Islam Ballots for Allah

By Jill Smolowe

At 1 in the morning, five hours after the polls had closed, Algeria's Interior Minister stepped to the microphone at the government press center in the capital city of Algiers. Speaking in a monotone, Mohammed Salah Mohammedi delivered the startling news: the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front was ahead in Algeria's first multiparty election since the country's independence from France in 1962. Eventually the scope of the victory became plain: the Islamic party took a majority of the municipal and provincial councils, while the ruling National Liberation Front (F.L.N.) captured only one-third of them.

For Algeria, the returns affirmed President Chadli Bendjedid's commitment to the development of a multiparty democracy in a region characterized by dictatorships and feudal monarchies. For his efforts, Bendjedid is being urged by the fundamentalists to dissolve the parliament, which currently seats only members of the ruling party, and hold national elections. "Any attempt to resort to trickery," warns Said Sadi, secretary-general of the Rally for Culture and Democracy, a moderate, secular party that made a poor showing, "will inevitably finish in the streets with helmets against turbans."

That prospect is sending a shiver of fear through the Arab world. The Algerian election represents the first time that Muslim fundamentalists have obtained a majority in a free vote in an Arab country. While some Arab leaders are flirting with reforms, most continue to cloak their disdain for democracy with self-serving warnings about the threat of fundamentalism. Algeria's returns are certain to support convictions that even a little democracy is too risky a gamble.

Arab alarms are reinforced by the building fear of Islamic fundamentalism in Western capitals and Moscow. As cold war tensions disappear, some intellectuals and politicians have begun to argue that the East-West confrontation will be replaced by North-South hostilities, which is to say a rising conflict between the haves and the have-nots. Islam is a religion that has appeal for the deprived. Moreover, although Tehran has yet to successfully export its revolution, the determination of Iran's fundamentalists to spread their radical brand of Islam raises the specter of subversion throughout the region.

Arguments like this, however, often fail to distinguish between the religious fanatics who garner headlines with terrorist attacks and the far more numerous Muslims who seek a greater say in their countries' policies. Anti-Islamic attitudes also tend to obscure the import of the fundamentalists' electoral gains. In Jordan's elections last November and now in Algeria, fundamentalist organizations offered the only strong vehicle for voters to register a protest against government policies.

Many Algerian voters were not endorsing radical fundamentalism when they voted for the Islamic Salvation Front. Rather, they found common cause with the front's president, Abbassi Madani, who called the ruling F.L.N. a "party of failure." Promised Madani: "We guarantee the freedom of all who have ideas on Algeria's future." While such words are encouraging, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini promoted a similar message before he returned to Iran in 1979 from exile in France.

Madani's party has put forward no concrete proposal to deal with Algeria's sagging economy. There is no guarantee that he can control the radicals, like those who took to the streets last week chanting, "Oh, Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!" And his party's aim to establish the Islamic legal code, known as the shari'a, conjures visions of public amputations. Middle- class women are particularly anxious: Madani has proposed that women be paid to stay home and not compete in the tight job market.

The outcome in Algeria is certain to provide a boost for Islamic movements elsewhere. The prospect that haunts is a militant tide that topples unpopular regimes and replaces them with fundamentalist theocracies. Some leaders are beginning to recognize that the most effective safeguard against radical fundamentalism -- or any other dogmatism -- may be to garner the consent of the governed. Among the countries that have taken tentative steps toward such reforms:

TUNISIA. The country most likely to be shaken by the vote in Algeria is neighboring Tunisia, which also held municipal and regional elections last week. Unlike that in Algeria, Tunisia's Islamic movement, Ennahdha, was banned from fielding candidates. That decision no doubt stemmed from the strong fundamentalist showing in legislative elections in April 1989, when Islamic militants, running as independents, took about 12% of the vote. The ruling party of President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali claimed last week that it had garnered 99% of the vote -- hardly a democratic outcome.

Still, since coming to power in 1987, Ben Ali has steered a less anti- Islamic course than did his predecessor. He reopened the Islamic university in Tunis, pardoned some 10,000 political prisoners, loosened press restrictions and encouraged the creation of non-Islamic parties. Ben Ali's gravest challenge may come from students and unemployed youths, who will no doubt be inspired by the fundamentalist success in Algeria.

KUWAIT. Last week's election was called to select a 50-seat National Council that is supposed to develop guidelines for the future of Kuwaiti democracy. Kuwait has been without a parliament since 1986, when the ruling family suspended it. Nonetheless, ex-parliamentarians called for a boycott of the election because they believed the council would be powerless; although government candidates took all 50 seats, only 65% of the electorate voted.

JORDAN. Bloody price riots in April 1989 convinced King Hussein that he needed to engage the public in the kingdom's political and economic problems. Last November he called the first national elections in 22 years. The result was telling: of the 80 parliamentarians elected, 34 were members or supporters of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. Although the moderate Brotherhood was the only organized opposition force to stand in the elections, Arab leaders read the outcome as a confirmation of their worst fears. While Hussein favors continued reforms, he retains absolute control of defense and foreign policy.

EGYPT. Part democrat, part autocrat, President Hosni Mubarak is steering a zigzag course. He has allowed opposition parties to flower, and tolerates perhaps the most feisty press in the Arab world. At the same time, he has invoked emergency arrest-and-detention laws to crack down on radical fundamentalists. Mubarak's party controls the national assembly; the opposition benches are dominated by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had to run under other parties since the Brotherhood is banned.

Mubarak is expected to dissolve the parliament and schedule new elections for the fall. The fairness of those elections may hinge on how Mubarak reads last week's returns in Algeria. He will hardly be alone among the region's leaders if he concludes that the threat of radical fundamentalism is too explosive to risk legitimate elections. Then again, he may take a lesson from Eastern Europe and recognize that countries tend to get the revolutions they deserve.

With reporting by William Dowell/Algiers and Dean Fischer/Cairo