NEWS ANALYSIS : Can Democracy and Fundamentalism Coexist? : Middle East: Countries such as Jordan and Algeria risk Islamic violence in their turn toward democracy.

A new wave of Islamic activism surging through the Middle East in the wake of the Persian Gulf War is forcing moderate governments to confront an essential dilemma of the new Arab democracy: How do you keep the most popular party from winning?

The difficulty in opening traditionally repressive Arab regimes to multi-party democracy was underscored in the minds of many government officials and analysts in the region by widespread fundamentalist violence in Algeria that toppled the government and led last week to the arrests of nearly 1,300 Islamic activists, and a new government in Jordan that was formed without the popularly supported Muslim Brotherhood.

Political pluralism in the Middle East increasingly is coming to mean a voice for anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists, groups that often seek through strict religious practices to limit the very democratic freedoms that have allowed their rise to power.

The crackdown in Algeria occurred after the Islamic party--which won a majority of the seats in last year’s municipal elections just as its spiritual leader was calling democracy “a foreign concept”--demanded immediate presidential elections and launched a divisive national strike.

In Jordan, the new, liberal government pointedly failed to offer key ministries to the fundamentalists, who two months ago issued a ban on fathers attending their daughters’ school sporting events.

The result of the standoff over the fundamentalists’ role has been political chaos in Algeria, where at last count almost 50 people had died in the violence that began in June. There also has been chronic unrest in nearby Tunisia and Egypt. And dissent confronts the new government in Jordan, which is preparing to move forward on peace talks with Israel over the objections of the largest voting bloc in its National Assembly.

“The most significant thing that America in particular wants to achieve is to get Jordan to limit democracy and contain the powers that disagree with it in the Arab world, especially the Islamic groups,” said Ahmed Azaida, head of Jordan’s Islamic movement, which holds the largest bloc of seats in the assembly.

Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has condemned violence by Islamic factions in Algeria but has warned that conflict results from attempts by Arab regimes to slow moves toward democratic reform.

Algeria had been the Arab world’s premier experiment with democratization. It was a one-party socialist state that suddenly opened the floodgates to reform and legalized more than three dozen political parties, among them the only legalized Islamic party in the region. But last month, President Chadli Bendjedid declared a state of siege after widespread fundamentalist strikes.

However, he took careful steps to preserve the country’s move toward pluralism, announcing national and presidential elections later in the year and bringing in a new government that included a broad array of factions in Algeria, including a woman as health minister and a new ministry overseeing human rights.

Still, the situation worsened steadily, with Abassi Madani, head of the Islamic Salvation Front, threatening in a sermon last weekend--when thousands of young fundamentalists filled Algiers’ streets for Friday prayers--to declare a holy war unless the state of siege was lifted.

Iran seemed to be fueling the fire, as its Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati declared that his nation “hopes that Islam reigns in Algeria,” and spiritual leader Ali Khamenei asserted that the Algerians’ proclamations in the streets that “God is great” is “a lesson they have learned from the Muslim people and the revolution of Iran.”

The pronouncements prompted Algerian officials to express their irritation by calling in the Iranian ambassador. And with new clashes breaking out in central Algiers and at least six other cities, Algerian authorities moved in force to round up fundamentalist leaders.

Madani and Islamic front spiritual leader Ali Belhaj were arrested, along with 1,300 others in a sweep that government officials said uncovered caches of ammunition, medicine, military fatigues, Molotov cocktails and gasoline. The materiel was stockpiled in mosques, municipal buildings and local Islamic front headquarters. Madani and Belhaj were charged with involvement in a conspiracy against state security.

The arrests left Algeria in essentially the same position as neighboring Tunisia, which has refused to legalize the country’s burgeoning Islamic movement as a political party. The government there also recently arrested hundreds of fundamentalists, including Islamic movement leaders, for their involvement in an alleged plot to overthrow the government.

Jordan, one of the most Western-oriented countries in the Arab world before the Gulf crisis, has moved deftly to accommodate an Islamic movement that enjoys widespread popular support.

Two years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood won more than a quarter of the seats in Parliament when Jordan held its first national elections since the 1967 Middle East War. King Hussein moved to include the Islamic bloc in the Cabinet during the Gulf crisis, when popular sentiment throughout his kingdom echoed the fundamentalists’ outrage at the regional presence of U.S. troops battling Iraq.

Allowing popular opposition a relatively free voice during the crisis and other such moves are thought to have preserved the king’s public support at a time of potential crisis. Indeed, said Ibrahim Izzedin, Jordan’s recent information minister, “I think we were saved by democracy.” At this point, he said, “the risks will be if the process will stop.”

Jordan recently adopted a new, wide-ranging national charter designed to consolidate political freedom in the country, and, in the words of the king, to “fight the ugly face of democracy.”

“It is a face which appears sometimes when those practicing democracy deviate from the morals and human values in their dealings with other people, or when they concentrate more on their narrow interests than on the general good of the state and society,” Hussein told the opening session of the charter drafting committee in 1989.

The charter underscores the legitimacy of the monarchy and the National Assembly. It emphasizes that while Jordan is an Islamic country, Islam is only “the main source of legislation” and Jordan “derives its legitimacy and its strength from the will of a free people.”

The charter’s legitimization of political parties will allow other elements to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood, which captured 22 seats in the 88-seat assembly by operating as a social organization and which controls perhaps a dozen more independent votes.

Political analysts in Amman said it is unlikely that the brotherhood, even with the largest bloc in the assembly, will be able to muster enough votes to defeat the new, liberal government of Prime Minister Taher Masri. The government may be up for a vote of confidence as early as this week.

The fundamentalists refused to accept Cabinet positions in Masri’s government. Government officials say privately that the dispute stemmed from his refusal to offer them the Ministry of Education, considered a key position from which to develop a national Islamic platform. But Azaida said the Islamic movement was offered several portfolios but stayed out of the new government because its members are convinced it was formed under pressure from the West to launch peace talks with Israel.

“As Islamists, we believe it is not appropriate for Jordan to play any role at this time, because this is a time of weakness and lack of willpower; American hegemony is presiding over the entire area, Israel has never been stronger and, in playing any role, Jordan would not be able to accomplish anything,” he said.

Thus, an uneasy standoff prevails, and if greater democracy was supposed to be one of the byproducts of the Gulf crisis, most political analysts in the region remain unconvinced.

BACKGROUND

The growth of Islamic fundamentalism is evident throughout the Middle East: more and more women are wearing veils; sales of the Koran and other religious literature are on the rise, and the sale and public consumption of liquor are under increasing attack. But while Islam is one of the world’s great religions, with an estimated 925 million adherents, a split that developed shortly after its founding in the 7th Century by the Prophet Mohammed continues to this day: The minority (about 15%) Shiites are more orthodox, marked by strict religious observance, hatred of foreign influence and willingness to use violence to defend the faith. The dominant (85%) Sunnis, at least in Western eyes, are seen to have a more moderate, open approach.