Last Saturday’s declaration by Libya’s National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil to the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, that Libya will not be turned into an extremist Islamic country, was greeted with a muted sigh of relief by political observers who have been viewing the dangers of a new hard core Islamist taking root in the country with trepidation.
Jalil had caused a stir last month when he had stated that Islamic Shariah law would be the main source of the new Libya’s legislation, and that existing legislation that violated Shariah law would be eliminated.
But, on Saturday, he declared that ‘our Islam is moderate’, in an evident turnaround clarification of his earlier statement. Many observers have said Jalil had been speaking in his personal capacity when he had made the first statement, and pointed out that a Libyan constitution would not be penned and approved until next year.
The comments, not incidentally, came during a women’s conference in Tripoli last Saturday and the clarification of the chairman’s stance on Shariah law were in perfect context given the conference’s subject matter and Shariah law’s view of women, as made infamous by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The comments were also aimed at allaying a Western sense that the Arab Spring countries of North Africa, as they continue to pick up the pieces in the wake of their revolutions, could fall into the hands of extremists with religious-rooted parties expected to gain control in Tunisia and Egypt.
US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Monday stated that the US would work with Islamist parties coming to power in the Maghreb.
In an acknowledgment of America’s former support for the ousted dictators of North Africa, she said, ‘For years, dictators told their people they had to accept the autocrats they knew to avoid the extremists they feared. Too often, we accepted that narrative ourselves.’
Now, it seems, these ‘extremists’ could very well turn out to be a lot less extreme than the dictators, but only time will truly tell if they take power and how they wield it.
The Islamic Ennahda Party had a strong showing in the recent Tunisian elections, and the Muslim Brotherhood party is likely to wield significant power in a future Egypt.
But now that the jubilation of successful uprisings in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt are dying down - making way for the more serious and unprecedented work of creating stable, lasting democracies in those countries – what has to be taken on board is that it does not really matter what a governing party calls itself, but, rather, what it does.
The fact of the matter is that the West will simply have to wait and see what transpires and how the new democratic parties of North Africa shape their governments and legislation.
Just as we have Christian Democratic parties in Europe, Malta is in fact being administered by one at the moment, whose ideologies are based upon and espouse Christian values, the very same could be said of an Islamist Democratic party taking root in any of the Arab Spring countries. There is, really, no difference whatsoever.
If that party has been democratically elected and it plays by the general rules of democracy – it rejects violence, abides by the rule of law, respects freedom of speech, religion, association and assembly as well as the rights of women and minorities – there should be no real cause for concern.
Rather, it should be a cause for celebration that the people of those countries have, at long last, a leadership that they themselves have freely elected – Islamic, Islamist, whatever they may choose to call themselves is irrelevant, it will be the substance that will count.