A Moment for Moderates

If pluralism and radical Islam have a future, stronger voices of tolerance are needed

By Fareed Zakaria Monday, Oct. 01, 2012
    • Moises Saman / Magnum for TIME

    Protesters throw rocks at Egyptian security forces protecting the area near the U.S. embassy in Cairo on Sept. 14.

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    As people watch the crowds and the violence, they must surely be thinking, Why is there so much anger in the Arab world? In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, many serious scholars and journalists, myself included, wrote extensively about the stagnation and repression in Arab countries that had produced bitterness over their failings, anger with the West and a search for a solution in Islam. The U.N.'s Arab Human Development Report documented the region's backwardness. All those conditions--economic dysfunction, illiteracy, female subjugation--still exist. Indeed, some have gotten worse. But some conditions have improved in many Arab societies. There is greater openness, more freedom and some kind of fragile democracy.

    That means that as Muslim societies begin to breathe, we are hearing a diversity of voices. Many are nasty, intolerant and bigoted. But others, like those of Libyans Mohamed el-Magariaf and Mahmoud Jibril, are moderate and modern. It's not clear who will win. The Arab world could witness the rise of illiberal democracies--places where people vote but individual freedoms suffer--or democracy and liberty could slowly reinforce each other.

    And what about the U.S.? Did America cause this turmoil? The argument made by Mitt Romney and several other Republicans--that these protests are a consequence of Obama's policies--utterly misses the point. Muslim anger has been building for decades and stems from deep internal causes. Does anyone think Ronald Reagan's policies caused the death threats against Salman Rushdie? Some long-standing U.S. strategies do play into the grand Muslim narrative--for example, the decades-long support for Arab dictators and monarchs, policies toward the Palestinians and concern about oil supplies. But the frustrations being unleashed in the region today are a response to much deeper forces as the Arab Spring has opened up these cultures and people have discovered their own politics. Egyptians once had the freedom to denounce only the President of the United States. Now they can denounce their own President. This internal power struggle, not U.S. policy or White House rhetoric, is at the heart of the turmoil.

    Every non-Western society is searching for a path to modernity that it can feel is in some way local, authentic and, in that sense, non-Western. It's tough because the West invented modernity. As these societies search for their own paths, the U.S. and the rest of the West can and should help them build modern societies and better the lives of their people. But we should also recognize that above all this is their fight. It really is about them.

    TO READ MORE BY FAREED ZAKARIA, GO TO time.com/zakaria

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