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Review Essay Recuperating Radicalism Across Cultures Middle East Law and Governance 3 (2011) 245–254 brill.nl/melg Review Essay Recuperating Radicalism across Cultures Bruce B. Lawrence Duke University, Durham, N.C. Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds. By Kai Hafez. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 253 pp. ISBN: 978-0- 521-76320-2. US $95.00 (hardcover); ISBN: 978-0-521-13711-9. US $28.99 (paperback) One of the most insistent questions of public policy and academic inquiry since January 2011 has been: Are Islam and democracy compatible in the Arab world? Th e characteristic response was tagged as “Arab Exceptionalism”, referring to the opinion that Arabs had become attuned to authoritarian rule, and that ruling elites opened their parlors or parliaments to popular voices merely as a window dressing to preserve their praetorian, security states from outside criticism. Under this rubric, human rights and civil society existed in the Arab world in name only. Moreover, it was argued, if open elections and participatory government did become possible in majority Muslim Arab countries, it would be those labeled extremists, fundamentalists or Islamists who would come to power, and once in power, they would subvert the very democratic structures that made their rule possible. Many of these same arguments focus on Islam either directly or obliquely. Regarding Islam as inherently patriarchal, and Iran as a test case for Islamic fundamentalism (1978-79)–with Algeria as a sequel (1991)–they have been reviewed in several academic sources, but perhaps nowhere more fully than in Waterbury’s “Democracy Without Democrats: Th e Potential for Political © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/187633711X591594 246 B.B. Lawrence / Middle East Law and Governance 3 (2011) 245–254 Liberalization in the Middle East”. 1 Weighing the near-term prospect of prae- torianism and repression, or tentative experiments in democracy, Waterbury concludes: Th e Middle East off ers some unique characteristics that block transition to democracy. Powerful states with suborned intelligentsias and dependent classes have pursued great quests and messianic visions. Society has been harnessed to these quests, and while the regimes themselves may have lost their legitimacy, the quests have not. Th e major challeng- ers to the incumbents in the Middle East do not therefore off er democracy as the alternative to authoritarianism but rather an untarnished instrument to pursue the great cause. 2 Most of the other contributors to this same volume are equally skeptical that any cause or quest aside from retention of control by privileged (and often corrupt) elites will determine the future of most of the Arab Middle East. A couple of years ago, Bruce Rutherford’s similar, downbeat assessment of Egypt off ered the prognosis that while liberalism could and should be advanced–as in constitutional reform, suspension of the emergency law, and partial openness in the electoral process–the pervasive fear of Islamist parties meant that democracy in Egypt would not be a viable option under the Mubarak regime because the latter seemed intent “to prevent any political group from utilizing Islamic principles in its electoral platform or campaign eff ort.” 3 Rutherford then went on to argue that Mubarak’s Egypt would none- theless survive in part because it managed to be a “hybrid regime”, that is, a regime that shared characteristics of both an autocratic order and a democratic order, with major Islamic groups defi ning and legitimizing the institutional alternatives to “full” democracy. 4 1) John Waterbury, “Democracy Without Democrats?: Th e Potential for Political Liberalization in the Middle East,” in Democracy Without Democrats? Th e Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World , ed. Ghassam Salame (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1994), 23-47. 2) Ibid. , 45. 3) Bruce K. Rutherford, Islam after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 251. 4) For the frequent invocation of “hybrid regime”, and its analysis within Egypt, see Rutherford, Islam after Mubarak , 16ff . Rachel M. Scott explores at length the issue of citizenship and minor- ity rights, arguing that the moderate Islamist group, or Wasatiyya, provides a way to thread together both secular and religious options, foregoing a democratic order in favor of an “enlight- ened” autocratic regime in Egypt. In Th e Challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), Scott asserts that the Wasatiyya off er the most likely means to redefi ne religious citizenship under Mubarak–namely, through “an Islamic framework such that their [the Wasatiyya] ideas open up the possibility for greater con- vergence between Islamists and Copts” (195). .
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