Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Don't Be Shy About Banning Islamist Political Parties

It would not be anti-democratic to keep the Moslem Brotherhood out of Egypt's next election.

Unless you want a Hamas-style, one-man, one-vote, one time" election as in Gaza, we should not be afraid of having the Egyptian authorities ban the Moslem Brotherhood. I wanted anti-democrats banned from the beginning of the anti-Mubarak era and still do as I've written here and here.

If it makes you feel better, Bangladesh--a Moslem country without a history of Islamist thuggery--bans Islamist thugs from their elections:

On a Public Interest Litigation petition filed in January 2009 by a Sufi group which practices Islamic mysticism, the High Court ruled recently that the Jamaat’s charter was in violation of the country’s Constitution and declared this Islamist organisation as illegal. The ruling was confirmed by the Bangladesh Supreme Court.

This creates a number of complex impacts on the election campaign in the run-up to the General Elections. The first impact would be that the Jamaat cannot field candidates for the General Election though the order does not ban political activity of the Jamaat.

Islamists exist in Bangladesh. So far they have not taken power. Hopefully they never will. And making sure that the first election an Islamist party wins isn't the last electon in a country is important. The safest way is to keep an Islamist party from running in the first place.