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Islam at the Ballot Box

[Wall Street Journal] Amir Taheri - Pakistan's election has been portrayed by the Western media as a defeat for President Musharraf. The real losers were the Islamist parties. The parties linked, or at least sympathetic, to the Taliban and al-Qaeda saw their share of the votes slashed to about 3% from almost 11% in the last general election a few years ago. The largest coalition of the Islamist parties, the United Assembly for Action (MMA), lost control of the Northwest Frontier Province to the avowedly secularist National Awami Party, despite vast sums spent by Iran and wealthy Arabs from the Persian Gulf states. So far, no Islamist party has managed to win a majority of the popular vote in any of the Muslim countries where reasonably clean elections are held. If anything, the Islamist share of the vote has been declining across the board. In Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas - the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood - won the 2006 general election with 44% of the votes, despite its secularist rival Fatah's years of misrule and corruption. Far from rejecting democracy, a majority of Muslims have repeatedly shown that they like elections. Tyrants fear free and fair elections, a fact illustrated by the Khomeinist regime's efforts to fix the outcome of next month's poll in Iran by pre-selecting the candidates. Support for democratic movements in the Muslim world remains the only credible strategy for winning the war against terror.
2008-02-21 01:00:00
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