Secular parties in the Arab world—a broad range of political organizations that vary in their political orientation from liberal positions to vaguely socialist programs—are facing a crisis. Caught between regimes that allow little legal space for free political activity on one side and popular Islamist movements that are clearly in the ascendancy throughout the Arab world on the other, they are struggling for influence and relevance, and in some cases even for survival.
Results of recent elections across the region have exposed the weaknesses of secular parties and thus created a new sense of urgency among their leaders and members. They no longer hide—from themselves or others—the depth of the crisis they are facing, but they have no ready solutions. They know that they have stagnant or even dwindling constituencies, whereas the Islamists have growing and increasingly well-organized ones. And most admit that, at present, they do not have a strategy on how to regain the ground they have lost in countries such as Morocco and Egypt or to take advantage of new opportunities in countries such as Yemen and Kuwait. There is often a plaintive tone to the arguments set forth by secular parties in the Arab world. They feel victimized by authoritarian governments that thwart their activities. They feel disadvantaged by the competition of Islamist movements that use mosques for proselytizing and charitable institutions to build constituencies. They feel, in other words, caught in the middle and fighting on two fronts...
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