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The middle east is moving towards Islamism in one form or another.
This is true, yet I think it will wither away slowly after taking power the same way Arab Nationalism and then Socialism both did. Islamism is the invention of Western educated Muslims under Western influence as were the two above mentioned ideologies, so its not a question of one being a native ideology and will thus succeed where others failed. The Arabs will eventually realize that even "Islam is the Solution" will not erase poverty. If Islamists do manage to address the quite severe social and economic problems in thier countries, and I hope that someone can, then I predict it will be because they will end up tending towards Western methods of social and economic development and thus Westernize faster and deeper than they thought. Westernization is a global steamroller and everyone, from Indian dhotis to Chinese factory workers are all Westernizing to some extent.
wouldn't you say iran is an experiment in islamism? its failed.
hamas, while short-lived, wasn't able to control its militant component.
but maybe those are outliers and an islamist ikhwani type of political party can get far if they could be given the room to breathe by tyrants.
Gee and why do you think that is?
Ali, why do you think that Islamism in Iran has failed?
From what I have seen--and I am by no means an authority, but what I observed was very striking to me--Islamism in Iran has failed socially but not materially or intellectually. The social coda of Islamism as it is practiced in Iran is positively banal, as many Iranian writers have eloquently expressed--arbitrary, irrational, and I would say backward. But materially and intellectually I thought Iran was far ahead of most Arab countries. You can't tell that Tehran and Shiraz were bombed beyond recognition 20 years ago; both cities have totally recovered. There's enough entrepeneurial activity going on that if the outpouring of oil was bottled up tomorrow, Iran could probably get through it. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, I think they would probably go back to herding camels, since the only other industry in which they've had marked success is property development, which is in its own way dependent on oil.
The biggest society-killer of Islamism is, I think, intellectual repression. That's a watershed for so many things--scientific advancement, saavy businessmanship, political cohesion, literature and art. The unofficial Islamism enforced in Egypt, though it has no political teeth, has been devastating because it is of this intellectual variety--people really believe it is their Islamic duty not to think. So the pure sciences are dying, businesses fail left and right because of incompetency, and there are commentators in opposition newspapers who have declared art and literature already dead.
The Ikhwen occasionally say intelligent things, but I don't think they're on-point when it comes to basic civil engineering and organization. If they came to power, I think very basic things--essential things like keeping power and water running and garbage collected--would go to heck, and they would become progressively more tyrannical in order to combat the chaos. This is the problem with idealists; they can lead revolutions, but not countries.
Muslim Hedonist
"People really believe that it is their Islamic duty not to think."
How very true---and not only in Egypt...
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