Recently I agreed to become a regular contributor to washingtonpost.com's provocative blog on religion and politics: 'On Faith'. My mission: to elucidate the intricate mysteries of Islamist politics. Something about my reputation for scholarly honesty and objectivity—I was told—bolstered by my work with Arab democratic activists, suggested that I could make a compelling addition to the On Faith team! Who was I to argue?
And so like the ponderous academic that I am, I pondered the subjects worth tackling, such as: 'Shariah (Islamic law) in Theory and Practice', 'What Makes Iran's Ahmadinejad Tick?' (excuse the expression!), 'The Ins and Outs of Islamist and Secular Parties in Pakistan'. What an opportunity!
But then I thought: 'Wait a minute! Won't Post readers wonder who is this guy, and why should we care what he has to say?' Even worse, they might ask: "Why should we trust Dan Brumberg?"
Not bad questions, in fact. And not easily answered by the short bio posted a click away from my photo. And so I am NOT going to begin with a standard analytical piece. Instead, I am going to tell you something about where I have been, what I have said and written, and what I have felt. I am going to spill my intellectual and emotional guts a little, so that your interest will be tweaked—so that you will come back to see why a government professor with a distinctly non-Islamic name might just have the impulse, the skills and the will to transcend the usual debates, polarities and slogans that surround (and confound) the issue of Islamist politics.
For starters, I lead a double professional life. A Georgetown University Government Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Democracy and Governance Studies program, I have worked hard to be the objective, studious scholar rather than the preacher, the activist or the advocate. Like others of my generation and like many of the new generation of political scientists who study the Middle East—I come to this region from the perspective of a comparativist, that is, a scholar whose scope of analysis reaches far beyond the supposedly unique features of Islam or its political manifestation in contemporary Islamism.
Rather, I view Islamist politics through a wider conceptual angle—the angle of Third World political change writ large. Go to my book on Ayatollah Khomeini's legacy, or my writings on authoritarianism in the Middle East, and you will see that I have no patience for distracting dogmatic disputes about whether Islamists are good or bad, or whether my or anyone's scholarship will or will not promote democracy, Muslim-Western understanding, or world peace. Academia is not a Miss World beauty contest.
But then again, I am Acting Director of the United States Institute of Peace's Muslim World Initiative, where I must think, write and speak with the head and the heart of an advocate and an activist. This doesn't mean giving up the scholarly side. But it does require a tricky balancing act whereby I point whatever scholarly instinct and skills I have towards advancing such lofty goals such as conflict resolution, peace processes and the like.
Indeed, I've been doing peacenik work for decades—as an early advisor to a host of democracy promotion outfits such as the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Democratic Institute, and as a partner with, or advisor to, democracy advocates in the Middle East and wider Islamic world. I have served as an international election observer in Palestine and Indonesia, and I have attended—often helped organize—conferences on democracy or human rights in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Indonesia and Iran. Yes indeed, in Tehran I told an audience of clerics and lay intellectuals that former President Khatami's call for a dialogue of civilizations would mean nothing until that very dialogue began in Iran itself. Chutzpah!
I could tell you much more about Dan Brumberg—a native Washingtonian (I am talking about the city here folks, not Manassas!) who dabbled with some momentary success—in stand-up political satire while a graduate student at the University of Chicago, the son of a prominent Polish-Jewish intellectual and specialist on Eastern Europe who, sadly—very sadly—just passed away. A speaker of Arabic, French and a somewhat outdated Hebrew who has lived and studied in Egypt and Israel, I am happy to say that my work commands the respect—and sometimes the resentment—of both Arab and Jews.
So, I am going to mobilize the two Brumbergs—scholar and activist—to give our readers a take on Islamist politics that is both intensely personal and deeply dispassionate. That is not an easy balancing act. But in a city as polarized as Washington, and as we move towards a national election that has put the issue of U.S.-Muslim relations at the center of our foreign policy debates, this kind of synthesis is worth a try.
Daniel Brumberg is an associate professor of government and director of democracy and governance studies at Georgetown University. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy. His work focuses on political, social and economic change in the Middle East and wider Muslim World.
