Building bridges not walls

In the wake of the US presidential elections in November, attention has been refocused on the question of western foreign policy towards the Middle East. Although the legacy of the past eight years will be challenging to overcome in the short to medium term, there have been many encouraging signs that President-Elect Obama will take decisive steps to alter both the direction and tone of US policy in the region. He has already signalled his willingness to talk to all leaders, whether they are friends or foes, in an effort to restore American diplomatic credibility and to re-establish links with key regional powerbrokers like Syria. However, it is far less clear what approach the new American leadership will take towards engaging with the range of Islamist parties and movements either in power or in opposition across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This remains a critical test.

North American and European policymakers have often been criticised for their tendency to treat political Islam as a monolithic and uniformly negative phenomenon, and for their failure to appreciate the role that non-violent Islamist parties could potentially play in addressing political stagnation in the region. This charge is perhaps no longer as fair as it used to be. In recent years, there has been increasing recognition of the fact that political Islam is not a fixed ideology with a clearly identifiable set of values and objectives, but rather a fluid phenomenon that encompasses a range of movements with different philosophies, principles and agendas.

A number of serious commentators in Europe and North America also now stress the need for western governments to be open to the idea of direct engagement with those Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa that have formally renounced the use of violence and that seek to work through legal political processes to achieve their goals, such as the Party of Justice and Development in Morocco, the Islamic Action Front in Jordan and even the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. As organisations like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argue, these groups currently offer the strongest and most popular opposition to existing authoritarian regimes and efforts should therefore be made to draw them into the wider dialogue about regional political reform. But to date, this argument has failed to translate into the formulation of realistic strategies for engaging with mainstream political Islam. To paraphrase Edward Djerejian, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, we are still building more walls than bridges in our policies towards political Islamists.

Some western governments have been more receptive to the idea of dialogue than others. In 2005, the German Federal Foreign Office released a policy paper recommending that potential avenues of collaboration with non-violent Islamist movements in the Arab world should be explored. More controversially, publication of a series of leaked memos in the New Statesman journal in early 2006 revealed that political analysts within the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office were in favour of enhancing contacts with members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It was suggested that the British government should be trying to influence this group, given the extent of its grassroots support in Egypt, and noted that engaging with the Brotherhood would provide an opportunity to challenge their perception of the West, including of the UK, as well as their prescriptions for solving the challenges facing Egypt and the region.

However, whatever official support may have existed within European and North American governments for taking steps towards developing contacts with non-violent Islamist movements has been weakened in the past few years by the backlash to these tentative shifts in policy from elements of the media and policymaking establishment. Indeed, the mandate of the unit within the FCO that was responsible for ‘engaging with the Islamic world’ was fundamentally changed in 2007: it now focuses more on countering radicalisation and terrorism than on promoting dialogue with political actors in the region.

Enthusiasm for practical engagement with political Islamists also seems to have been sapped by endless circular discussions about the democratic credentials of mainstream Islamist groups. Instead of asking how we might engage more effectively, many policymakers are still asking whether this is feasible or desirable. This is linked to their concerns about Islamist violence and terrorism in both domestic and international contexts, but also relates to their wider strategic and political interests in the MENA region, some of which they perceive to be threatened by the rising popularity and influence of Islamist parties and movements. For their part, Islamist groups have also displayed a strong reluctance to enter into dialogue with those western governments whose policies in the region they oppose, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom. Both sides have legitimate concerns about the implications of forging closer ties, but a failure even to discuss these issues will do little to move the debate forward.

To this end, in November 2008, ippr held an international symposium on the theme of political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa. Alongside members of the western political establishment, academia and civil society, it also involved current or former representatives of a number of Islamist parties, including the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Jordanian Islamic Action Front, the Tunisian al-Nahda Party and Hezbollah. The aim of the conference was not to put Islamists on the back foot by interrogating their commitment to western democratic ideals, but rather to provide a neutral space for debate about political reform, human rights, the relationship between religion and state and regional political, economic and security dynamics. Although few conclusions were reached, the process of dialogue was valuable in and of itself.

It would be difficult, if not impractical and even counterproductive, for western governments to formulate a single strategy for engaging with non-violent Islamist parties across the MENA region. The context in each country is very different, and policy will have to be based on a careful assessment as to what is appropriate and feasible in any given case. But the focus must surely be on finding more avenues for frank discussion of this kind. At a time when there are so many walls – both political and physical – that divide people within the region and separate them from partners in the West, it is essential to start building a few more bridges.

Alex Glennie is a Research Assistant in ippr's International Team. Her reports include Reform in Jordan: The role of political Islamists, and Reform in Morocco: The role of political Islamists.