This article is not about Islam, as it is essentially believing in God and working in accordance with the morals that his greatest messenger brought, and not about advocacy or charitable Islam but rather about political Islam, that is, on political movements that have made Islam the intellectual reference for the pursuit, exercise and preservation of power.
Of course, sane does not put in the same basket a terrorist movement like ISIS and a national resistance movement like Hamas. Of course, all the sins against which the Islamists rose up against oppression and corruption within our borders are true to the reality of the major injustices that have been and still are Muslims in the world such as Jaguar, Rohingya and Kashmiris.
I am not in the process of settling accounts with the Ennahda Movement, but I affirm that I do not regret an alliance that has paid dearly for it. It was an initial choice to bridge the gap between secularists and Islamists, and a rational political choice to manage a very difficult transition period.
Of course, the coup against the martyr President Mohamed Morsi was a major crime against democracy and the Islamists have the right, wherever they succeed in free elections, to exercise power within the conditions of the democratic contract. Of course, the criticism of political Islam does not mean engaging in the stances of his worst enemies toward him, particularly Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the disaster of Egypt and Mohamed bin Zayed, the misfortune of the Arabs.
Of course, I am not in the process of settling scores with the Renaissance movement, but I confirm that I do not regret an alliance that I paid dearly for. It was an initial choice to bridge the gap between secularists and Islamists, and a rational political option to manage a very difficult transitional phase and the only solution to preserve Tunisia's stability and democracy, which we have succeeded, praise be to God.
But since the Al-Nahda election, beginning in the 2014 elections, this alliance ended with the counter-revolution. Churchill called the policy of appeasement with evil forces on the pretext of agreeing at all costs "feeding the crocodile in the hope that you will be the last to eat." That is why I continued with all those who share the project of the people of citizens the struggle for a country that is not blackmailed or governed by crocodiles.
However, just as we do not accept the infringement of the rights of the Islamists, we do not accept any intellectual terrorism that gives sanctity to their political movements and withdraws them from accountability to which all movements and the first political law are subject: actions by results, not by intentions. Now that all the points are placed on the letters, we can ask what was achieved by contemporary political Islam nearly a century after its launch from Egypt, at three levels: image, performance and cost.
When you look at the gentle political Islam, what attracts attention is not its struggle with part of society, but its struggle with itself. Examine the chronic enmity between Shiite and Sunni political Islam, and its latest episode is the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the martyr Yemen.
What is the credibility of political movements that raise the slogan "Islam is the solution" if they themselves are unable to solve their problems, and which solution do we have to embrace as the solutions within the solution multiply and struggle?
See the spectrum of Sunni Islam and the ferocity of its internal struggles: the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s between Hekmatyar and Masoud, and the Taliban’s war against them, and in the last decade, conflicts between Al Qaeda and ISIS, between the Syrian Islamic factions and every other atonement group.
If you now consider the unarmed part of the spectrum, you will discover the deep rift between those who classify themselves as moderates, such as the Tunisian Renaissance or Moroccan justice and development, and the ancestral fissure that these moderates consider to be a betrayal of the issue, between those who stand with the people's revolts and those who calm tyranny and line up with the counter-revolution.
What is the credibility of political movements that raise the slogan "Islam is the solution" if they themselves are unable to solve their problems, and which solution do we have to embrace as the solutions within the solution multiply and struggle?
Now rate the performance. Who can seriously present countries governed or governed by political Islam like Sudan Al-Bashir, Saudi Arabia, and Iran as successful countries? Update and embarrassment about the ability of the civil Islamic parties to adapt to the ruling corruption system and even to share power with it. Tunisia as a model.
What needs a long pause is the Turkish example, which is presented as the brightest sign of the success of political Islam.
The intellectual conflict that has been fracturing the Arab and Islamic political scene for more than a century is mainly between secularism - in all the forms that it took - and between political Islam in its utter spectrum, and the central dispute is the relationship of religion and the state.
With regard to the latter, the separation of religion from the state is heretical, because Islam is not only a belief and acts of worship. The central thesis of political Islam is building a state whose legitimacy and legitimacy derives from this religion.
With regard to the secular trend, given that all historical experiences have shown that there is no religion or state outside human beings, and based on the principle that human beings are good and bad, religion must be protected from the evil of politicians who use it to establish their authority, and protect politics from the evil of religious people who use religion to extend their influence. This means that the wrestlers in power must move ahead with their faces open, and leave religion alone, so that it is our common treasure - like language, homeland and knowledge - that no one has the right to claim representation alone without anyone else.
When you look at Turkey today, you see a country that does not undergo the orders of any guide and separating it between the politician and the religious compared to Saudi Arabia and Iran is clearer than the sun in the midday afternoon. You also see an authority exercised by a government that emerges from the elections, subject to a positive constitution and laws enacted by Parliament ... And even the death penalty was abolished!
Today's Turkish leaders to be democratic and successful Muslims, congratulations to Turkey, and our sins for us, because there is nothing better than a combination of faithful and creative leaders / democratic institutions. But to count this at the expense of political Islam, then it is fraud.
Islam can be compared to Christianity, both of which are religion. But it is not permissible to compare democracy and Islam, because democracy is not a religion, and then it is futile to search for fictional meeting points between them. The comparison is permissible only between democracy and political Islam, and both are a worldly political project to organize society. In this regard, there has been and will not be any agreement between them, because they are the opposite sides of the principles, means and goals.
Neither in Tunisia nor in Turkey the democratic system took one idea of political Islam, but the latter in its moderate and rational form is the one who swallowed all his pride and his "most famous" democracy, adopting all the ideas, values, and mechanisms of democracy. Some of them say to you: Aren't we the oldest people in democracy and the Shura, what did the true religion command us about fourteen centuries ago? What an abuse of language and history, as if the Shura had been applied throughout the time, or as if it gave sovereignty to the entire people and organized a peaceful transfer of power or preserved rights and freedoms even for its enemies!
Last but not least: cost:
The West has been subjected to painful terrorist strikes, but what they always forget is that ninety per cent of the victims of terrorism affiliated with armed political Islam are Arabs and Muslims.
There is also the political, social and humanitarian price that our countries have paid and terrorism is a royal gift that Satan has taken upon all the corrupt authoritarian regimes that have managed, under the banner of his fight, to rally the support of the West and the local upper and middle classes, and to extend the life of its rule, not to mention the arguments it gave to return to the direct occupation as it took place in Afghanistan after September 2001 events.
Do not forget the destructive role of the Arab Spring that armed political Islam played by its interference in the path of the Syrian revolution or terrorist strikes in Tunisia, which played a major role in the return of the old regime in the 2014 elections.
Fewer people also appreciate the extent to which terrorism, linked to political Islam, has narrowed the space of freedoms, even for the most ancient democratic people. The law that the US Congress enacted under the name Patriot Act immediately after the events of September 2001, and which is still in effect, gave wide powers to the police and restricted the freedom of Americans in a way that was not known before. The fruits of these terrorist operations are also outside our borders, because of the huge number of cameras that people breathe in all the airports and streets of the countries of the world.
Armed political Islam has caused a leap back in the field of freedoms in the whole world and has greatly affected the rapprochement between peoples and civilizations, not to mention the terrible damage it has done to the image of Islam itself.
The most painful distortion of the image of Muslims and made them throughout the world a place of suspicion and hostility. There is no doubt that the situation of millions of Muslims in the West, in China or in India was not easy before the emergence of terrorism, which was calculated on political Islam, but the emergence of the latter poisoned their lives in an unprecedented way. The suffering of Muslims in India is not new, but the 2008 Bombay assault helped lift it to a particularly dangerous level. Imagine that Gandhi - seventy years after his death - was paying the price for his defense of Muslims, and extremist Hindu movements today deemed him a killer for this position.
To sum up, it can be said that armed political Islam has caused a leap back in the field of freedoms in the whole world and has greatly harmed the rapprochement between peoples and civilizations, not to mention the heavy damage that it caused to the image of Islam itself, and no one knows how long it will pass before the restoration of all the ruin it caused.
The biggest problem is not failure and its price, and this is a phenomenon in which no sane people arrogate, but rather its cause. My opinion was and still is that the failure has nothing to do with it, neither with Islam nor with intentions that no one doubts was the result of real zeal for Muslims. Our historical tragedy is that patriotism, nationalism, and progressiveness have given the wrong questions posed by our political, economic, and technological backwardness. As for political Islam, its answers have been off topic.
Nothing as much as the experience of governance places a person in a position that can distinguish between reality and delusions, and what are the most pressing needs for society. I will only review some of its titles.
How do we build a democratic system that populists and corrupt people do not easily take over? How do we create a solidarity economy in the shadow of brutal liberalism? How do we combat youth unemployment? How do we create a sustainable machine that cuts corruption and does not spoil its turn? How do we rebuild the Arab system with all our peoples' plurality so that we have a place and a place among nations? How will we face a new system of the Internet, such as that sought by China, Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia, that is, an absolute monitoring system that gives tyranny enormous energies, and in return, will the old regime that gives a handful of American companies the authority to control the minds and hearts (and elections) of entire nations be accepted? What will we do about the imminent danger called artificial intelligence that will put us, as Arabs and Muslims, light years behind the nations that will control this time around the most dangerous thousands of times of oil and money? Where do we begin to address the consequences of the climate disaster that threatens the existence of future generations?
And they talk to you about the caliphate, the Sharia, the relationship of religion and the state, and the differences of the companions, and some of them insist on continuing the battles of the first century of immigration as if they occurred yesterday.
Someone says that is it the responsibility of political Islam to provide solutions for unemployment, the Internet, climate change and the threat of artificial intelligence? Of course. Doesn't he claim that it is the solution? What solution is there, if not to the most serious problems threatening hundreds of millions of Muslims? It might add our axes and is liberalism or democracy the solution? Of course not, liberalism is the biggest problem and democracy only plays the role of allowing all opinions to exist and trying all the proposed solutions.
The constant is that we are facing unprecedented problems, none of which has a serious Islamic solution that is characterized by it and which has salvation on its hands. It is a rule that applies to everyone as no such huge challenges have any Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu solution. Even secular ideologies see it in an accelerating state of aging, which requires it to be completely renewed or bankruptcy as well.
That is why the Islamic movements have estimated in the next decade to face two options, the most bitter.
The first is to stick to the principles, and at that time an irreversible divorce with pluralistic societies, and in the worst cases, the establishment of ISIS or Taliban regimes outside the history system.
The second is to engage in the major political intellectual systems that make the world of today and tomorrow, mainly the expected forms of democracy, progressive, national, and global.
Someone who says yes and will add to her the values of Islam. Mistake, these political intellectual systems are not worthless to expect from political Islam. Add to this that the political laws apply to all political parties, whatever their reference, just as the laws of gravity apply to missiles and gliders. Which means that you will find necessity within Islamic parties what you find in other parties: human beings from all the moral spectrum and partisan practices that extend from the extreme of Machiavellian to the utmost idealism.
It remains that nothing is more important than the morals that the best of wilderness and the first example brought, but its space is not parties that claim to represent it without the rest of the Muslims, but rather an entire society that must strive to achieve it. At that time, it did not matter if the ideas separated us as long as the values brought us together, so that we could move forward together, even a step in achieving the incalculable thing: to be the best nation that was brought out to people.
In conclusion, anyone who imagines that I am talking about the failure of political Islam is mistaken for slander. That is because I am moving inside a vision that believes that we are all cells of the same extremely intelligent, extremely vital collective mind that does not stop experimenting generation after generation in search of solutions to the problems of peoples and humanity, and every successful experience is our success and every failed experiment is our failure all.
We must not be disheartened by our failure or feel the knot of guilt in the face of the failure of what we have tried in terms of national, national, socialist and Islamic solutions. The door to ijtihad is still wide open and the necessary slogan for the stage: reason, not transmission.
All we have to do is not be arrogant, not be discouraged, and recruit the best of us to crystallize a new intellectual system that learn from all the mistakes of the past and its painful experiences and wager more than ever to be or not to be.