Islam GERAKAN DAN PROSES DEMOKRATIS DI DUNIA ARAB: Menjelajahi Zona Gray

Selama dekade terakhir, gerakan Islam telah menetapkan diri sebagai pemain politik utama di Timur Tengah. Bersama dengan pemerintah, Gerakan Islamis, moderat serta radikal, akan menentukan bagaimana politik daerah terungkap di masa mendatang. Mereka telah menunjukkan kemampuan tidak hanya untuk membuat pesan dengan daya tarik populer yang tersebar luas tetapi juga, dan yang paling penting, untuk menciptakan organisasi dengan basis sosial asli dan mengembangkan strategi politik yang koheren. Pihak lain,

umumnya, gagal di semua akun.

Publik di Barat dan, khususnya, Amerika Serikat, baru menyadari pentingnya gerakan Islam setelah peristiwa dramatis, seperti revolusi di Iran dan pembunuhan Presiden Anwar al-Sadat di Mesir. Perhatian telah jauh lebih dipertahankan sejak serangan teroris September 11, 2001. Hasil dari, Gerakan Islam secara luas dianggap berbahaya dan bermusuhan. Sementara karakterisasi seperti itu akurat mengenai organisasi di ujung radikal spektrum Islam, yang berbahaya karena kesediaan mereka untuk menggunakan kekerasan tanpa pandang bulu dalam mengejar tujuan mereka, it is not an accurate characterization of the many groups that have renounced or avoided violence. Because terrorist organizations pose an immediate

threat, Namun, policy makers in all countries have paid disproportionate attention to the violent organizations.

It is the mainstream Islamist organizations, not the radical ones, that will have the greatest impact on the future political evolution of the Middle East. Th e radicals’ grandiose goals of re-establishing a caliphate uniting the entire Arab world, or even of imposing on individual Arab countries laws and social customs inspired by a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam are simply too far removed from today’s reality to be realized. Th is does not mean that terrorist groups are not dangerous—they could cause great loss of life even in the pursuit of impossible goals—but that they are unlikely to change the face of the Middle East. Mainstream Islamist organizations are generally a diff erent matter. Th ey already have had a powerful impact on social customs in many countries, halting and reversing secularist trends and changing the way many Arabs dress and behave. And their immediate political goal, to become a powerful force by participating in the normal politics of their country, is not an impossible one. It is already being realized in countries such as Morocco, Jordan, and even Egypt, which still bans all Islamist political organizations but now has eighty-eight Muslim Brothers in the Parliament. Politik, not violence, is what gives mainstream Islamists their infl uence.