Islamism Doesn’t Win

In today’s Wall Street Journal , Amir Taheri argues that the Pakistani election delivered a loss to more than just Pervez Musharraf: The Islamist parties failed to garner votes despite intense campaigning. This is but the most recent defeat for Islamist political parties, and that is good news for those seeking democracy in Muslim countries. Taheri writes:

The Islamist defeat in Pakistani confirms a trend that’s been under way for years. Conventional wisdom had it that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the lack of progress in the Israel-Palestine conflict, would provide radical Islamists with a springboard from which to seize power through elections.

Analysts in the West used that prospect to argue against the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy in the Middle East. These analysts argued that Muslims were not ready for democracy, and that elections would only translate into victory for hard-line Islamists.

The facts tell a different story. So far, no Islamist party has managed to win a majority of the popular vote in any of the Muslim countries where reasonably clean elections are held. If anything, the Islamist share of the vote has been declining across the board.

Far from rejecting democracy because it is supposed to be “alien,” or using it as a means of creating totalitarian Islamist systems, a majority of Muslims have repeatedly shown that they like elections, and would love to join the global mainstream of democratization. President Bush is right to emphasize the importance of holding free and fair elections in all Muslim majority countries.

Tyrants fear free and fair elections, a fact illustrated by the Khomeinist regime’s efforts to fix the outcome of next month’s poll in Iran by pre-selecting the candidates. Support for democratic movements in the Muslim world remains the only credible strategy for winning the war against terror.

The full article is here .