In “The dangers of wishful thinking in the Middle East” in MercatorNet, January 11, Robert Reilly skewers the latest example of fantasy-based analysis in the reliably dhimmi Wall Street Journal:
Last July Matthew Kaminski opined in the Wall Street Journal
that the transition to democracy in the Middle East would be as easy as
it was for the democracies that emerged after the fall of the Soviet
empire. Alas, this was predictably not so, and has now been proven, as
vote after vote has shown the strength of the Islamists, most
particularly in Egypt, where they have won some 70 percent of the
ballot. With his article on January 3, “Arab Democracy Is the Best Bet for a Muslim Reformation“,
Kaminski continues in this vein of false optimism, based upon his
propensity to project Western conceptions and norms onto the Islamic
world, where they are largely irrelevant.Wishful thinking can be dangerous when it distorts reality. Here is a short list of misconceptions in his latest piece.
“The appeal of political Islam… grows when religiosity is repressed.”
Islamism is a reaction to modernity, not to repression. It would grow
regardless. With the shackles off in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, watch it
grow even more. To think that it will diminish because it is not
repressed is a dangerous fantasy. Thanks to the Arab Spring, it now has
the opportunity to seize control, and most likely will do so. Democratic
elections have simply revealed the strength of the view that “Islam is
the answer.”“Calls for Sharia to become state law emerged only in the twentieth century, as a result of Islam’s encounter with the West.”
Really? Sharia existed for many centuries before this encounter. The
first call for state sharia enforcement came from Ibn Taymiyya in the
late thirteenth century when he declared the Mongol rulers (converts to
Islam) apostates because they continued to live by their tribal law,
rather than by Sharia. Taymiyya laid the basis for requiring a ruler to
enforce sharia if he wished to maintain his legitimacy, which is why
Taymiyya is so popular among the Islamists today. The only recent sharia
states have been Saudi Arabia, Taliban Afghanistan, and Sudan — those
with the least amount of exposure to the West. In any case, the sharia
enforcement issue emerges from the struggle within Islam, not from the
encounter with West.“The Quran is politically agnostic and says nothing about the preferable form of government.”
Not quite. In Surah 3:110, the Qur’an speaks of the regime in Medina as
“the best community [or nation] ever raised for mankind.” Since the
Qur’an is understood by almost all Muslims as coexisting eternally with
God, this statement means that the Medinan concept of the “best
community” obtains forever. This is why the Salafists desire to emulate
it exactly, and why every major effort of reform in Islam goes back,
instead of forward. It may also help explain why democracy has never
arisen indigenously in the Arab Middle East.“Salafists… practice Osama bin Laden’s creed of Islam.”
No, bin Laden’s creed of Islam is not Salafist, but came directly from
the Muslim Brotherhood and is infected with its ideology, which was
partially obtained from Western totalitarianism. His teacher in Saudi
Arabia was Mohammed al Banna, the brother of the founder of the Muslim
brotherhood, Hassan al Banna. Salafism, on the other hand, is an ancient
and integral part of Islam.Kaminski calls for a Reformation in Islam, without seeming to realize
that Islamism is that Reformation. Be careful of what you wish for. One
reason that the Islamic world became calcified is that the “gates of
ijtihad” were closed in the Middle Ages. This meant that the authority
for making original interpretations of the Koran or the hadith had been
withdrawn because the sharia had, by that time, covered every possible
situation in human life with a specific ruling. The Islamists today have
reclaimed the authority of individual interpretation in order to wipe
out the Islamic jurisprudence that stands in their way, most
particularly in their use of indiscriminate violence and terrorism….