Longtime contributor Kirk H. Sowell over at Window on the Arab World, and More! sent the following to me via email with regards to my post, “Dealing with the rise of Islamist politics.” It furthers the discussion by pointing out a key flaw in the article I linked to; that, while elections would certainly lead to Islamists gaining power in the Middle East, the article makes several wrongful assumptions and mistakes because it doesn’t go into specific detail on the countries he talks about — or even goes into wrong detail. Here’s what he had to say.

I’ve never had a real high opinion of Carnegie as a source of analysis, and Hamzawy’s article – I read the whole thing – reinforced that tendency. I agree with your general analysis of why the Islamists are strong and how this transition ought to be handled incrementally and with care. I don’t really share your optimism for success, but I can’t think of a better approach. But I think that Hamzawy’s analysis is wrong on multiple levels. A lot of his basic analysis is true, but when it comes to the specific facts on these movements he doesn’t seem to know what is going on.

First – to talk about how the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood might or might not be moderate enough to be democratic simply passes over the fact that their core ideology is the same as al-Qaeda, the only difference is the more pragmatic means they use. One could go back through the MB’s history, including recent history, and see all the Wahhabi tie-ins, but look at the MB’s offshoots in Jordan and Palestine. The Jordanian MB – called the Islamic Action Front – favors political participation in Jordanian elections, and defends the killing of Israeli children, because they are the enemy. They openly sympathize with al-Qaeda. Making them legal hasn’t moderated their core ideology. Hamas operates openly and legally in Palestine, and this has changed nothing in terms of their ultimate goals either. They have actually formed a strong partnership with Iran in the last couple of years. Why anyone would believe that the Egyptian MB will be different, I don’t know.

Egypt does have an Islamist Party which is considered by many to be genuinely moderate, and that is the Hizb al-Wasat, the Center Party. But I don’t think that Wasat got even a single seat in the recent elections in which the Brotherhood did so well. Of course they are new, only a few years old, but so far at least they don’t appear to have a politically significant following.

Second – Hizbullah; in part of the article that you didn’t quote, he gave Hizbullah as an example to support his contention that “Islamist forces are well embedded in the social fabric of Arab countries and capable of generating political capital wherever the authoritarian grip over society loosens.” That statement is true in Egypt, but not Lebanon, where Hizbullah was part of the “authoritarian grip” which is now coming loose. Moreover, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah is not doing better these days. Their support doesn’t extend beyond their Shia base, and most non-Shia Lebanese now favor their disarmament.

Third, the contention that being in power moderates Islamists is without foundation. Radical Islamists have come to power in three states – Afghanistan, Iran and the Sudan – and in none of these cases did they moderate. The Taliban had to be removed by military force, the Islamic regime in the Sudan ended with the imprisonment of its leader, Hasan al-Turabi (who is still a Bin Laden supporter), and we know where the Iranian government is these days.

I don’t think that Iraq is a counterexample here, because Iraq’s highest religious authorities favored pluralism before the Shia came to power there. They haven’t moderated in power; they weren’t extremist to begin with.

Hamzawy is right in his explanation of the phenomenon we are seeing – the fact that Islamists are coming to the fore because they were merely suppressed earlier, but his final point about “increasingly pragmatic Islamists” is valid only if they are pragmatic in the ends as well as their means. I wouldn’t stake too much on what’s happening in Egypt and Palestine right now leading in a positive direction.