2011 in Arab History

One year ago yesterday, I noticed a news item about protests in southern Tunisia. Although I had intended to take a blogging break until after the new year, I sensed in these protests a new social movement of some significance, and so put up a post, and continued following the story the next two days (1, 2, 3). I definitely did not expect them to succeed in toppling the regime, and even when they did I was skeptical that they would lead to similar movements elsewhere. They did, however, and the result was what many have called the "Arab Spring," a year of popular activism which toppled old regimes and led to a rebirth of hope across the Arab world.

As a historian, I recognize the hubris in the title of this post, since we can only speculate what the immediate consequences of these uprisings might be, much less what will stand out about them after decades or a century. At most, we can say that these events will continue to be contested in political rhetoric, secondary education classrooms, and public history displays, as politicians and various social forces strive to shape their legacy and place themselves within it. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile to offer some thoughts about aspects of these ongoing events that, to me at least, seem early candidates for consideration.

One of these aspects may lie in their origins. Leaving aside Kuwait, where popular protests have been having an impact for years, we can look at a group of countries where monarchies with colonial ties were, in the name of national independence, replaced by regimes based in the military or other security services. This also usually led to different social classes gaining power and influence in society, as the old urban notable and landowning families saw themselves targeted as a rival power center. Something like this also happened in Iraq in 1958, although the 2003 Anglo-American invasion meant that the successor regime of the 1958 "revolution" was gone before the year started. The exception which proves the rule is Syria, which had not had a king since 1920, but where the governing National Bloc was still based on the power of the old notables and landowners. As others have noted, the states which did not have these upheavals, which means those that remain monarchies today, as well as Lebanon and Algeria, have also seen little "Arab Spring" action. This is enough of a pattern that it could point toward some interesting socio-political roots of what we've seen in the past year and are seeing now.

Those regimes which had the least social basis fell most swiftly. Tunisia's wealthy elite wasn't going to take up arms to defend Ben Ali, and Egypt's military chose to manage the transition rather than prop up Mubarak. Other countries have seen tribal or sectarian groups who stood to lose a benefactor fight on behalf of the old system, as happened with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. A key issue going forward will be the ability of new government forms to have a broad constituency among the populace, ideally through elections providing for a rotation of power.

This, however, is tied to another issue. One framework we have seen the past year is that "the nation," meaning the people, is rising up against internal oppressors so as to establish a new government on its own behalf. One question now is how the "nations" will be defined, or what identities will be on people's minds as they act politically. In Iraq, probably moreso than under Saddam Hussein, loyalty to a community of Sunnis, Shi'ites, or Kurds competes with that to Iraq as a whole. Those "Arab Spring" countries with religious differences will face the question of deciding if those differences preclude national unity. This issue might be most explosive in Syria, but for the moment, it is also a subject for discussion in Egypt, where salafis see Christians not as equal citizens, but as a subject population under Muslim rule.

2011 also shows signs of introducing new norms into Arab political life, as the Arab League is now willing to at least pretend to be upset by rulers oppressing their people, especially if those people are Sunni Arabs. In addition, peaceful mass protests have become for many the preferred form of political action, even affecting Hamas rhetoric. This still doesn't work if the government shoots back too much, but then it never has. This development, along with the death of Osama bin Laden, may have completely eliminated the already marginal al-Qaeda-like voices from the Arab political landscape, and could become a thorn in regimes' sides for decades to come.

I have mostly ignored Bahrain in this because it really doesn't fit the pattern, but I don't think interferes with it, either. Although its activists joined in the "Arab Spring" wave, their models are more Kuwait and Iraq than Tunisia and Egypt, and unfortunately, it is a country where mass protests appear to have been successfully contained, though they continue in rural areas. Bahrain shows the effects of the troubling sectarian political framework emanating from Iraq which may prove the region's biggest challenge in the 21st century.

All this is not to proclaim the "Arab Spring" over, especially in the cases of Syria and Bahrain. As I said, it is simply a pause for reflection on the past year, thinking about where it might have come from and what challenges and opportunities might lie ahead, as the Arab world enters what will clearly be a new phase of its political history.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Meshaal's Ceasefire Orders

Fatah sources confirm reports circulating earlier this month that Khaled Meshaal has ordered an end to Hamas attacks on Israel:

"According to the sources in Fatah, the largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Meshal ordered a de facto cease-fire with Israel not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank. Hamas had already refrained from launching rockets from Gaza.

"The sources say Meshal issued the order in late November, after the first round of reconciliation talks in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah.

"After that meeting, it emerged that the two organizations agreed also to focus on a popular struggle along the lines of the Arab Spring...

"Hamas' leadership in Gaza said it was surprised by Meshal's statement and that 'the only way to liberate the occupied lands is through the armed struggle.' The Hamas interior minister in Gaza, Fathi Hamad, added that the group's 'internal leadership' does not necessarily intend to abide by Meshal's policy.

"Meshal reiterated late last week that popular protest had 'the power of a tsunami' and has already proved itself in the Arab world. But he added that the organization would not give up the use of violence against Israel."

Two things come out in this story. One is the differences between Hamas's on-the-ground leadership in the Gaza Strip and the exiled leadership in Damascus. The latter is theoretically in charge, but does not always get its way. The second is the fact that, while contrary to popular impressions there has always been non-violent Palestinian resistance to Israel, Palestinians have also maintained that they have a right to use violence when under occupation, and that assertions to the contrary are a means of delegitimizing their struggle.

Israeli defense sources quoted by Ha'aretz are dubious about all this, and what will matter most is how Hamas responds within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Meshaal has been in exile for ages, and doesn't always carry credibility in the Occupied Territories. If violent attacks continue, then even the diplomatic impact of this will be limited. At the same time, for someone in Meshaal's position to endorse what he calls "popular protest" as a superior alternative to violence is an important step that could have implications down the road.

Requiem for a Two-State Solution

Carlo Strenger believes a two-state solution is no longer a viable option in the Arab-Israeli conflict:

"Nousseibeh suggested (in a recent book that) the Palestinians relinquish their struggle for statehood. He even asked them to accept that, for a long time, they would not have full political rights, and that they should settle for civic and human rights to make life as bearable as possible. His deeply pessimistic conclusion was that, given the realities, the human cost of continuing the struggle for a Palestinian state was too high...

"From a historical perspective, the two state solution’s demise was, maybe, inevitable. Except for six years, the Likud has been in power for the last thirty-five years, and the Likud never relinquished its dream of the greater land of Israel. When Rabin won elections for Prime Minister in 1992, both he and Peres felt that this was a last chance; they believed that what they would not achieve in Rabin’s term would not be achieved at all.

"Rabin had to govern, with a minority of the Knesset supporting him, and Israel’s right never felt that he had a mandate for the Oslo process. Netanyahu spoke at demonstrations where crowds held posters depicting Rabin as a Nazi. He was later recorded taking pride in having killed off the Oslo process.

"Now he can take partial credit for having killed the two state solution. The other half goes to the Palestinians: As Mahmoud Abbas said more than a year ago, the Palestinian’s greatest mistake was the second Intifada. Indeed, together with Hamas’ win of the elections in 2006 and the shelling of southern Israel, the Intifada’s horrible violence has made Israelis averse to taking further risks for peace."

I am not the one to say whether Strenger is right. I would still like to believe it could work, but do not see a realistic chance of it happening under Netanyahu's leadership. Whether two states remain possible depends on the combination of facts on the ground and the political will to alter them. I cannot judge the former, and perhaps given the latter, it might be better to say that it has entered a persistent vegetative state from which no recovery is foreseeable.

How one apportions blame depends largely on what you think happened in the diplomacy under Ehud Barak in 2000. I'm not even going to attempt to untangle that mass of conflicting assertions. Strenger is right that the Second Intifada strangled the Israeli peace camp, but that in turn flowed from a belief in Israeli perfidy during negotiations. The uprising's most violent aspects were also the terrorist attacks on civilians inside Israel, and in the history of the conflict's violence, one should not forget that Hamas only turned to those tactics and made them a key part of its struggle after Baruch Goldstein committed the Hebron massacre in 1994, a massacre which stemmed directly from the inclinations toward ethnic cleansing on the part of many in the settler movement which the Israeli state tries to control, but also supports with defense and infrastructure. What Hamas did, in other words, was escalate dirty warfare in the region, not introduce it.

Strenger also addresses the future:

"Our long-term task is to develop new models of dealing with the emerging reality. I wish I could say something clear and constructive, but for the time being I can’t. I have not yet seen realistic models other than the two state solution.

"The one state solution, at this point, is an empty concept, so is that of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation. For neither case can I imagine how the parliament of the greater Israel-Palestine would function, or how equality of all citizens with respect to security could be achieved: I agree with Sari Nousseibeh that Jewish history from the Pogroms through the Holocaust, from the 1948 war to that of 1973, is too traumatic for Israelis to relinquish control of security for a long time to come...

"I am afraid that Israel will lose many friends in the gradual process of finalizing its sovereignty over the West Bank. Netanyahu and Lieberman have already aggravated many politicians and supporters of Israel, ranging from Hillary Clinton to Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. And they have deepened the alienation many Jews in the Diaspora feel towards the current government’s policies that they cannot accept."

I actually think that what will happen is that, within 10-20 years, Israel will impose Netanyahu's vision of disconnected cantons with nominal sovereignty under Israeli domination. The path toward any one-state solution depends on demographics and, perhaps, the fate of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Iraq after the U.S.

Shortly after the official end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved against high-ranking Sunnis in his government:

"On December 18, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki requested the dismissal of his deputy, Saleh al-Mutlaq...

"The next day, December 19, an arrest warrant was issued for Iraqi vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi, also a Sunni, on terrorism charges.

"On December 20, Mutlaq was prevented from entering the cabinet building in Baghdad. The same day, vehicles in which two Sunni politicians were travelling in the west of the capital came under fire, apparently from members of the Iraqi security forces.

"Although Mutlaq and Hashemi are the two most senior Sunni Arabs in positions of power, the authorities insist the proceedings against them have nothing to do with sectarian politics.

"State-run television last week showed what purported to be the confessions of Hashemi’s bodyguards, in which they said they assassinated health and foreign ministry officials and Baghdad police officers. They alleged that Hashemi paid them 3,000 US dollars for each attack...

"Hashimi left Baghdad and went to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north after security forces raided his home and office and arrested some of his staff...

"On December 21, the prime minister made it clear he no longer felt bound by the power-sharing agreement in which posts are shared out among Iraq’s various ethnic and confessional groups. Instead, he announced, he would be setting up a new majority-based cabinet."

The story here is that while Iraq today is politically freer with far more democratic features than it had under Saddam Hussein, the game being played is still one of which faction will dominate the state and the webs of government patronage that makes possible. In the decades prior to the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, the nation was ruled through the Ba'ath Party, which was dominated by military officers from the Sunni regions around Baghdad where power was concentrated under the Ottomans and British. After the complete collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, power passed to militias, either Shi'ites trained by Iran or Sunni units rooted in the old Iraqi army and augmented by foreign salafi fighters. The Sunnis wound up losing that civil war, which was at its peak from 2006-2009 and saw the end of mixed neighborhoods as people were forced to join their co-religionists for their own protection.

Prime Minister al-Maliki came to office through elections, but his power also rests on his dominance of a government which controls much of the economy and security services dominated by veterans of those same Shi'ite militias. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Sunnis live as refugees elsewhere in the Arab world, and al-Maliki's government is in no hurry to repatriate them. This is why Iraq's government is widely perceived, not as democracy, but as control by a sectarian strongman, and why those elsewhere in the Arab world always cited it as a negative example rather than a model. This is also why, over the past few months, Sunni regions have begun seeking autonomy:

"In recent months, Anbar, Salahuddin and Diyala Provinces have each pushed for a public vote on creating their own regional governments...

"Early Friday morning, Iraqi police commandos arrested a leading advocate of Salahuddin Province’s push for regional status and seized his computer and reams of documents, security officials said. They did not say why he had been detained.

"The provinces are not seeking a total divorce from the rest of Iraq, just a wider separation in the mold of Kurdistan, the relatively prosperous and safe area in northern Iraq. The Kurds, who have lived for decades as a people apart from the rest of Iraq, have their own Parliament and president, command their own security forces and have signed lucrative oil deals with foreign companies without Baghdad’s approval."

American forces have withdrawn, but the future of the country remains undecided. Its leaders treat their posts as fiefdoms through which to build their own power bases, and the general public fears a collapse of the security situation should competition among those leaders get too out of hand. Furthermore, the empowerment of a previously disadvantaged Shi'ite population has come at the direct expense of Iraq's Arab Sunnis, and that fact, kept firmly in Arab consciousness by the refugee problem, has been perhaps the most significant ingredient in a spike in anti-Shi'ite attitudes among Sunnis throughout the region. I will not say the country was better off under Saddam Hussein, but no one should pretend for political reasons that the U.S. has mid-wifed a stable democracy rather than a weak yet abusive state in a battered society which serves, not as a model of freedom, but a source of instability.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)

Netanyahu and Channel 10

Channel 10, one of Israel's two independent news TV stations, ran an expose earlier this year which was embarrassing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some are arguing that this is a reason Netanyahu's government is not allowing the station to postpone its debt, a refusal which may force the station to close:

"'The fight over Channel 10 is partly a matter of revenge — Netanyahu wants to make them pay for what they did to him,' argued Nachman Shai, a member of Parliament from the opposition party Kadima, a former news executive who helped set up Channel 10 a decade ago. 'But it is also part of a three-front struggle — over the courts, civil society and the media. The right wants to control every institution. Freedom of expression is at risk...'

"President Shimon Peres has weighed in, saying that the channel’s effort to survive is 'a struggle for Israel’s democratic character.' In a related comment, he also declared himself 'ashamed' of several bills being considered in Parliament that he believes chip away at Israel’s democratic character — an antidefamation law, one that silences loudspeakers issuing the Muslim call to prayer and another that prevents foreign governments from financing left-wing Israeli groups.

"Last summer, Parliament passed a law making it possible to sue anyone who advocates boycotting things Israeli, including West Bank settlements."

What's really happening here? Israel has always had a strong state internally, and speech restrictions in the name of security are taken for granted. A disturbing trend lately has been restrictions on speech seen by the right as disloyal, meaning that it advocates views at odds with their conception of Israeli nationalism. The linked article, however, does not include much to tie the Channel 10 imbroglio to anything but Netanyahu's political interests. It seems reasonable to fear that he is trying to control the Israeli mediasphere the same way Berlusconi dominated Italy's media, and that this would be bad for Israeli democracy and, given that Netanyahu is a right-wing figure, have the same practical effect as would an attack on the station for ideological reasons.

IDF and the Settlers

Mark Perry passes on the phrase "Jewish Hezbollah" to describe Israeli settlers in the West Bank who attack IDF targets:

"'I don't want to exaggerate, but it's time to call this what it is,' a veteran IDF officer noted in a recent telephone conversation on the Nablus incident. 'It might be news in America, but it's no secret in Israel. This is a very real crisis. What we have here is the birth of a state within a state. The birth of a kind of Jewish Hezbollah.' This former officer went on to speculate that 'what is emerging in the West Bank' is 'a three-state solution: Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and, standing between them, a radical settler state.' Yehuda Shaul, an organizer of Breaking The Silence -- a group of IDF soldiers committed to publicizing the reality of being an Israeli soldier in the West Bank -- is unwilling to go that far, though he confirms that the series of escalations between settlers and the IDF has roiled the Israeli military. 'The IDF is in the West Bank to control tens of thousands of Palestinians,' he notes, 'but they're having the most trouble controlling the settlers. It's quite an irony.'"

The anonymous IDF officer quoted above is referring to the fact that Hizbullah effectively runs Shi'ite areas of the country that were long marginalized by the Maronite-dominated government, and that its loyalty to that agenda supersedes any loyalty it has to Lebanon as a whole. Those settlers who are part of the religious Zionist movement believe that God wants Jews to settle the entire "Land of Israel" between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, a divine commandment which they place above the policies of the Israeli government which seeks to control and direct settlement based on its own agendas. This is not new, as there was violent opposition to the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. I also remember that in 2007, when I visited Hebron along with but not participating with Jewish anti-settler protestors, the IDF routed the bus caravan through Palestinian neighborhoods because of the fear of violence from the Jewish ones. Radical settler attempts to harass and intimidate the IDF have clearly increased over the past year, mostly over the IDF's attempts to suppress settler violence against the Palestinians.

Perry also reports on problems faced by the IDF as an organization, such as this video of an occupation patrol dancing in a Hebron street. My take on such matters is this: Sympathetic visitors to Israel often comment that Israelis, because of their mandatory military service, have to display maturity much earlier than teenagers in the United States. It doesn't take much time in the West Bank, however, to see that not all of them muster that maturity, adding insult to the injuries associated with the military occupation.

Zainab al-Khawaja's Arrest

Mona Kareem provides information on Zainab al-Khawaja, who was arrested in Bahrain two days ago:

"Zainab was arrested while she was sitting in a roundabout on the Budaiya Highway, as part of a sit-in called for by protesters called Occupy Budaiya Street which aimed at pressuring the government to release political prisoners and pay tribute to Bahrain's 40-plus martyrs, killed at the hand of security forces since the unrest started.

"According to her sister Maryam, Zainab was arrested with another woman called Masooma Al-Sayed and was charged with illegal gathering, assaulting a female officer, and inciting hatred against the regime. The prosecutor decided to detain both women for seven days under investigation. Zainab was sprayed in her eyes when she was arrested and was unable to see for an hour. In the police station, Zainab was beaten on the head, arms and legs, as she was unable to see. She recognized the voice of the policewoman who beat her, but the prosecutor refused to write it down. Her lawyer attempted to show the prosecutor a video of Zainab's arrest, but he refused to see it. The policewoman came to the prosecutor with bandaged arm claiming Masooma and Zainab hit her. Zainab refused to sign the statement unless the name of the policewoman who hit was written down."

Zainab's father and husband are both in prison already. My usual disclosure: Zainab was in my "Medieval Islamic Civilizations" course at Beloit College, and my interest in this case is therefore not meant to belittle other activists around the Middle East. Her Twitter feed, however, is an excellent source for Bahrain's ongoing protest movement.

Shi'ite Origins

How and when did the various movements of Shi'ite Islam begin clearly to become separate communities distinct from the proto-Sunni majority? Arabic sources dating almost exclusively from the ninth century and later present the events as going back to the generation of the Companions of the Prophet in the early-mid 7th century and a dispute over whether his cousin and son-in-law Ali b. Abi Talib was the rightful successor. Many modern historians have suggested that Shi'ism was a matter of simple preference or tendency until after the Abbasids came to power in 750. In The Origins of the Shi'a, which may be 2011's most important book on early Islamic history, Najam Haider re-examines this question by creatively applying cutting-edge methodologies of source criticism. He concludes that the two major strands of early Shi'ism, the currently minor Zaydi Shi'ism and the Imami Shi'ism from which both the dominant Twelvers and second most numerours Isma'ilis, both existed as distinct communities from the early 700's.

The extant Arabic sources include lots of hadith accounts concerning the proper performance of religious rituals. These accounts are sourced back to Muhammad through chains of transmission, and their reliability has been the most significant issue in the evolution of Islamic religious doctrine in the 20th century. In recent years, however, scholars working mainly in Europe have determined that if forgery was taking place on a large scale, it involved not only the names of authorities, but convincingly developing complete intellectual biographies that were shared among the occasionally inconvenient for the scattered generation of account transmitters who allegedly did the forging.

Based on this evidence, Haider uses the substantial corpus of traditions discussing religious rituals to develop three case studies to determine the degree to which Imamis, Zaydis, and Sunnis followed distinct paths in the crucial early 700's. He finds that they did, though the emergence of Zaydism over the period followed a somewhat different trajectory than has customarily been held.

In the final section of Haider's book, he examines the ways in which these identities were articulated in society. The materials concerning rituals and authorities on ritual matters suggest that how one performed acts of worship was, to some set of the public, more important than their specialized theological doctrines. These differences ultimately led to the development of separate sacred spaces within Kufa, the Iraqi city which was critical to early Shi'ism and the focus of Haider's study.

This whole book is not only important for its methodology and conclusions about early Shi'ism, but sits comfortably alongside other works examining religious identity in the late antique and early Islamic Middle East. I'm thinking here of Leor Halevi's Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society which won MESA's most prestigious book award for its examination of how rituals surrounding death became and important symbol of the emerging Islamic identity and values from the 7th through 9th centuries, as well as Maged Mikhail's 2004 dissertation "Egypt from Late Antiquity to Early Islam: Copts, Melkites, and Muslims shaping a New Society," which received "Honorable Mention" for MESA's dissertation award. Although I can't find it now, I'm sure the latter work argued at some point that Egypt's Christian communities came to consolidate their separate identities largely through the observation of specific fasts and similar observances. One might also lump in here that in the 4th century John Chrysostom's Adversus Judaeos sermons were motivated by his desire to keep Christians from following Jewish observances. The common link among these three works is the consolidation of religious identity among communities of practice, and lens which may finally allow historians to better understand the social dimensions of the theological tumult of the period.

Abu Dhabi and Oman's Protests

I post without comment the idea that Abu Dhabi might have been responsible for the brief 2011 protests in Oman:

"Nonetheless, in late February, unrest erupted after hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in the northern port city of Sohar demanding jobs and an end to corruption. Qaboos swiftly responded by firing 12 cabinet ministers and raising government salaries while agreeing to boost unemployment benefits to 150 Oman rials (380 USD) a month. And shortly after the Sultan increased minimum wages by 40 percent, the unrest subsided almost as quickly as it had erupted.

"Some analysts, however, quickly attributed the unrest in Sohar to the neighboring United Arab Emirates (UAE). By playing up economic differences between wealthier tribe members residing on the UAE side of the border, in stark contrast to their poorer Omani 'cousins,' analysts argued that Abu Dhabi sought to send an unmistakable message to Muscat about its 'friendly' relations with Tehran.

"Since assuming power, the Sultan has played a delicate balancing game between his strategic alliance with Iran while aligning himself with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which comprises Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Oman is the only GCC country to carry out joint military exercises with Iran. Nonetheless, as a staunch American ally, former U.S. Vice President Dick Chaney visited the Sultanate three times during his years in office.

"In another rift with Abu Dhabi, the 10 billion USD GCC pledge to Muscat seemed to arrive at the backdrop of Omani officials announcing the uncovering of a UAE spy ring allegedly seeking to overthrow Qaboos by means of a coup d'etat, only months earlier.

"The historical mistrust between Qaboos and the UAE in particular stems from when the GCC failed to support the Sultan in his uprising against his father."

As I said, I have nothing of my own to say about this. I've just had Oman on the brain lately.

Shippensburg U.S. History Projects

Students in the first half of Shippensburg's U.S. history survey are challenged to do research and present it in different ways:

"At the beginning of the semester, the students are charged with the responsibility of presenting a balanced historical interpretation that is accessible and interesting to a broad demographic.

"'I want them to think of the professional, analytical and aesthetic concerns that they will face,' he said. 'I want to fire up their passions.'

"Last Wednesday, Dec. 7, the students in two sections of Dieterich-Ward’s Early History of the United States course had the opportunity to display their hard work to ‘celebrity judges,’ which included university faculty and community members...

"Many of the students were pleased with the opportunity to explore historical topics in more depth, and were especially excited about the challenge of displaying information in a dynamic and engaging manner.

"'This is one of the only times we get to go outside of what is taught in class and learn in depth one piece of history,' said Alex Kramer, 20, Philadelphia. 'I like that we can research our own ideas and can then form our own opinions about things...'

"For other groups, the challenge came in making the information come to life in dynamic ways.

"'We decided to design a voting booth because it was more interactive than a tri-fold,' said Rachel Tyrpin, 21, Pine Grove. The group explored the Freedmen’s Bureau’s role in the overall reconstruction efforts of the South in the decades following the Civil War."

Christmas in Nazareth Illit

One Israeli town has some issues with religious freedom:

"The mayor of a Jewish suburb of Nazareth sparked outrage on Wednesday after refusing to allow Christmas trees to be placed in town squares, calling them provocative...

"'The request of the Arabs to put Christmas trees in the squares in the Arab quarter of Nazareth Illit is provocative,' Mayor Shimon Gapso told AFP.

"'Nazareth Illit is a Jewish city and it will not happen -- not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor,'" he said of the northern Israeli town...

"His decision angered the town's Arab and Christian minority, who accused him of racism.

"'The racism of not putting a tree up is nothing compared to the real racism that we experience here,' said Aziz Dahdal, a 35-year-old Christian resident of Nazareth Illit."

Christianity is a hot-button issue for some in Israel due to the history of Christian persecution and forced conversion of Jews. Nazareth Illit is in the heart of the "Arab Triangle" in northern Israel, and was founded as a sort of shadow community to Nazareth by those interested in demographically Judaizing as much of the land as possible.

Nir Rosen wonders how this will play in conservative circles.

UPDATE: A commenter notes that this story is actually from December 2010. I'm not sure why it was making the rounds yesterday, but I don't know the current status.

Onward, Egyptian Democracy

The first round of voting in Egypt's three-stage elections indicates that the new parliament will be dominated by Islamist parties. The areas that voted this week were more liberal than Egypt as a whole, and yet the Muslim Brotherhood appears to have upwards of 40% of the seats, or about what they were expected to do nationwide. More surprisingly, Salafis strongly overperformed expectations to win about 25% of the vote. As the New York Times reports:

"If the majority proves durable, the longer-term implications are hard to predict. The Brotherhood has pledged to respect basic individual freedoms while using the influence of the state to nudge the culture in a more traditional direction. But the Salafis often talk openly of laws mandating a shift to Islamic banking, restricting the sale of alcohol, providing special curriculums for boys and girls in public schools, and censoring the content of the arts and entertainment.

"Their leaders have sometimes proposed that a special council of religious scholars advise Parliament or the top courts on legislation’s compliance with Islamic law. Egyptian election laws required the Salafi parties to put at least one woman on their electoral roster for each district, but they put the women last on their lists to ensure they would not be elected, and some appear with pictures of flowers in place of their faces on campaign posters."

Egypt's liberals are despondent, and there is concern for the future of civil liberties in Egypt if the Muslim Brotherhood decides to move in a more conservative direction to co-opt the salafis. My belief, however, is that the path forward is to establish a stable democratic system in which free elections become the norm. This means, in fact, supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in its efforts to speed the transition to civilian rule. Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Banna himself cited elections as something to admire about Western civilization, as it allows people to hold their leaders accountable, force those leaders to take into account the popular will and the condition of the country as a whole instead of just themselves and their own patronage networks.

Although Western political commentators assert as a given that all Islamist commitments to democratic principles is deceptive window dressing and that their true agenda is "one person, one vote, one time," evidence for that is scanty. After the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini installed an "Islamic Republic" which still has lots of democratic features, and which even with its undemocratic elements happens to be what he stood for before the 1979 revolution. In Turkey and so far Tunisia, Islamist parties have maintained their democratic commitments. In Algeria and the Palestinian Territories, Islamist election victories were followed by chaos, but in both of those case the ruling powers acted undemocratically against the election results, cancelling them in Algeria and sharply curtailing their ability to do anything in the PNA. In other words, there's no real precedent for Islamists suddenly acting on a hidden agenda, and plenty for fear of Islamists leading to rash, undemocratic actions damaging to the polities involved.

Given this history, the liberal parties, who are losing badly because they are simply badly underdeveloped and without a long history of arguing their message in society, should consider their common ground with the Muslim Brotherhood and the prospects for forming a coalition with them rather than leave the salafis are their only willing partners. The MB, for its part, has expressed an openness to this, denied rumors they are tacitly allied with the salafis, and even advertised their willingness to put Christians in high-profile positions. The way forward for those disappointed today is not to become political insurgents in league with the SCAF, but to accepts the results of 2011 so as to make sure they have a chance to do better in future elections.

(Crossposted to American Footprints)