Feature articles, Reviews, posted March 16th, 2008

2,703 Views

It was in a surprisingly sparsely filled lecture hall at the University of Maastricht that Middle East analyst Dale Eickelman earlier this month presented his views on “The Knowledge and Practice of Democracy in the Middle East”.

Mr Eickelman, a US professor of Anthropology and Human Relations at Dartmouth University, Massachusetts, and senior advisor to the American University of Kuwait, began his lecture with a remarkable statement: “Everyone in the Middle East knows what democracy is, while we Westerners, beyond some theoretical understanding, don’t.”

This was an off-putting assertion to hear, for hasn’t the institution of democracy, since it was first created within the framework of the Greek Polis been solely in the hands of the West?

What Mr Eickelman however meant was that the West takes democracy for granted, and has forgotten what a long process it is for a country to become fully democratic: “Democracy is by no means something to be forced upon a people, but needs time to gestate, for remember it took the standard-bearer of democracy, the United States, two hundred years to develop its current democratic system.”

Democracy cannot be imposed
The Middle East, according to Professor Eickelman, has attentively watched, and participated in, albeit largely in a trading capacity, the development of what some may call the most powerful democracy in the world, the United States, but it has consciously chosen not to follow its example… as of yet.

Seen through this angle, the American rationale behind the attempted application of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan through invasion appears to Mr Eickelman “even more barbaric”.

The professor emphasised the point and backed it up by giving other examples of attempts at democratic reform that the US, either overtly or covertly, has influenced, with Somalia at the forefront.

Beyond simply listing the countries where initiatives to institute democratic regimes have failed, Mr Eickelman also gave the names of those “responsible”, in his view, for these blights. One of these people was the current US Secretary of State, Dr Condoleeza Rice. Mr Eickelman sarcastically called her his “favorite political scientist,” and in the same breath, said that “she should have her doctoral license revoked.”

Mr Eickelman also criticised the policies of Paul Bremer, Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance to post-war Iraq, but conceded that Mr Bremer had no previous experience in the Middle East before being tasked with reconstructing Iraq.

The critique of Mr Bremer and Dr Rice highlighted the misunderstanding between the West and the East. This seemed to be a pervading argument throughout the lecture to explain why the implementation of democracy in the Middle East is proving so difficult.

While Mr Eickelman was very quick to mention the many faults of the US, he also didn’t shy away from grounding the fear of the “other” (defined as “those of non-Western origin” by famed Orientalist Edward Said) that exists within the European psyche. He recounted that some political scholars have said that “Europe is suffering from its third invasion by Islam,” giving a negative connotation to the steady increase of Muslim immigrants to the European Union in recent years.

By referring to some of the most notable sociologists of our time, Samuel Huntington, who wrote of the unavoidable “Clash of Civilisations” and Emile Durkheim, who posited that people order the physical, supernatural and social world according to the same principles, Mr Eickelman gave other examples of what he believed to be outdated methodologies that need to be revised if democracy has to be achieved in the Middle East.

Paths toward democracy
Mr Eickelman promoted three alternative perspectives that could serve as guidelines for a new way of thinking in the application of democracy in the Middle East. The first of these is that “democracy is a process by which the exercise of power becomes less authoritative.” Taking the examples of Latin America and Turkey, Mr Eickelman pointed out that both regions had successfully implemented a democratic form of governance, despite the long-standing presence of great militaristic (Latin America) or religiously fundamentalist (Turkey) influences, because adequate time was given for democratic adaptation.

The second perspective for a workable democracy in the Middle East is that “democracy requires a government to know its people.” That refers to whether or not a nation is able to cater to the needs of all of the social groupings within its society, differing religious affiliations and cultural heritages being the greatest factors that require legislative consideration. In the example of Iraq, Mr Eickelman sees the religious fractionalisation within the political parties of Iraq as a catalyst for ethnic violence. These elements constitute definite barriers towards the implementation of a lasting, independent democracy in the country.

Mr Eickelman’s third and last perspective on democracy was that “democracy is able to be understood now.” He described three recent events which have allowed that understanding to emerge. The first was the ability of the Middle Eastern people regardless of social standing to receive “mass higher education” which was one result of the 1952 Egyptian Revolution. However, Mr Eickelman warned that even though higher education gives a population “the capacity for critical thinking and allows them to participate in political debates” the opening of doors to the masses for higher education will cause overall education standards to decline.

The second event that has favoured the dissemination of democracy is “mass communication.” The now commonplace usage of the internet is able to supplant the local coffee houses as the traditional place of political conversation, and serves as an effective alternative to the often singular perspectives offered by the state media institutions. It is for both of these reasons that “mass communication” encourages the spread of alternative political ideas.

Finally, “ease of travel” has also opened up democratic understanding in allowing the rapid and increasingly more affordable interaction between peoples.

Mr Eickelman rounded out his lecture with some suggestions to both the US and the EU that may assist them in interacting with the countries of the Middle East to encourage, but not force them, to become democratic.

The most important of these was that “the EU and the US should deal with avowedly Islamic Parties such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.” Mr Eickelman illustrated this idea with the example of the American aid organisation, USAID, which against the protests of the American government, cooperated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood after a severe earthquake in 1993.

“How could the US get it so wrong?”
The floor was then opened for questions but, sadly, a large portion of the audience had departed by that time. When later asked why, some audience members said that Mr Eickelman’s analysis, although “overly optimistic”, had given a most cogent take on the subject, which therefore made asking questions, in their mind, redundant. The smaller size of the audience however proved an advantage as it encouraged a more intimate discussion between the audience and the speaker.

One person questioned the reasons behind Mr Eickelman’s optimism in democracy taking hold in the Middle East when the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq (which the US led Coalition hoped would be the catalysts for the spreading of democracy in the Middle East) are still raging: “How could the US get it so wrong?”

Mr Eickelman acknowledged these failures, but said that he believed that in January 2009, when the next American President is in office, soft diplomacy will be brought back to the fore in the exercise of American foreign policy.

Another question addressed the corollary topic of terrorism: “Can we publicly negotiate with terrorists?” For someone who had just stated that the US will promote that of diplomacy over the use of military force, Mr Eickelman’s answer was surprising, for he said: “No, negotiation is the last resort. When there is no other option it is better not to negotiate.”

Mr Eickelman however did not agree with the idea of “the war on terror,” quipping that it should be “put back on the Texas ranch from which it came” (a reference to US President Bush’s state of origin). The only effective counterforce to terrorism in his view is to rely on the public’s revulsion to terrorist acts and ideologies that will cause those who would commit terrorism to be subverted.

Defining democracy
The “need for patience” was the idea which stuck out most prominently from the lecture, and it left this writer with a palpable feeling of hope towards the prospect of democractic governance in the Middle East. Mr Eickelman did not wholly advocate for the replacement of the current political systems in the Middle East with an American style democratic government, indicating rather that some nations in the Middle East have seen the democratic superpower of the United States as a touchstone for economic policy.

He criticised all of the current attempts being made by Western powers to convert the Middle East to democracy, but for the sake of his topic - that of presenting the possibilities of democracy working in the Middle east - he mentioned that Egypt is a standard bearer for how democracy can successfully function in a Middle Eastern nation.

As a Westerner, who outside of extremely brief visits to Kuwait and Egypt has not spent any time in the Middle East, it is difficult for me to imagine how a person who was born in the Middle East might interpret this lecture. I saw only one person who - pardon my assumption if that is not the case - looked as if he might have been of Middle Eastern origin, who stayed through the entire lecture, and did not look visibly displeased at the lecture’s content.

In fact, Mr Eickelman’s musings about the advantages and disadvantages of applying democracy within a Middle Eastern context were probably meant to be received as exactly that, a simple thought experiment, not soap box preaching.

I think that it’s a pity that the audience was not larger. Many had perhaps shrugged off the idea of attending the lecture due to the ubiquitous reports of the failure of democracy in Iraq, and of its weak form in Afghanistan, which has been displayed in every conceivable type of media within recent memory.

I will make a wager that those people had never considered the approach that Mr Eickelman advocated, which was illustrated with one of the many humanising stories he shared with us that evening, the moral of which both the Middle East and the West should take heed of in considering what democracy truly is. The story told of a Muslim scholar who, when asked by a colleague to define the true form of Islam, responded: “I do not know, but let us continue to study it, and perhaps we will find it together.”

By Eliot Rolen

Eliot Rolen is an American expatriate living in Maastricht and a regular freelance contributor to Crossroads.

 

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