“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.” - Machiavelli

But what happens when one is neither feared nor loved? The “New Middle East” is already here. It has already been born. It is not a distant reality that exists in the mode of a “to come” that never really arrives. It is already now, of the present moment. And the West is at war with it. Its allies in the region are trembling. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan -- among the most autocratic regimes in the region -- are facing a new, democratic consensus, a new sort of politics:

“The regular man on the street is beginning to connect everything together,” said [Kamal] Khalil, the director of the Center for Socialist Studies in Cairo. “The regime impairing his livelihood is the same regime that is oppressing his freedom and the same regime that is colluding with Zionism and American hegemony.” -New York Times, 8/6/06

This new politics spares neither the imperial practices of the West, of which Israel is but a satellite, nor the autocratic regimes that rule directly over them (mistakenly called “moderate” in the West due to their willingness to sign peace treaties with Israel). This is something new:

For decades, the Arab-Israeli conflict provided presidents, kings, emirs and dictators of the region with a safety valve for public frustration. Middle Eastern leaders were all too willing to allow their people to rant against Israel and champion the Palestinian cause, rather than focus on domestic politics or economic concerns. That valve no longer appears to be working in Egypt. The anger against Israel remains, but now is melding with fury and despair, over the many domestic problems for which Egyptians blame their own government. The war has encouraged many Egyptians to focus their anger inward, rather than outward, according to political analysts, political advocates and ordinary people on the street. -New York Times, 8/6/06

The “New Middle East” is being born out of a deep frustration with Pax Americana; the Arab regimes are now seen as the instruments, the local administrators, of Empire. This politics foreshadows their downfall.

The West does not own democracy. Neither is it in a position to decide what does and does not constitute democracy. In the Middle East, democracy means Hamas, it means Hizballah. It does not mean a neo-liberal, secular Iraq with no ties to Iran and a peace treaty with Israel.

The U.S. is not simply “going about it the wrong way” -- as if there were a “right way” to go about “regime change.” It is not a question of logistics. In fact, the U.S. not only enforces democracy poorly, it is actively opposed to it. The point is that American realpolitik demands the annihilation of the Islamic democratic impulse. Pax Americana and Zionism have entered into an unholy alliance with the Arab autocracies, whose legitimacy we now see evaporating before our very eyes. It will not be long before these regimes, too, will begin to crumble. The question is: who will be there when the dust settles? Who will be there to construct a new order?

The legacy of Arab nationalism is experiencing its final crisis; it has failed to live up to its historic promise, the liberation of the “Arab nation” from the forces of Imperialism and Zionism. In fact, it is now seen as colluding with the very forces it once valiantly resisted. A new promise is on the horizon, the promise of Islam, which has managed to continue the struggle, despite its various weaknesses, against U.S. and Israeli hegemony. Let us not forget that Israel would be the first to suffer from the success of any democratic project in the Middle East (the Hamas victory being an early indication of this). The common claim that Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East” is belied by the fact that, strategically speaking, Israel cannot afford to lose Egypt and Jordan (despite the autocratic nature of these regimes) due to their willingness to sign peace treaties and recognize Israel’s “right to exist.”

A Challenge to Western Power

The question of whether or not Israel has been deliberately targeting civilian populations can be easily answered by referring to statements made by Israeli officials during the early days of the war: On July 12, Israel’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told Israel’s Channel 10, “If the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years.”

Is it not true that punishing the Shi’a would put greater pressure on Hizballah? The folly of good intentions cannot conceal the fact that Israel has deliberately targeted civilians as part of an overall military strategy of collective punishment and intimidation. The point is that the Shi’a must pay for their support of Hizballah, they must be made aware that working with Hizballah is a costly venture, not to be taken lightly. Israel’s target is the radical Islamic consciousness itself.

But Israel has failed to accomplish its political objectives. Hizballah has not been dismantled, nor has its popularity waned. To the contrary, Hizballah is now enjoying domestic and regional popularity to a larger degree than ever before. Israel has not secured the return of its captured soldiers; Hizballah proved capable of fighting a fierce guerilla war in the south, restricting and pushing back Israeli military positions, securing land, simultaneously prohibiting Israeli attempts to re-occupy the south. Despite Israel’s inflated military claims that they destroyed large portions of Hizballah’s military arsenal, Hizballah continued to strike inside northern Israel on a daily basis throughout the conflict.

The U.S. and Israel now see Hizballah as a genuine obstacle to their regional hegemony, especially in regards to their ability to make war with Iran. Iran cannot be so easily attacked so long as Hizballah remains capable of striking Tel Aviv.

Israel’s destruction of Lebanon has not only damaged American-Israeli interests in the region, it has helped to inaugurate what may be considered the second phase of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. The Iranian regional network of influence -- stretching from Baghdad to Gaza to Beirut to Damascus -- has been consolidated and regionally strengthened. The national and ideological boundaries of the traditional, Arab state arrangement have been put into question by an Islamic polity that transcends fidelity to the nation. Increased American political pressure on Iran will now involve a substantial amount of risk.

When one is neither feared nor loved, there remains only violence. Today, Israel and the U.S. find themselves in precisely such a position. Being neither feared nor loved, they resort to strategies of overwhelming military force in the hope that they may attain militarily what they have failed to achieve politically. The dust, for the time being, has settled. It seems, however, that the U.S. and Israel have not been able to secure a solid foothold in the rubble.

Islam and the Left

Leftists (and in this they find themselves in agreement with the Right) tend to understand Islamism as a sort of regression, a political language incapable of adequately addressing the political aspirations of the global dispossessed. Strange, then, that it is those very same dispossessed who seem to find in Islamism a unique expression of their political desires and aspirations. Islamism must be understood here not merely as “ideology” or “discourse” or “belief system” -- these categories are too abstract and removed from the concrete, lived experience of Islam; nor is it simply a matter of ghostly clerics who tranquilize “the people” into a passive, impotent stupor. Islam is becoming the element of social life itself; it is essentially a way of life, a way of existing in the world.

Westerners tend to understand Islamism as either a variant of fascism (“Islamic fascism”), fundamentalism, or patriarchy, etc. These reductive labels stereotype Islamism and limit our ability to understand Islamic movements. The use of the term “Islamic fascism” in particular speaks to the general inability of American and European intellectuals, journalists, and academics to understand Islam outside of the prism provided by European history. “Fundamentalism” repeats a similar error, and fails to see the highly experimental, innovative core of Islamic political movements (see Bobby Sayyid’s excellent study, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Rise of Islamism). With regard to the patriarchal structure of many Islamic movements, one needs to keep in mind that this is not unique to Islamic movements and, moreover, recognize that Islamism is not something fixed; there is no “Islamic code” that necessitates the existence of patriarchy. In fact, these matters can only attain their true significance within Islam itself; Islam will be the very site where such internal tensions can be negotiated (see Susan Buck-Morss’s Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left).

Islam, as a way of life, and as a force of political mobilization, has proven itself resolute. The Left cannot afford to continue to dismiss this phenomenon. The Left is challenged to forge a new language through which it can critically engage with Islam.

Tarek R. Dika is a former member of the Critical Moment editorial collective. He is a student of philosophy and theology at the Johns Hopkins Humanities Center in Baltimore, MD. He has recently returned to the U.S. after spending six months in Lebanon.