Islamists’ Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya

Islamists’ Growing Sway Raises Questions for Libya






TRIPOLI, Libya — In the emerging post-Qaddafi Libya, the most influential politician may well be Ali Sallabi,
who has no formal title but commands broad respect as an Islamic
scholar and populist orator who was instrumental in leading the mass
uprising.
The most powerful military leader is now Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of a hard-line group once believed to be aligned with Al Qaeda.
The growing influence of Islamists in Libya raises hard questions about
the ultimate character of the government and society that will rise in
place of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s autocracy. The United States and
Libya’s new leaders say the Islamists, a well-organized group in a
mostly moderate country, are sending signals that they are dedicated to
democratic pluralism. They say there is no reason to doubt the
Islamists’ sincerity.
But as in Egypt and Tunisia, the latest upheaval of the Arab Spring
deposed a dictator who had suppressed hard-core Islamists, and there are
some worrisome signs about what kind of government will follow. It is
far from clear where Libya will end up on a spectrum of possibilities
that range from the Turkish model of democratic pluralism to the muddle
of Egypt to, in the worst case, the theocracy of Shiite Iran or Sunni
models like the Taliban or even Al Qaeda.
Islamist militias in Libya receive weapons and financing directly from
foreign benefactors like Qatar; a Muslim Brotherhood figure, Abel
al-Rajazk Abu Hajar, leads the Tripoli Municipal Governing Council,
where Islamists are reportedly in the majority; in eastern Libya, there
has been no resolution of the assassination in July of the leader of the rebel military, Gen. Abdul Fattah Younes, suspected by some to be the work of Islamists.
Mr. Belhaj has become so much an insider lately that he is seeking to unseat Mahmoud Jibril,
the American-trained economist who is the nominal prime minister of the
interim government, after Mr. Jibril obliquely criticized the
Islamists.
For an uprising that presented a liberal, Westernized face to the world,
the growing sway of Islamists — activists with fundamentalist Islamic
views, who want a society governed by Islamic principles — is being
followed closely by the United States and its NATO allies.
“I think it’s something that everybody is watching,” said Jeffrey D. Feltman,
assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, visiting here on
Wednesday. “First of all the Libyan people themselves are talking about
this.” The highest-ranking American official to visit Libya since
Colonel Qaddafi’s fall, Mr. Feltman was optimistic that Libya would take
a moderate path.
“Based on our discussions with Libyans so far,” he said, “we aren’t
concerned that one group is going to be able to dominate the aftermath
of what has been a shared struggle by the Libyan people.”
Mr. Sallabi, in an interview, made it clear that he and his followers
wanted to build a political party based on Islamic principles that would
come to power through democratic elections. But if the party failed to
attract widespread support, he said, so be it.
“It is the people’s revolution, and all the people are Muslims,
Islamists,” Mr. Sallabi said. Secularists “are our brothers and they are
Libyans.”
“They have the right to offer their proposals and programs,” he said,
“and if the Libyan people choose them I have no problem. We believe in
democracy and the peaceful exchange of power.”
Many Libyans say they are not worried. “The Islamists are organized so
they seem more influential than their real weight,” said Usama Endar, a
management consultant who was among the wealthy Tripolitans who helped
finance the revolution. “They don’t have wide support, and when the dust
settles, only those with large-scale appeal, without the tunnel vision
of the Islamists, will win.”
Yet an anti-Islamist, anti-Sallabi rally in Martyrs’ Square on Wednesday drew only a few dozen demonstrators.
Many, like Aref Nayed, coordinator of the Transitional National
Council’s stabilization team and a prominent religious scholar, say that
the revolution had proved that Libyans would not accept anything but a
democratic society, and that the Islamists would have to adapt to that.

“There will be attempts by people to take over, but none of them will
succeed because the young people will go out on the streets and bring
them down,” Mr. Nayed said.

Mr. Ali Jaloudi I thank you for this nice topic

And wait for the new distinctive

I respect you a lot