http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/31/why-unilateralism-won-t-work.html

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=403176

It may have been a real blessing in disguise for Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq to have been excluded from the TV debate between then-apparently leading candidates Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh.

There are a number of plausible reasons that the highly uncharismatic establishment candidates Morsi and Shafiq demolished these relatively more charismatic and individual politicians. But it could also well have been a factor that Moussa and Aboul Fotouh did each other in by relentlessly making powerful accusations neither was able to successfully refute: that while they pretended to have moved beyond their prior associations and to represent something “new,” in fact Moussa was still nothing more than a remnant of the overthrown regime of President Hosni Mubarak while Aboul Fotouh was not only an Islamist, but a de facto part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

If Moussa and Aboul Fotouh successfully exposed each other as simply “light” or “stealth” versions of the felloul and the Brotherhood respectively, why not go for the real thing? In the event, that’s exactly what the public did, preferring overt representatives of the former government and the traditional opposition, in almost equal numbers.

Many of the Egyptian revolutionaries instrumental in bringing down the former regime are understandably distraught. Indeed, they’re faced with an impossible choice: the representative of everything they hate from the past and everything they fear about the future.

Typically in elections, most ballots are cast more against a given party or candidate than for one. But the coming Egyptian second round election will be almost entirely a question of which of these two unpalatable options most Egyptians find least disturbing.

Few are going to vote for Shafiq based on his “stability” and “experience” arguments; they’ll be rallying around him as the only way to avoid a completely Islamist-dominated elected government.

Morsi’s 25 percent win in the first round probably demonstrates the outer limits of the Brotherhood’s present ability to secure enthusiastic votes. If he is able to create a broader coalition to win the second round, it will certainly be based on the idea that even Egyptians who are otherwise highly uncomfortable with the idea of an Islamist government should prefer such an experiment to a return to anything directly related to the former regime.

The Brotherhood is going to have to maneuver extremely quickly, and radically alter its tone, if it’s going to be able to reach out to a broad enough coalition before the second round. If they can, this might prove a humbling and moderating experience, but suspicions about their long-term intentions will, and should, linger.

Shafiq has two built-in advantages. First, any impulse to have a divided government with different political forces in control of the parliament and presidency that can check and balance each other defaults to him. Second, any widespread boycott of the election based on the idea that both candidates represent intolerable positions is more likely to pull potential votes away from Morsi.

Indeed, it is almost certainly going to be the key to a Muslim Brotherhood victory to prevent secularists, non-Islamists, and others who would never vote for a representative of the former regime from simply staying home. If there is a widespread boycott, Shafiq’s chances will be greatly enhanced, though if he wins, many will allege fraud by the ruling military government.

But if Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are able to win by creating a broad enough coalition on the grounds that any other vote would be a final and irreversible “defeat for the revolution,” this sets up a very serious potential political crisis for the country. The constitution-redrafting process is at a total impasse and there is no mechanism currently in place for moving forward with it. If Muslim Brotherhood candidates dominate parliament and hold the presidency, there is a very real question about how the military will react.

Already in a series of edicts, decrees, extraconstitutional “principles” and other documents issued by the military leadership, powers of both the presidency and the parliament have supposedly been transferred to the military. Under these documents, the military would have control of its own budget, final say on national defense issues and numerous other extraordinary prerogatives.

It’s likely that efforts by the military to secure its own powers in independent structures parallel to those to be determined by democratic elections would intensify in the event of a Morsi victory. In other words, it’s hard to imagine the military simply walking away and handing the keys to the kingdom over entirely to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Under such circumstances, especially with no clear process under way for creating a new constitution, the military and the Brotherhood will have to either craft a deal neither of them is at all comfortable with, or begin what is likely to be a bitter, dangerous and prolonged power struggle.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/saliba-sarsar/israel-palestine-conflict_b_1545472.html

June 5, 2012 marks the 45th anniversary of the start of the Six-Day War. One of us experienced the war in Jerusalem at the age of 11, and the other in Beirut at age 4, yet it haunts us to this day. The war led to the ongoing Israeli military occupation that has come to define the conflict. It has lessened neither the fears of the triumphant Israelis, nor those of the defeated Arabs; the mindset of confrontation that produced the war still haunts the region. 

Despite the military might and economic prowess of their state, Jewish Israelis feel insecure and hesitant to trust the Arab side. They remain traumatized by a tragic history. For some, clinging on to the occupation is seen as a security necessity. For others, it is the fear of losing land that they consider a divine or historical birthright.

The Palestinians, given their historic dispossession and suffering in exile or under Israeli occupation, feel increasingly disempowered and disillusioned, and are rapidly losing hope that a two-state solution will ever be achieved. Given its immoral and indefensible system, the occupation is wrecking their livelihood and lives, and condemns them to live without basic human and national rights.

The State of Palestine remains an unfulfilled promise and seems a distant reality. Peace negotiations, United Nations resolutions, and accords have reached a seemingly impossible impasse. Israeli and Palestinian politicians are not listening to each other. Years of conflict and narratives of struggle and pain mean both national communities are caught up in their own visions and divisions.

A year has passed since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wrote an op-ed in The New York Timesabout “The Long Overdue Palestinian State.” At the same time, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke, on May 19, 2011, about the need to base future negotiations on the pre-June 5, 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a line in the sand on May 24, regarding the border with a new Palestinian state during his address to a joint session of Congress, outlining a vision that no Palestinian leadership could accept.

The Palestinian people are beleaguered by internal divisions and Israeli oppression. Even though Fatah recently signed a deal with Hamas to hold elections and establish a new unity government for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the rifts between them are so significant that such elections are unlikely to take place. The refusal of Hamas to recognize the goal of a two-state solution and renounce violence remains a major obstacle.

Obama is busy campaigning for a second term. Some hope that a re-elected Obama might adopt a more assertive approach to resolving the conflict. But it is hard to see what will change by then, unless a sudden crisis or opportunity emerges that cannot be ignored.

Netanyahu is now in possession of a new 94-member Knesset coalition of almost unprecedented scope. It seems unlikely that, by joining the government, the Kadima Party will create changes in Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Right-wing political parties — including the settler movement, which are opposed to peace with the Palestinians — remain powerful obstacles to positive change. The new government shows no signs of slowing the settlement expansion program that is threatening the viability of peace.

The United States and the other members of the Middle East Quartet — the United Nations, European Union, and Russia — have pushed for a resolution, but nothing has been realized except some continued, but much reduced, support for the crucial Palestinian institution-building program led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

The Israeli occupation is a result of the conditions of the 1960s. The time for ending it is long overdue — it is right and proper for Israel’s soul and the Palestinian spirit. An independent, contiguous, and secure Palestine — democratic, pluralistic, non-militarized, and neutral in conflicts — living in peace alongside Israel is in the national interest of both Palestinians and Israelis, and the entire world. It, alone, offers a conflict-ending solution. The only alternative is more occupation and, eventually, further conflict.

There is a leadership crisis on resolving the conflict. Martin Luther King Jr. explained that “leaders only change because they either see the light or feel the heat.” If Israeli and Palestinian leaders will not “see the light” and lead, placing political power above national interests, their publics and the international community must work together to force their hands through constructive and cooperative interventions that make all of them “feel the heat.”

The growing Palestinian nonviolent protest movement, often joined by brave and principled Jewish Israelis and international activists, is one such effort. The institution-building program led by Fayyad is another, as many of its effects empower ordinary Palestinians and improves their lives while laying the groundwork for a well-functioning independent Palestine. Failing to build on these and similar efforts to push peace forward from the bottom up will only perpetuate insecurity and a historic injustice, and strengthen the forces of exclusion and extremism.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/25/you-say-you-want-a-revolution.html

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=399797

One of the most important political principles is that history is not deterministic in any sense. It is, rather, a genealogy of human choices. It is shaped by agency, intentionality and decisions that are both individual and collective.

Almost all of the most insidious contemporary political mindsets reject this. Instead they invoke some kind of determinism or historical teleology—the will of God, the hidden hand of the market, biological determinism regarding human beings or their habitat, Malthusian prognostications about population growth. These are all common variants of the theme. And all of them are totally and dangerously mistaken.

I had the pleasure of debating the Iranian-American author Reza Aslan last week at the University of California, Los Angeles regarding the future for Israel and the Palestinians. It was extremely useful in reminding me of the importance of avoiding determinism and the ethical and political imperative to reassert the primacy of human agency in shaping history and, particularly, the future.

We agreed on some key points regarding the diagnosis of the Israeli-Palestinian syndrome but differed completely on the prognosis and the prescription.

We agreed that there was much blame to go around for the fact that peace has not yet been achieved. We both noted the historically corrupt and frequently incompetent Palestinian leadership, the extremist mentality of Hamas and, above all, the ongoing Israeli settlement project as key factors in the absence of peace. But that was more or less where agreement ended.

In the second part of his diagnosis, Aslan categorically asserted that Palestinian statehood was absolutely “impossible” because of demographic and infrastructural changes enforced by the occupation. His prognosis was that a prolonged period of bloodshed, “apartheid and ethnic cleansing” is totally unavoidable. Eventually, he said, “international mediation” would enforce his prescription: a “loose confederation” akin to the Bosnian arrangement. All of this, he insisted, was “inevitable,” with an absolute certainty worthy of Nostradamus himself.

Aslan readily agreed this was not a desirable outcome and frankly conceded the extraordinary amount of violence that would be required to produce it. Perhaps unfairly, I thought I detected in him an inexplicable nonchalance about the nightmarish picture of the future, in the style of Hieronymus Bosch, that he was painting as “inevitable.”

There is, as I noted, nothing “inevitable” in the realm of the political. Outcomes are produced by political, economic, military and social forces. But all of these are expressions of human will and agency, both collective and individual. The word “impossible” is, potentially, a legitimate political category if one can convincingly demonstrate that the forces that produce outcomes, based on their own interests, cannot plausibly yield a given result. But the word “inevitable” is almost never a legitimate political category, most importantly because human agency is always the most important factor, and there are countless unforeseeable imponderables and contingencies.

In our debate, I continued to insist that a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians is indeed still possible, mostly because a majority on both sides want it and because there is a huge body of international opinion and law that requires it. I’ve always unhappily accepted that a continuation of the status quo is more likely for the foreseeable future. Aslan’s dystopian vision of a future characterized by increasingly bloody conflicts, “apartheid and ethnic cleansing” is indeed a possibility. But I see no reason to conclude that it will “inevitably” either occur or, less still, yield the outcome he predicts with such astounding confidence—especially not if “ethnic cleansing” is a factor.

Apart from asserting that while a limited number of outcomes can be reasonably defined as “impossible” for the foreseeable future, I argued that almost nothing is “inevitable.” Human beings are, in fact, not only able to decide their future, but that’s exactly what they always have done and will do, barring unforeseeable natural disasters that are rare and usually manageable.

What I was defending was a “secular” perspective on history and politics, in the way its most important contemporary champion, Edward Said, defined it. It’s a position that emphasizes human agency, intentionality and decisions, and rejects every possible form of determinism, not just religious superstition.

I told Aslan that even if I believed he were right about the likely prognosis of bloodshed, “apartheid and ethnic cleansing,” to use his precise words, I would be proud with all the conviction and passion I could muster to fight against this contingency—this set of choices—with every fiber of my being.

Precisely because Aslan’s radical dystopian vision is actually plausible, everyone who does not work against it will be complicit in the horrors he predicts. But because they will be the consequences of human choices, they are by no means inevitable. We have the ability and profound moral obligation to choose differently.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/17/beware-creative-alternatives.html

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=396608

The new coalition government suddenly formed last week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the new leader of the Kadima party, Shaul Mofaz, remains something of a mystery. It is essentially a deal between two men, not two parties. Only Netanyahu and Mofaz really know the terms under which they joined forces.

It’s easy to see what was in it for both. Mofaz was able to avoid an election that seemed likely to reduce his party to marginal status in the Knesset. Netanyahu got the opportunity to enjoy 16 months of uncontested power before the next legally mandated election.

Netanyahu had been in the political center of his previous coalition, but now he will be back in his usual position on the right. That doesn’t mean, however, that the new coalition will take a more constructive approach toward the Palestinians. But it does mean that Netanyahu has lost his principal excuse for not taking steps toward peace—that he was constrained from doing so by his dependence on more right-wing forces in Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu.

In scathing comments to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz a few days before the new government was announced, former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said the primary cause of Netanyahu’s disinterest in peace-oriented measures was the political dynamics of his previous coalition.

Diskin said Netanyahu’s previous coalition had “no interest in solving anything with the Palestinians, that I can say with certainty… Forget the story they are selling you that [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] doesn’t want to talk. We are not talking with the Palestinians because this government has no interest in talking with the Palestinians.” As Diskin saw it, “The prime minister knows that if he takes the smallest step forward in that direction his solid coalition will break apart.”

Whether offered as an indictment, an excuse or an explanation, this logic plainly no longer applies. Whatever the details of his private agreement with Mofaz may be, Netanyahu now heads a huge coalition that frees him from any claims of being beholden to smaller right-wing parties that won’t stand for any conciliatory measures toward the Palestinians.

The earliest indications of where the new government may be going are hardly promising. The outgoing coalition was on a rampage of settlement activity. It expanded existing settlements and dropped the long-standing pretense that it was not creating new ones. The government was in the process of retroactively recognizing “unauthorized” settlement outposts created in violation of even Israeli law, and was trying to circumvent Supreme Court orders to evacuate some of the largest outposts.

The demolition by July 1 of one of the most egregious of these, Ulpana, has been ordered by the Israeli Supreme Court, because the outpost was built, with the full knowledge of its founders and the government, on privately owned Palestinian land. Instead of using his new coalition to obey the law and enforce the court order, Netanyahu is moving quickly to create new legislation to bypass the court’s instructions.

The Supreme Court rejected a government petition to review its finding. According to reports in the Israeli media, the State Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office have also objected to the idea of creating a new law to bypass the Supreme Court’s order.

One of the first meetings of the new cabinet was on this issue, and it was reportedly unable to reach any conclusion. Mofaz’s position is not yet known. A draft law would retroactively legalize all West Bank outposts constructed with governmental funds or having benefited from initial technical approvals. These are estimated to include at least 9,000 outpost housing units. Supporters have expressed confidence the draft law can pass in the Knesset with the support of the new government.

If this is one of the first measures taken by the new Netanyahu-Mofaz coalition, it would be a very disturbing indication that disinterest in peace by the previous coalition will be continued by the new one. If so, it would also mean that Diskin’s diagnosis—that this disinterest was a symptom of the fragile dynamics of the old coalition—was incorrect.

The international community will have to take careful note of how the new Israeli government handles the outposts issue. If it persists with aggressive and provocative settlement activity and attempts to bypass even Israel’s own laws on the issue, the world will have to conclude that this is a consensus Israeli policy and not political necessity.

The international community will then have to decide whether to acquiesce or take serious measures to ensure that there are real consequences for decisions that severely damage the viability of renewed negotiations and the prospects for a real conflict-ending solution.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/07/we-need-to-talk.html

http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2012/05/revolution-citizenship-and-democracy-in-transitional-arab-states/

As the Arab uprisings continue to unfold, the word “revolution” is often bandied about with complete disregard for what an actual revolution entails. A coup; a pacted or managed transition between elements of the ancien régime and opposition forces; or simple regime change do not constitute a genuine revolution.

Revolution, properly defined, means that society changes both from the top-down and bottom-up, and looks very little as it did before. Some famous revolutions are more dramatic in this context than others. It’s obvious that the Russian and French revolutions, for example, changed everything almost overnight and dramatically for the people of those countries. The revolution against British rule in the United States, on the other hand, changed a great deal but also preserved much of what was long-established. Nothing was ever the same in the United States after the revolution, but the change was more cautious, gradual and vigorously debated than the vanguardist transformations in Russia or France.

By these standards, the only Arab country which could possibly be described as having actually undergone a revolution is Libya. A principal reason for this is that Colonel Moammar Qaddafi established so few real social and governmental institutions that any alternative government, even one following his natural death, would have faced the need to build such structures from their very base. Yet even in Libya, there are real questions about how revolutionary the transformation will be.

The head of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustapha Abdul Jalil, after all, previously served as “the Secretary of the General People’s Committee of Justice” (essentially the minister of justice, as defined in the bizarre lexicon of Qaddafi’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya – itself a neologism reflective of his twisted thinking). There are plenty of opposition figures in the new Libyan leadership and a very different political scene, especially given the absence of Qaddafi and his sons. But even in Libya there are grounds to question whether political developments constitute a bona fide revolution.

In Egypt, there was certainly no revolution. The military was forced to perform a regime decapitation, removing former President Hosni Mubarak and his family, and some other elements of the elite as well as the ruling National Democratic Party, in order to try to save as much of the existing power structure — particularly their own prerogatives, privileges and economic holdings — as possible. Much of the former regime remains intact, including the Ministry of the Interior and its secret police. Egypt is now the scene of an intense, complex and convoluted power struggle between three established forces: the military, the remnants of the former regime (including the MOI and secret police) and the Muslim Brotherhood. The liberal street protesters who brought down the former regime serve as an unorganized and unstructured fourth factor that can be brought into play in the context of a crisis. Nothing that has happened there reflects a real political or social revolution.

Yemen’s protest movement was hijacked by a power struggle within the elite, between forces loyal to President Ali Abdallah Saleh, his son and nephews, and those aligned with the Ahmar clan and rebel generals such as Ali Mohsen Ahmar (who, in spite of his last name, is related to Saleh, not his rivals in the Ahmar clan and their de facto leader, telecommunications tycoon Hamid Al-Ahmar). Whether this power struggle between the elites in Sanaa has been resolved or not remains to be seen, but even if it has, that elite will have to deal with a revivified “Southern Movement” which seeks either radical autonomy or independence for the south; the strengthened Houthi rebellion; some other secessionist movements; numerous Salafist-Jihadist groups, including but by no means limited to Al Qaeda, which control large parts of rural territory; a drought; a Somali refugee crisis of considerable proportions; and a population that is by far the most illiterate, unemployed, under-educated and heavily armed in the entire Arab world. In other words, the factors working in Yemen’s favor for a brighter future can be listed on one hand (possibly with superfluous fingers remaining), whereas the list of challenges   is formidable. Failed statehood, or a threatened deterioration to that status, is not a revolution either.

In Bahrain, demonstrators never sought a revolution, except perhaps the fringe led by Hassan Mushaima and Al Haq that called for a republic to replace the monarchy. But most mainstream opposition groups, most notably Al-Wefaq, were not talking in terms of revolution or even regime change, but rather stronger forms of constitutionalism to produce a greater balance of power between royal and popular prerogatives, and redressing grievances specific to the long-marginalized Shiite majority. Even though the uprising, for the most part, did not seek to abolish the monarchy, it was successfully crushed by force and so by no means can we speak of revolution in Bahrain.

On the other hand, a “revolutionary situation” might be brewing because of growing tensions between the government and the opposition, particularly the Shiite community; the lack of any forum for dialogue to produce a reasonable accommodation; the splintering of leaderships on both sides; and the rise of radical fringes, including what may be the beginning of urban terrorism and sabotage by radical opposition forces, and the concurrent rise of Sunni vigilantes of a previously unknown Salafist variety, attacking Shiite villages. Revolutionary situations don’t necessarily generate genuine or stable revolutions, but rather yield open-ended conflict, which presently appears to be the direction in which Bahrain, very much in the grip of Saudi hegemony, is headed.

Syria seems not only to have a fully-fledged revolutionary situation but to be inexorably headed towards full-blown civil war, probably of a sectarian nature. The government is manifestly uninterested in and patently incapable of reform. Meanwhile the opposition is deeply divided politically, militarily weak (armed opposition is strictly at an insurgency level; unable to control and hold any territory); lacks proper coordination between disparate armed groups and divided political ones; and is unable to articulate a coherent vision for Syria’s future or inspire confidence that it constitutes a viable alternative leadership, as the NTC in Libya did. Civil wars, especially of a sectarian nature, are unlikely incubators of anything that could legitimately be described as a revolution.

This summary of why the Arab uprisings don’t qualify as revolutionary begs the question of what would.

A genuinely revolutionary transition fundamentally changes the relationship between the individual, society and state. Regime change, coups, civil wars, and similar political ruptures that maintain the pre-existing relationship between the individual and the state cannot be considered revolutionary. This is the missing element in the Arab uprisings: none can be said to have fundamentally changed the citizen-state nexus.

Revolutions need not constitute an improvement in that relationship: the Communist “new man” became a vassal of a vanguardist socialist clique; fascist revolutions aimed to produce mindless nationalist automatons; some revolutions, like the Khmer Rouge’s in Cambodia, recast individuals as enemies of the new society, marked for death. So revolutionary change is not necessarily positive, but it must be comprehensive.

While none of the Arab uprisings have transformed the relationship between the individual and the state. Libya has changed more dramatically – at least superficially – than anywhere else. But the country is too chaotic, deeply in flux, and reverting to tribal, clan and regional affiliations that predate the Qaddafi era to identify a more healthy, relationship between the individual, state and society. Indeed, across most of the Arab world, the uprisings are driving people back into more atavistic identities: sectarianism, both local and regional; tribal affiliations; clan loyalties; and subnational regional agendas have all enjoyed a terrible resurgence.

If the Arab world is ready for a new political and social consciousness that fundamentally reshapes political and social relations, it will be shaped at the level of citizenship. The concept of citizenship, with its complex, mutually reinforcing and interdependent relationships of rights and responsibilities, has been largely absent from modern Arab political discourse. Citizenship is a new idea and the struggle to define it is at the core of the most promising of these uprisings, particularly in the one transition I have not yet addressed: Tunisia.

Over the past decade or so, a new idea has taken root in most strains of Arab political thinking: the notion that legitimate governance requires the consent of the governed and its corollary that only regular, multiparty elections and the peaceful transfer of power can affirm that consent. The basic outlines of this idea are now accepted by almost all current strands of Arab political thought, with the notable exception of existing ruling elites and their courtiers (whether in republics or monarchies); and extreme Salafist groups, particularly Salafist-Jihadists, who reject the idea as “unIslamic.” Even illiberal organizations such as Muslim Brotherhood parties and other Islamist groups understand the centrality of this concept, at least in theory.

What is not nearly as widely understood or accepted, even in theory, is the other side of the coin of democracy: limitations on the powers of government; separation of powers between different branches (particularly the need for an independent judiciary to enforce those limitations); and, above all, the inviolable rights of minorities, women and, especially, individuals on the basis of their status as citizens. In some countries, such as Egypt, the current struggle of political ideas revolves around efforts by Islamists, probably at the peak of their influence, to assert as much as possible maximal authority for majority rule.

But throughout the Middle East, and above all in Tunisia, which is by far the furthest along in developing a constitutional post-dictatorship system, Islamists are disturbingly taking the lead in promoting and defining the concept of citizenship. This has deeply ominous implications.

Consider the harm done to the concept of secularism because of its abuse by Arab republican dictatorships that framed themselves as secular, only to use this as an excuse for radical forms of repression, including against genuine secularists as well as Islamists and other opposition groups. In other words, when the wrong people define important concepts, words can be stripped of their meaning to the point that they become unworkable and even anathema. Damaging mischaracterizations and misunderstandings of indispensable ideas thereby poison political discourse.

If the Arab uprisings are to become genuine revolutions, they will have to transform ordinary Arab individuals from mere subjects of the state — to be managed and controlled — into citizens empowered to participate freely in all aspects of society with no unreasonable limitations. The essence of citizenship is that the individual has inviolable rights, such as freedom of conscience, religion, speech, property, equal treatment under the law, and equal status, and reciprocal responsibilities, such as paying taxes, public service, abiding by the rule of law, and consent to legitimate authority. The most fundamental element of real citizenship is that individual rights cannot be compromised by democratic decisions of tyrannous majorities. Genuine democracy requires balancing the rights of majorities and majority coalitions to executive and/or legislative power, with limitations on government, and inviolable minority and individual rights protected by an independent judiciary. If citizenship is defined in any other way it will, like secularism, become a term that is poisoned in Arab political discourse and is rendered virtually useless for at least a generation.

Tunisia is central because its Islamists are the most advanced, sophisticated, imaginative and, indeed, crafty in the Arab world. It’s ironic that few Arab liberals or progressives pay as much attention to the concept (or at least the rhetoric) of citizenship as Ennahda’s spiritual guide Rashid Ghanouchi or its main spokesman Said Ferjani. Indeed, anyone looking at the rhetoric in the contemporary Arab world without any context or historical understanding might be tempted to see Ghanouchi and Ferjani as fully-developed liberal, constitutionalist Muslim Democrats, in the manner of the Christian Democratic parties of Western Europe. In reality they are nothing of the kind, at least for now. They are probably the Arab Islamists furthest along in any evolution in this direction, if in fact that is where they are going.

But, it’s important to note that citizenship as defined by Islamists like Ghanouchi and Ferjani is still framed in the context of “Islamic traditions” and “Islamic values.” Ferjani, in particular, isexceptionally eloquent on the concept of citizenship, and has correctly identified it as the key to creating genuinely pluralistic, democratic post-dictatorship Arab societies. Yet his party remains absolutely committed to an interpretation of not only Islam, but also “Islamic societies,” that claims authenticity based on socially reactionary ideals. Arab Islamists, including Ennahda, frame religious equality in interfaith terms: they would recognize, at least in theory, the right to be Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Jewish, or hold any other religious conviction. So a certain respect for this kind of freedom of religion is accepted by Islamists, insofar as they understand that there are different kinds of Muslims and others who belong to a different religion. But as recent blasphemy prosecutions in Tunisia and similar intolerant incidents elsewhere demonstrate, the idea that there might be skeptical citizens who are atheists or agnostics, and that these citizens have a right to publicly question religion, engage in blasphemy, satire, scholarly interrogation of the history of various religions (including Islam), or promote radical skepticism and rejection of religion is still totally outside their frame of reference.

Similarly, Islamist definitions of citizenship confront a major problem regarding gender. If they claim to be in favor of equal citizenship, but insist that this equality must be grounded in Islamic traditions, Islamists face an impossible conundrum. Most traditional interpretations of Islam give Muslim men more rights than Muslim women in terms of inheritance, divorce, child custody, court testimony, and many other familial and social matters. They also give Muslim men more rights than non-Muslim men. It’s absurd but symptomatic that in both Tunisia and Egypt there are huge controversies among Islamists about whether non-Muslims (inevitably defined as Jews or Christians, rather than atheists or agnostics, the latter being entirely outside their frame of reference) should be allowed to serve as president. In neither case is this a likely scenario given that both Egypt and Tunisia have over 85 percent Sunni Muslim majorities. So the question boils down to one of formalizing discrimination rather than worrying about the rise to power of a Jewish Tunisian or a Coptic Egyptian president (neither of which are conceivable given those countries’ present circumstances and political cultures).

In short, the struggle for good governance, equal rights, pluralism, tolerance, and actual democracy boils down to the question how citizenship is defined and incorporated into post-dictatorship Arab societies. If Islamists are allowed to monopolize the discourse regarding citizenship, convert it into a vehicle for simply legitimizing majority rule that that oppress the rights of women, minorities and individuals, and hijack the concept of citizenship the way former dictatorships appropriated and distorted the concept of secularism, there will be no Arab revolutions. If Islamist parties consistently win electoral majorities under such conditions, there will simply be the transfer of one form of authoritarian rule to another (albeit electorally legitimized and bolstered, but with limited separation of powers and few protections for minority and individual rights). There is reason to be deeply concerned that Islamists are dominating the conversation about citizenship at this moment in Arab political discourse. If one had any confidence that they were sincere about the rights of citizens inherent in their individual citizenship, this would be a welcome rather than a worrying development. But any such confidence would be grossly naïve.

Therefore, one of the most urgent tasks facing those who seek a genuinely revolutionary, liberating and progressive Arab post-dictatorship future is to engage in the struggle over the definition of citizenship, and ensure that Islamists are not able to hijack this ideal to defend oppressive majority rule, but rather to inculcate a sense of citizenship that defines and defends the rights of each and every individual, woman and man alike. Liberty, at its root, means maximizing the range of choices for every individual in any society while protecting the rights of others from encroachment by those choices. It’s a difficult balancing act, but it’s one that most of the rest of the world is much further along in negotiating than the Arabs.

What most Arabs, above all the Islamists but also many liberals who unwisely and indefensibly prefer the old authoritarianism over potentially Islamist, or Islamist-influenced, but limited and constitutionalist governments, should understand is that the only freedom that really counts is the freedom for others to be radically wrong in one’s own eyes. Pluralism means accepting the right of somebody else to choose to be completely wrong in your opinion, and yet defending that right in the context of freedom of conscience. This is the idea that must make headway in the Arab world if genuine citizenship, democracy, pluralism, tolerance and women’s, minority and individual rights are to be protected in post-dictatorship democracies.

That would irreversibly transform the nature of the relationship between the Arab individual and her or his state and society.

That would be a real revolution.