When Musharraf was in power, the West had it’s major evil in Pakistan: it’s not a democracy. Now having a, in the West’s eyes, democratic government in place we are back to dealing with the country through the Army and Secret Service rather than the elected representatives. What has the West done for a democratic Pakistan? Cheered at a brick-throwing lawyers movement? Shoved in a government that so far has shown little will to bring in the original constitution?

On the other side of the border, the idea of discussions with the Taliban has recently become popular again. Without any experience in dealing with Islamist groups in when it comes to state-running rather than state-wretching it looks like nobody really has a clue where to start.

Shadi Hamis argues in his papers for a Western appreciation of Islamist parties in the Miidle East and how the US and EU should not fear to approach those and step away from continued support, especially of the repressive regimes.

Perhaps a bigger obstacle to engagement is the mistrust that Islamists evince toward America and Europe, a result of the sometimes striking gap between Western pro-democracy rhetoric and policies that support repressive regimes. For example, France (as well as most European countries) voiced support for Algerian democratization in the late 1980s, but after the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a legal opposition party, swept the first round of parliamentary elections in 1991, France was the first nation to recognize the new military-led government.11 Similarly, the United States routinely expresses “concern” about human rights abuses in a variety of countries, while continuing to provide billions of dollars in economic and military support to these same regimes. As a result, many in the Middle East question how the U.S. can be interested in Middle East democracy if its policies are actively preventing it. from the paper at POMED.

By choosing to focus specifically on the motivations of al Qaeda jihadists, Freeman neglects the Muslim population at large. It is true that among most doctrinaire Salafists, democracy is seen as an intrusion by man into God’s sacred domain.3 But neither these Salafists, nor al Qaeda, are representative of Islamists, let alone the broader Muslim community. from Stanford University Policy Review.

On Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood he writes in the Democarcy Journal:

Just as neoconservatives got a lot wrong, progressives, in reaction, have learned some of the wrong lessons for the wrong reasons. Strong democracy rhetoric is not necessarily counterproductive, and there is little reason to think the Middle East is immune to democratic interventions. Pragmatism, the new and rather hollow progressive catch-all term, is not a substitute for well-considered policy. Nor should it obscure deeply held principles and ideals, principles that, sadly, we have so often failed to uphold in the Middle East.

For the case of Pakistan, while the local government should look for it’s roots in the visions of his founding father Jinnah who proclaimed “If we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor… you are free- you are free to go to your temples mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state… in due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to Muslims- not in a religious sense for that is the personal faith of an individual- but in a political sense as citizens of one state”. On the other side the Western governments should be prepared to acknowledge that Islamist parties, when supported by a democatic movement can be taken serious as well.