Islamists across the Arab world have taken heart from the Muslim Brotherhood's strongest ever showing in Egyptian elections, saying this could weaken the appeal of violent ideologies.
The Brotherhood, the Arab world's oldest Islamist movement, managed to win nearly a fifth of the Egyptian parliament seats in the legislative elections despite a state crackdown.
Islamists from Tunisia to Syria see the gains in the elections, which finished this week, as a victory for the Brotherhood's strategy of gradual and peaceful steps towards a more Islamic state and society.
They also say the showing should encourage the United States to recognise the influence of political Islam across the region.
Militant ideologies that have inspired groups such as al Qaeda hold Arab governments are infidel and can only be changed through force, at odds with the Brotherhood's belief that it was possible to bring about change from within.
''This gives very strong momentum in the region -- that the method of patience and endurance is not a dead end, as some claim.
That in the face of despotism, the armed solution does not work,'' said exiled Tunisian Islamist Sayyed Ferjani.
Along with other opposition groups, Islamists have had few, if any freedoms, in most Arab countries.
Tunisia banned Ferjani's Islamist Nahda Party in the early 1990s, the Brotherhood is still officially banned in Egypt and membership of the group in Syria is punishable by death.
Islamists who share the Egyptian Brotherhood's approach say governments must give them more space to marginalise militants.
''Arab regimes should deal transparently with the Islamic movement and deal with it in a way that allows it to shield society from radical views'', said Abdul Majid Thunaibat, head of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood yesterday.
That echoes the view of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who said last month that making room for peaceful views was the best way to marginalise violent groups.
''It would be a mistake to exclude Islamist parties on the assumption they are inherently undemocratic or prone to violence,'' she said.
The current U.S. administration, which has called for more freedom in the region, supports the Egyptian government's ban on the Brotherhood and has exerted little public pressure on Cairo over the arrests of Islamists during the elections.
''It wants to see democracy, although it likewise wants the democrats who win not to be Islamists,'' Ferjani said. The Brotherhood opposes much of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
ISLAMISM ON THE RISE But the Brotherhood's showing in Egypt adds weight to the argument that political Islam is a force the United States must come to terms with across the Arab world, where Islamists have shown their electoral strength when given the chance.
Algeria's army cancelled an election which Islamists looked set to win in 1992 and the country descended into civil war.
As in Egypt, the Brotherhood in Jordan is the country's strongest opposition force. Hamas is expected to mount a strong challenge to the ruling Fatah faction when it contests its first Palestinian parliamentary elections in January.
''There is a phenomenon which cannot be ignored in the Arab world and it is the clear growth of the moderate Islamic current,'' said Ali Bayanouni, the exiled head of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood.
''It is in the interests of all, including the United States, not to be the cause of the oppression of the Islamic movement and not to support tyrannical leaders who oppress this movement,'' he said.
Hassan al-Turabi, one of the Muslim world's most prominent Islamist ideologues, said the Brotherhood's success in Egypt would give hope to Islamists pushing for a role in government.
The Brotherhood's showing was a sign that ''more pressure through the masses is better than hitting back through force'', said Turabi, once the ideological force behind Sudan's Islamist government, which came to power in a coup in 1989.
Turabi, who was close to militant Islamist dissidents in the 1990s, said militancy would ''gently wither away'' if more political freedoms were accompanied by withdrawals of U.S.-led forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. |
LONDON - The exiled leader of Syrias outlawed Muslim Brotherhood on Friday called on President Bashar al-Assad to step down and allow free elections, saying the opposition would resort to civil disobedience if the regime failed to introduce democratic change.
The Hamas politburo chief traveled from Damascus disguised as a pilgrim. Saudi rulers offered him and his movement generous terms for breaking away from the Damascus-Tehran bloc, freeing the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit and signing a cooperation pact with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.