Democratization
The Democratization Industry and the Limits of the New Intervention
In the wake of the Gulf war, the question of democracy in the Middle East has finally caught up with Washington, but in ways that reinforce dominant strains of Cold War thought and action. Witness the regular depiction of Islam and Islamist movements in terms once reserved for communism, reflecting an artful mix of representation and prescription meant to discourage meddling with the authoritarian status quo. Within the community of Middle East scholars and academic experts, though, one finds people less ready to write off the region as an “exception” to global trends. To varying degrees, this current believes that US policy can strengthen a second wave of liberalism in the Middle East.
Gender and Civil Society
Suad Joseph, an editor of this magazine, teaches anthropology at the University of California-Davis and is a founder of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies and the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology. She has published extensively on sectarianism, gender and the family, and constructions of the self and state in Lebanon. Joe Stork spoke with her in early May.
What questions does the idea of civil society raise concerning gender?
From the Editors (November/December 1992)
With this issue we return to the question of the prospects for democratic forces in the Middle East, and the role of religiously based political movements there. These essays and interviews share a resolutely secularist perspective, a conviction that the construction of a just and viable social order requires a political practice that values tolerance and diversity. This perspective respects the genuine religiosity of many Middle Eastern societies, but the authors firmly critique the authoritarian component of the leading Islamist trends in Egypt, Algeria, Sudan and Palestine, and the varying degrees of complicity of the states (and Palestinian political organizations) in furthering the growth of these movements, by their combination of encouragement, neglect and repression.
Human Rights and Elusive Democracy
The practice of human rights cannot wait until all political systems have become democratic. Human rights, in their vast range, can be protected under non-democratic regimes and violated under democratic ones. Still, human rights and democracy, though not interchangeable, can form the most humane relationship of all.
Turkey: Reading the Small Print
In early April, the president of the banned Turkish Peace Association invited friends from END (European Nuclear Disarmament) and other peace groups across Europe to join him and the TPA executive in Istanbul in celebrating the tenth anniversary of the founding of the TPA. They planned to hold a public peace forum and a press conference.
