Arabocracy

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The banner of democracy is raised across the Arab homeland — raised by those who believe in the necessity of applying it, and likewise by those who do not believe in it at all but hope it might carry them to power, and also by those who know nothing about it but hope it might be the hidden force that saves them from the earthly hell that Arab rulers manufacture. As for the West, it never tires of encouraging Arabs to establish democracy and adopt it as a modern system of governance that leads humanity out of the darkness of oppression into the light of freedom, adopting capitalism alongside it so that the circle of Western culture and thought closes fully around Arab necks. The Arabs have moved from slogan to slogan according to the succession of historical eras, or according to the patterns of defeat, retreat, bewilderment, and loss. This period bears witness to the slogan of democracy, awaiting yet another slogan whose arrival may not be long delayed, given the failure of democratization efforts.

Arabocracy Instead of Democracy

Democracy reached certain parts of the Arab world, and local council elections were held in Algeria in 1992, but the results did not please everyone, so those they did not please seized military control of the country and annulled the results of the democratic process, causing internal fighting that reaped thousands upon thousands of lives. Elections were held in Palestine that ended in a Hamas victory, but Fatah and its allies at both the Arab and Western levels did not accept the results, and matters ended in internal fighting and the establishment of two Palestinian governments, one in the besieged Gaza Strip, the other in the occupied West Bank. And now it is the turn of the military in Egypt, which had seen the first elected president in its history.

The spectacle of rejecting election results was not far removed from Iraq, where voices rose demanding the toppling of Maliki, who had taken the post of prime minister as the result of a democratic process, nor is it far now from Tunisia, where signatures are being gathered to override the results of democratic elections. I have myself witnessed elections for Arab councils, organizations, and associations conducted along democratic lines, and I have seen how the losers gather on the very night the results are announced to form a parallel body to the one that won, in order to obstruct and undermine its work.

The Arab arena witnesses a democratic process on election day, but it then flips afterward into “Arabocracy,” which I define as the tribalism and partisan bigotry that circumvents democratic standards in order to preserve the tribal balance prevailing at both the social and political levels, and that pushes toward further political and social fragmentation and moral decay.

Tribalism and Democracy

A large portion of people in the Arab homeland wish for democracy to develop in Arab lands, and for people to begin breathing freedom once it is applied, but the Arab tribal mentality, and the behaviors that follow from it, do not appear ready for such a political system. Experience says: “I want democracy, on condition that I am the one who wins, and democracy is not democracy if someone other than me wins. Either I win, or I wreck things for whoever does.” This is precisely the bigoted tribal mentality that cannot see leadership or command residing in others, and that stands always ready for fighting, corruption, and corrupting others, so that it alone remains at the forefront of the worlds.

The bigoted tribal mentality does not accept the other, and does not recognize him except as a follower; it attributes good always to itself, so that no good befalls people except by its grace, while evil comes from others who conspire, or from devilish forces that stab in the back and seek discord. Yet this mentality is defeatist, aggressive, and opportunistic — it does not dare confront foreign invasion or domination, but it is forever lying in wait to trip others up and seize their rights, never letting an opportunity pass, however base, without exploiting it for its own interest. It is a cowardly mentality that believes neither in public work nor in the public good, and it is prepared to bow its neck before the foreigner in order to dominate its domestic rivals.

This point has already been highlighted with respect to Palestine and the Arab rulers, in that Arab rulers, or even the public Palestinian leaderships, cannot stand with the Palestinian right, because the interest of the tribe or the ruling clique is tied to that very enemy who allies with Israel and secures its rule and its dominance. Standing with Palestine requires sacrifice, and sacrifice in confronting the external enemy has no entry in the bigoted tribal dictionary. Tribal people are always prepared to be slaves to whoever secures leadership for them within their own societies.

So can a political system that believes in one free vote for every free citizen easily overpower a tribal mentality? The tribal mentality is utterly at odds with the democratic mentality, to the point that the Arabs who oversee the democratic institutions built by the democratic West in the Arab homeland to promote the democratic system practice tribal despotism within these very institutions.

External Powers and Arabocracy

Western states and Israel are never absent from interference in the internal affairs of the Arabs; they work constantly toward domination, and are keen to see regimes and governments in place that accept submission and dependency. Many Arab regimes were originally installed by Britain, and are now under the patronage of the United States, and cannot disobey orders or rebel, since that would cost the ruler his rule. There are also Arab states that cannot stand on their own feet without Western financial and economic support, and are consequently nothing but a tail wagged by whoever pays the money, always ready to work in Israel’s interest even if their public rhetoric is against it and critical of its policies.

[The text here is damaged in the original and resumes mid-sentence:] …otherwise they back sabotage and getting rid of the winners. And if any of us imagines that the West favors the establishment of democracy, he ought to review the record of Western positions toward the results of Arab ballot boxes. The United States and the Westerners allied with it favor Arabocracy, which looks from a distance as though it were democracy.

Islamists and Arabocracy

It is plain that Islamists win elections, and are then subjected to coups, after which it becomes difficult for them to recover what they lose. Some interpret this as hostility to Islam, but I see the matter as rooted in Arab culture, and the hostility may be directed at Islamists rather than necessarily at Islam. That is, rebellion against election results is not confined to cases where Islamists win, but is expected to occur in the event that others win as well. At this historical stage, there are no strong parties or organizations that challenge the Arab authoritarian order and stand a chance of winning elections other than the Islamists, and so it is expected that their victory would be challenged by the collapsing authorities and by those forces that hope to replace the ruling despots. There is a principled hostility to Islam on the part of some people, but their numbers and their strength do not reach the point of being able to overturn election results and impose a new, non-electoral reality, and the hostility we see on the ground is directed against the Islamic movements and the Islamists more than it is directed against Islam.

Islamists do not differ from others in their own Arabocracy, and there are many indicators of their tribal encapsulation, among which I mention:

Islamists monopolize truth in all their political and moral discourse, and consequently monopolize Paradise, accusing others of error, corruption, or unbelief, and so on.

Islamists isolate themselves from the wider society, preferring to remain within their own social and religious circles, particularly in the mosque or the charitable association, and they close themselves off, to a great extent, from the various segments of people — something that gives an uncomfortable impression of the very state the Islamists seek to establish.

Islamists are bigoted toward their own, and often stand with the members of their own group even when they are in the wrong, and are prepared to set aside Islamic principle in favor of the brotherhood of their particular group.

Islamists are biased against women, and expend great effort to keep her away from carrying out the Islamic charge set forth in the Holy Quran; they hem her in with Arab customs at the expense of Islamic principles, which opened before her fields of work, activity, and interaction with the various segments of society.

The various Islamic factions are incapable of uniting, and some declare others unbelievers or sinners, describing them in the harshest terms. If some Islamists declare other Islamists unbelievers, how then would they treat those who are not Islamists at all?

The Islamic factions give the impression that Islam is a religion of strife, because so many Islamists are preoccupied with discord, particularly between Shia and Sunni, and also because of acts of killing and destruction that strike ordinary people, civilian targets, and places of learning and worship.

Islamists provoke others when they speak of establishing a religious state that applies certain rulings on the permitted and the forbidden, whereas Islam contains no “religiosity” and no religious state as such, but rather faith and a state of justice that establishes justice among all people. Islamists talk about cutting off the hand of the thief and the appearance of a woman’s hair, while failing to focus on the elements that build a nation — namely knowledge, work, striving [jihad] in its various forms, and the moral framework that binds these elements together.

Getting Out of Arabocracy

Whoever imagines that democracy can be imported and successfully applied in a tribal society is mistaken. Democracy is the product of a long historical and social labor in the Western world; it is the result of long experiences, tragedies, sorrows, wars, and conflicts, and was never merely a mental exercise that people undertook, agreed upon, and thereby turned their lives into bliss. It is nations that make their own history, and their present cannot be separated from the developments of their past, just as their present partially draws their future. If the Arabs are to escape the trap of backwardness, despotism, and strife, then what lies before them is either to think together calmly and deliberately, or to bear internal conflicts, bloodshed, and the destruction of institutions. Neither Arabs nor non-Arabs can successfully import moral, political, and cultural systems, and whoever tries will not succeed. Arabs can benefit from the experiences of others, but their civilizational, humane, and moral renaissance can only come from within — that is, by developing the Arab cultural, religious, and social edifice in favor of a new construction that does not cast Arab-Islamic civilization aside, and that responds to the demands of a historical stage witnessing scientific and technological revolutions.

Getting out of Arabocracy requires getting out of the tribal mentality, and if we are to recover Arab-Islamic ideas, there is no tool more effective for eliminating tribalism than Islam itself. Islam rejects bigotry and partisanship, rejects the tribalism of monasticism and priesthood, rejects mere “religiosity,” and establishes a society of faith grounded in clear moral values whose purpose is to establish justice among people without distinction between male and female, white and black, Muslim and Christian.

Tribalism is deeply entrenched in Arab behavior, and it has succeeded in twisting Islam’s arm in a way that makes its own pillars sacred, as though they were part of Islamic legislation itself, and the Islamic idea cannot rise unless religious instruction — built as it is on closure, monasticism, mythical and supernatural tales, and certain issues of the permitted and the forbidden — changes, and sets out instead toward an Islamic thought grounded in questions of truth and falsehood, which can only flourish through scientific thinking and scientific inquiry. It is possible for the Islamic idea to overtake the religious instruction now prevailing, and to bring about a gradual change in people’s understanding of how to conduct public relations and deal with one another.

There are those who see in Islam a rampant evil and are ready to fight it, and there are those who manufacture out of Islam a rampant evil that drives people away from it. It is therefore important to activate Islamic thought (not Islamic jurisprudence) if the Arab mind is ever to take the rifle’s place, and if progress and construction are ever to overtake backwardness and destruction.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “العرب قراطية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.