Islam, Democracy, and Constitutional Liberalism
It is always the same splendid setting, and the same sad story. A senior U.S. diplomat enters one of the grand presidential palaces in Heliopolis, the neighborhood of Cairo from which President Hosni Mubarak rules over Egypt. He walks through halls of marble, through rooms filled with gilded furni ture?all a bad imitation of imperial French style that has been jokingly called "Louis Farouk" (after the last king of Egypt). Passing layers of security guards, he arrives at a formal drawing room where he is received with great courtesy by the Egyptian president. The two talk amiably about U.S.-Egyptian relations, regional affairs, and the state of the peace process between Israel and the Pales tinians. Then the American gently raises the issue of human rights and suggests that Egypt's government might ease up on political dissent, allow more press freedoms, and stop jailing intellectuals. Mubarak tenses up and snaps, "If I were to do what you ask, Islamic fundamentalists will take over Egypt. Is that what you want?" The conversation moves back to the latest twist in the peace process. Over the years, Americans and Arabs have had many such exchanges. When President Clinton urged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to agree to the Camp David peace plan that had been negotiated in July 2001, Arafat report edly responded with words to this effect: "If I do what you want, Hamas will be in power tomorrow." The Saudi monarchy's most articulate spokesman, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, often reminds American officials that if they press his gov ernment too hard, the likely alternative to the regime is not Jeffersonian de mocracy but a Taliban-style theocracy.