When Westerners watched television images of the popular uprising against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, they winced at the government’s thuggery toward protesters. But some also flinched at the idea of a popular democracy that might give greater voice to Islamic fundamentalism.
In 1979, a grass-roots uprising in Iran led to an undemocratic regime that oppresses women and minorities and destabilizes the region. In 1989, uprisings in Eastern Europe led to the rise of stable democracies. So if Egyptian protesters overcome the government, would this be 1979 or 1989?
No one can predict with certainty. But let me try to offer a dose of reassurance.
After spending last week here on Tahrir Square, talking to protesters — even as President Mubarak’s thugs attacked our perimeter with bricks, Molotov cocktails, machetes and occasional gunfire — I emerge struck by the moderation and tolerance of most protesters.
Maybe my judgment is skewed because pro-Mubarak thugs tried to hunt down journalists, leading some of us to be stabbed, beaten and arrested — and forcing me to abandon hotel rooms and sneak with heart racing around mobs carrying clubs with nails embedded in them. The place I felt safest was Tahrir Square — “free Egypt,” in the protesters’ lexicon — where I could pull out a camera and notebook and ask anybody any question.
I constantly asked women and Coptic Christians whether a democratic Egypt might end up a more oppressive country. They invariably said no — and looked so reproachfully at me for doubting democracy that I sometimes retreated in embarrassment.
“If there is a democracy, we will not allow our rights to be taken away from us,” Sherine, a university professor, told me (I’m not using full names to protect the protesters). Like many, she said that Americans were too obsessed with the possibility of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood gaining power in elections.
“We do not worry about the Muslim Brotherhood,” Sherine said. “They might win 25 percent of the votes, but if they do not perform then they will not get votes the next time.”
Sherine has a point. Partly because of Western anxieties, fundamentalist Muslims have rarely run anything — so instead they lead the way in denouncing the corruption, incompetence and brutality of pro-Western autocrats like Mr. Mubarak. The upshot is that they win respect from many ordinary citizens, but my hunch is that they would lose support if they actually tried to administer anything.
For example, in 1990s Yemen, an Islamic party named Islah became part of a coalition government after doing well in elections. As a result, Islah was put in charge of the Education Ministry. Secular Yemenis and outsiders were aghast that fundamentalists might brainwash children, but the Islamists mostly proved that they were incompetent at governing. In the next election, their support tumbled.
It’s true that one of the most common protester slogans described Mr. Mubarak as a stooge of America, and many Egyptians chafe at what they see as a supine foreign policy. I saw one caricature of Mr. Mubarak with a Star of David on his forehead and, separately, a sign declaring: “Tell him in Hebrew, and then he might get the message!” Yet most people sounded pragmatic, favoring continued peace with Israel while also more outspoken support for Palestinians, especially those suffering in Gaza.
I asked an old friend here in Cairo, a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, whether the Muslim Brotherhood might be bad for peace. She thought for a moment and said: “Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.”
If democracy gains in the Middle East, there will be some demagogues, nationalists and jingoists, just as there are in America and Israel, and they may make diplomacy more complicated. But remember that it’s Mr. Mubarak’s repression, imprisonment and torture that nurtured angry extremists like Ayman al-Zawahri of Al Qaeda, the right-hand man of Osama bin Laden. It would be tragic if we let our anxieties impede our embrace of freedom and democracy in the world’s most populous Arab nation.
I’m so deeply moved by the grit that Egyptians have shown in struggling against the regime — and by the help that some provided me, at great personal risk, in protecting me from thugs dispatched by America’s ally. Let’s show some faith in the democratic ideals for which these Egyptians are risking their lives.
I think of Hamdi, a businessman who looked pained when I asked whether Egyptian democracy might lead to oppression or to upheavals with Israel or the price of oil. “The Middle East is not only for oil,” he reminded me. “We are human beings, exactly like you people.”
“We don’t hate the American people,” he added. “They are pioneers. We want to be like them. Is that a crime?”
The nation’s job woes may be the determining factor in which party controls Congress, but voters across the country will also have the chance to weigh in directly — through ballot initiatives — on some of the other contentious issues that have made cameo turns in the spotlight this year.
In Oklahoma, the ballot will feature a measure to ban state judges from using Islamic law, called Sharia, in court decisions, even though it has never happened. In Washington, voters will address an issue similar to one Republicans successfully kept from coming to a vote in the United States Senate: a proposed tax increase for the rich.
Voters in three states will have the opportunity to take a largely symbolic stand against the federal health care law approved this year by declaring that individuals or business cannot be compelled to buy health insurance. And in Colorado, leaders of all political persuasions are joining to urge voters to reject three tax initiatives they say would drive the state to fiscal calamity.
In total, 155 measures are on the ballots in 36 states, a number roughly unchanged from previous years. While lacking the thematic cohesion of years past — when states around the country simultaneously weighed in on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage or eminent domain — this year’s raft of initiatives, referendums and propositions nonetheless capture the political spirit of the season.
Perennially divisive issues are back: Colorado voters will decide whether to define human life as beginning at fertilization; Oklahoma voters will decide whether to make English the official state language; and, in perhaps the nation’s most closely watched referendum, California voters will decide whether to allow the sale of marijuana for recreational use.
But most of the measures to be decided on Election Day are routine housekeeping: fiscal proposals — like bond requests, property tax exemptions and licensing fees — that capture the constant ideological tug of war of taxing and spending.
“What it feels like is that the state legislatures are really fixated on the routine budgetary stuff, trying to keep their ships afloat,” said John G. Matsusaka, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California. “The ballot propositions seem to have become an outlet for all the other issues that the legislators don’t have the time to deal with right now.”
Government spending is at the heart of the three ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado and Oklahoma — which, along with California, have the longest and most controversial lineup of ballot measures this year — that aim to nullify President Obama’s signature health care legislation. The measures, which are similar to one overwhelmingly approved by voters in Missouri this summer and approved legislatively in five other states, would establish that individuals or business cannot be compelled to buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty. The effect, however, is uncertain, given that the requirement does not become effective until 2014 and is already the subject of lawsuits.
The proposed constitutional ban on judges’ using international law in general — and Sharia law in particular — in Oklahoma has caused local Muslim leaders to complain that the state legislators behind the proposal were “riding a wave” of anti-Islamic sentiment across the nation, citing the controversy over burning Korans and protest over mosques elsewhere. “Sharia law is not a threat to anyone, I don’t care where you live,“ said Saad Mohammed, a director at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City. “Bigotry and prejudice is driving this.”
State Representative Rex Duncan, who is chairman of the state judiciary panel and the lead sponsor of the measure, said he knew of no judge ever citing Sharia law in a ruling in Oklahoma and could point to only one case in the country where the law had been cited. (In that case, a Family Court judge in New Jersey cited a man’s Islamic faith in denying a restraining order to a woman who said she had been raped by her husband. The ruling was overturned by a higher court.) But Mr. Duncan said the measure was “a pre-emptive strike.” Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, has called for a similar federal law, and Mr. Duncan said he had received inquiries from legislators in a dozen other states who expressed interest in adopting a similar ban.
The political rhetoric has grown particularly heated in Colorado, where Republican and Democratic politicians as well as labor and business groups have united to warn that the passage of three tax-cutting measures — dubbed the “ugly three” by opponents — would lead to such fiscal disaster that governing the state would be “nearly impossible.” They cite official state analysis that concluded that the budget would be cut by a quarter and the state would also be prohibited from taking on debt, preventing large capital projects.
“I’ve never seen a fiscal impact comparable to what would happen if all three of these were to pass,“ said Jennie D. Bowser, who studies ballot initiatives for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The Washington initiative would create the state’s first income tax, exclusively on individuals who earn more than $200,000 — the same figure favored by President Obama, who has proposed extending tax cuts for individuals making less than that amount but allowing taxes to rise for those making more. (The tax rate would be 5 percent and increase to 9 percent for those making more than $500,000.)
The debate follows the national framing. Supporters say that the tax is needed to continue paying for services (it would be devoted to education and health care) and would affect only a tiny fraction of people while allowing taxes to be cut for everybody else. Critics say the increase would discourage business investment and prolong the recession, questioning whether politicians can be trusted with greater access to taxpayer money.
As with all state initiatives, the back and forth features a local flavor. The pro-tax effort is being led by Bill Gates Sr. and endorsed by his son, the Microsoft founder; the anti-tax effort is being supported by the current head of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer.
