisions by formerly violent Islamic groups. The conference turned out to be more of a testimony to the success of the security services than to the truthfulness of the groups. Remarkably, however, one of the historic leaders of those groups said the initiative to stop violence was inspired by a theological need to do what was right by all Muslims. Many, including myself, welcome the shift in the thinking of Islamist groups. But something is wrong about the whole thing. This collective way of turning around only confirms that the modus operandi of such groups is one of blind obedience.

Only groups with strict lines of command can produce such a collective change of heart. This is not the kind of shift that happens through individual choice or in a free environment. This is why sceptics pointed out that the revisions were perhaps opportunistic rather than sincere. And this is why the security forces quickly ruled out any plans by the concerned groups to engage in political life. When an Islamist figure said he wanted to form a secular party for former members of violent groups, everyone shot him down.

No one has the right to question the veracity of the revisions by Islamist groups. But those revisions would have been more credible in a society that is open and democratic. Arab societies have so far failed to move towards democracy. They have failed to show due respect for law and the constitution. And it is their failure to open up that sustains the climate in which religiously-inclined groups continue to work in secret and in which militants carry out the orders of despotic leaders without pausing to think. The West has for sometime maintained that the best weapon against terror in the Arab world is democracy. Perhaps we should give it a try.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg

{great opinion, but overlooks, that it must be a Bush Approved, Zionist Approved Democracy -- e.g. Palestine Democracy vs. Fatah}

Second thoughts

Friday, July 13 2007 @ 10:55 AM CDT