And they were happy when the Arab spring came but not very much so at the flowers it let bloom. Many liberal quarters in the West (and here at home) are in full ‘I-told-you-so’ mode as ‘Islamists’ have swept the polls in Egypt – as they did in Tunisia and Morocco earlier. Gone is the rejoicing of the advent of democracy in the Arab world and has been replaced by political soothsayers predicting radical Islamisation of the region and all the much-feared allied paraphernalia it is supposed to bring with it (despite the winning parties allaying such fears).
That these parties have won in their respective countries should not surprise anyone. Electoral politics is not just about having a platform people can hop onto but to ensure that these people will also hop to the polling booth come election day. This requires having a well-organised grassroots machinery that churns out the required numbers. The Ikhwan in Egypt, the PJD in Morocco and the Nahda in Tunisia had cultivated their ground rank and files (and that too under the previous repressive regimes) which helped them run impressive campaigns which then translated into checked ballots. Voter turnouts as high as 62 percent return representative leaders even if the still-nascent process has glitches: these kinds of numbers don’t lie.
But just commending these parties on their electoral machineries is a bit of a gyp. They after all had clearly defined manifestoes which the people chose to support. It’s hypocritical to cry foul at the process simply because the people it turned out belong to a certain side of the ideological spectrum. ‘They-aren’t-ready-for-democracy-because-they-elect-fundoes’ arguments are the kind of canard despots like Mobarak and Musharraf hide behind before they abscond.
The people have spoken and (purported) liberals should learn to respect that. Conflating genuine religious sentiment with radicalism is a mistake many analysts make especially those who have a bad case of PTSD after witnessing phenomena like Zia, Taliban and the Al-Qaeda. But a distinction needs to be made. The very fact that these parties chose to participate in the electoral process should differentiate them from your average gun-toting fundamentalist. They are at the end of the day answerable to the electorate and if the people have issues with their Islamist projects, they shall so speak next elections. It’s a process, let it work.
