Islamist radicalisation the challenge for euro-mediterranean relations

150 |
 
K
RISTINA 
K
AUSCH
 
 
raises questions about the knowledge, political intentions and objectives 
underlying member states’ policies and substantially exacerbates a rational 
European debate about engagement. 
Missing a window of opportunity? Moderate Islamists in the MENA will 
continue to be dangerously isolated and policies supporting democracy 
will carry on lacking credibility as long as European governments are not 
willing to stand up to their authoritarian MENA counterparts. If anything, 
peace and democratisation by engagement and integration has been a 
proven strength of EU foreign policy. It is very hard to understand why the 
EU fails to apply this strength in its relations with Islamist movements, 
whose peaceful, democratic development is so crucial to the future of both 
the EU and the MENA.  
Contributing to re-radicalisation? European policies have been 
advocating the integration of Islamist movements into the political process 
as a means of moderation and de-radicalisation. But to the degree that the 
political participation of Muslim democrats in set authoritarian frameworks 
does not pay off, the perceived uselessness of political contestation is likely 
to empower radical currents that advocate a reversal of the moderation of 
positions and strategies. Processes of re-radicalisation, it is widely argued, 
have already begun. The EU must shift its policy towards engaging with, 
encouraging and empowering moderate Islamists to prevent an 
undermining and reversal of the processes of moderation and political 
integration that it has itself  been  encouraging.  If  the  EU  fails  to  make  the 
shift towards the inclusion of all relevant actors, it will only reinforce the 
impression that its policies towards the MENA are actually about 
containing both Islamism and political change. 

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151 
 
 
8.
 
H
OW CAN 
E
UROPE ENGAGE WITH 
I
SLAMIST MOVEMENTS
? 
N
ONA 
M
IKHELIDZE AND 
N
ATHALIE 
T
OCCI
 
ince the late 1980s and particularly since the 9/11 attacks in New York 
and Washington, research on political Islam has been much in vogue 
in Europe and the United States. Whether openly stated or 
inadvertently assumed, the vast majority of Western approaches to political 
Islam are tainted by a distinctly culturalist undertone, focusing on the 
religious rather than political underpinnings of Islamist movements.
1
 This 
has meant that political Islam is often viewed as a different, if not unique, 
phenomenon, whose uniqueness defies conventional political analysis and 
precludes meaningful comparative analysis with other regions in the 
world. It has also meant that the rare Western attempts to engage with 
political Islam often start with and remain trapped in an attempt to test the 
‘democratic credentials’ of Islamist movements. By focusing on what 
Islamists think about democracy, many attempts at engagement ignore the 
fact that Islamists operate in authoritarian contexts and are thus unlikely to 
have concrete and tested views on democratic governance. They also pay 
insufficient attention to other aspects of political, economic and societal life 
on which Islamists tend to have more developed views.  
                                                      
1
 For an exposition of this critique, see E. Hurd, “Political Islam and Foreign Policy 
in Europe and the United States”, Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2007, pp. 
345-367. There are of course several important exceptions to a culturalist approach 
to the study of political Islam. For a recent publication following a different 
approach, see for example M. Ayoob, The Many Faces of Political Islam, Ann Arbor, 
MI: University of Michigan Press, 2007.  
S 

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152 | N
ONA 
M
IKHELIDZE 
&
 
N
ATHALIE 
T
OCCI
 
 
Based upon these premises, this chapter tackles two principal 
questions: First, why engage with Islamist movements? And second, how 
engage with them? In what follows we are concerned exclusively with 
mass Islamist parties, which are primarily national in character, support 
base and objectives, and which are fundamentally detached and distinct 
from global jihadist movements.
2
 To answer these questions, this chapter 
first sets out the objectives that Western engagement with Islamist actors 
could realistically pursue, explaining how the formulation of these 
objectives hinges upon a ‘political’ rather than ‘religious’ reading of 
Islamist movements. Second and precisely because we do not consider 
political Islam a unique phenomenon, we turn to Europe to seek lessons 
and best practices of engagement with national opposition movements in 
other authoritarian contexts. In particular, we analyse American and 
European methods and experiences of engagement with opposition actors 
in Franco’s Spain, Kuchma’s Ukraine and Shevardnadze’s Georgia, before 
applying, mutatis mutandis, these lessons to the case of Western engagement 
with political Islam. 
In tackling these questions, the caveat is the assumption that the West 
actually desires and promotes democratisation of the authoritarian states of 
the Middle East. The desire for democratisation necessarily cohabits, at 
times uneasily, with other foreign policy objectives, such as the pursuit of 
stability, energy security, migration management or the pro-Western 
orientation of strategic Middle Eastern countries. Democratisation and the 
regime changes that would come with it would shake the short- to 
medium-term stability of the region and may hinder the accomplishment of 
strategic objectives in the realms of energy, security and migration. It may 
also lead to a reversal in the pro-Western orientation of many states in the 
region, in view of the antagonising attitudes held by Islamist movements 
towards the West. Especially the latter problem did not apply to the cases 
of the Spanish socialists or Ukrainian and Georgian liberals, all of whom 
were committed to the West. In other words, lessons for engagement with 
Islamist actors must be understood in a context in which other and 
sometimes competing goals exist and often prevail. And this was not 
                                                      
2
 For an interesting discussion of the fundamental difference between the two 
phenomena, see L. Guazzone, “The Success of Islamist Parties Works against Al-
Qaida”, International Spectator, Vol. XLI, No. 2, 2006, pp. 95-100. 

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