West urged to accept rising Islamist political power in Arab world

[xchrom]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/01/hrw-calls-on-west-to-accept-political-islam-in-arab-spring-nations.html

REPORTING FROM CAIRO -- Human Rights Watch has urged the West to accept the new reality that Islamist parties are the rising political powers in Arab nations where secular autocratic regimes were toppled in last year's so-called Arab Spring movement.

In the organization's annual report, Executive Director Kenneth Roth said the West should abandon traditional repressive regimes and begin working with new Islamist politicians toward democratic reforms. In Tunisia and Egypt, where fair and transparent parliamentary elections have been held for the first time ever, Islamist parties won unprecedented majorities.

"The international community must … come to terms with political Islam when it represents a majority preference," Roth wrote. "Islamic parties are genuinely popular in much of the Arab world, in part because many Arabs have come to see political Islam as the antithesis of autocratic rule."

"Wherever Islam-inspired governments emerge, the international community should focus on encouraging, and if needed be pressuring, them to respect basic rights -- just as the Christian-labeled parties and governments of Europe are expected to do."




*** pssst: stop meddling.

[Muskypundit]

1. No where in the world is the idea of tying up governance with ANY religion a good one.

My only hope is that they are content to kill each other and not us while they figure it out.

[David__77]

2. There is little commonality between Islamism and Christian Democracy.

This will become quite clear enough in the period ahead. There is no "Christian jurisprudence" in Europe, anywhere. There are paeans to Christian heritage, and that's it. Political Islam is quite difference, and seeks to divide the populace into believers and dhimmis, to impose fundamentalist interpretation of Islam on the whole of criminal and civil law.

[JDPriestly]

3. Indonesia, while not as tolerant as a Western country, is a primarily Muslim

state that is moving toward tolerance.

It's slow progress, but Indonesia appears to be moving in the right direction.

It was a Dutch colony as opposed to a British or French colony.

The Dutch are very tolerant.

I'm not saying that Indonesia is as tolerant as we are, but compared to a lot of other Islamic countries, it is pretty tolerant. Bali, for example, is mostly Hindu yet a part of Indonesia.

Christians and Muslims are proselytizing religions so, inevitably, they have conflicts about how to deal with conversions.

You might be surprised to learn that many Muslims would describe their religion as very tolerant especially toward Christianity. That surprised me. But that is the case.

Even in the US, some fundamentalist Christians want a religious government -- dominated of course by their own personal religion.

[WCGreen]

5. Also, it is not dependent on a single resource for it's wealth and legitimacy.

When you have a small cohort of single minded driven people in countrol of all the wealth in a country, you get that kind of political rephesion no matter what the main ideo or theo logy is that is adopted.

Places such as Egypt and Indonesia have a more modern economy so there is the ability to seek autonomy outside of the closed caste system that comes into place when there is nothing or only one or two central economic hot spots.

[Robb]

4. Surprisingly good segment on NPR this morning

The gist was that the religious parties are coming into power in coalition governments -- e.g. they didn't get enough votes to rule on their own. As a result they're faced with dealing with genuine issues -- unemployment, health care, etc. -- that they know they need to fix, or they'll get even fewer votes next time.

So they're all becoming "moderates" by default, because they have to govern with other factions. It was a reassuring analysis, I thought, and spot-on.

[WCGreen]

6. Shit I wish I would hav heard that...

I slept in today.

See my post upside. You said it way better than I did...