Election of Hamas should serve as a cautionary tale to the West's efforts to democratize the Middle East. 
 

Last month, Palestinians went to the polls and gave Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya—better known as Hamas—42.9 percent of the popular vote for parliament, a decisive majority over the incumbent Fatah party.

Hamas is the group that has claimed responsibility for suicide attacks on Israeli civilians during the Israeli/Palestinian intifada, and, in its charter, refuses to recognize Israel as a state. To Hamas, the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and the rest of the present-day state of Israel are part of an Islamic waqf, land that cannot under any circumstances be surrendered to non-Muslims.

Further, Hamas is officially dedicated to wiping out any secular Muslim state that might arise in the territory it claims for itself. Only an Islamic Republic is acceptable to the group, whose acronym corresponds to the Arabic word for fanaticism.

As the United States works to plant the seeds of democracy in Iraq, the results of the Palestinian election should serve as a cautionary tale—what good is democracy when the people desire tyrants and fanatics?

It’s clear, however, that there are visceral reasons Palestinians would want Hamas brought into their official leadership. Many may feel, for instance, that the Fatah party they are replacing is riddled with corruption and inefficiency. Further, 80 percent of Hamas’ budget is reportedly devoted to public welfare, such as the construction of schools and hospitals.

The other 20 percent, however, is problematic. Any photograph one might find of Hamas members invariably contains faces covered in black or red-checkered cloth, and few, if any, images fail to contain at least one weapon—most commonly Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. By far the most disturbing of these pictures are of children: infants dressed in military fatigues, their tiny hands wrapped around the shoulder straps of M-16 rifles, and phony suicide-bomb belts strapped around their little chests. Often, these children wear the distinctive green Hamas headband (usually inscribed with “The Islamic Jihad Movement”) or are surrounded by bandoliers of bullets.

The reaction from the rest of the world—including Israel’s government—has been muted. Most have said that if Hamas is willing to recognize Israel’s status and right to exist as a state, then negotiations and diplomacy will be possible. Those holding out hope that this will happen—in deed as well as in word—will most likely be disappointed. The destruction of Israel is a central tenet of Hamas’ founding document, and fanatics are not normally prone to straying from core beliefs.

And those beliefs are being shouted from the top seat of the government of Iran as of late. Newly-elected Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called publicly for the wholesale destruction of Israel, and claimed that the Nazi holocaust is nothing more than a “myth” most likely cooked up by treacherous European Jews in order to take land away from the Believers.

Ever the underdog, Hamas—like most grassroots Islamic fundamentalist movements—has no scruples as to who it kills. A member who wanders into a crowded nightclub in Tel Aviv and blows up the entire clientele (along with himself) is hailed as a “martyr.” This is a cause for celebration.

Should the same man be killed during a conflict with the Israeli military, he is again hailed as a martyr, but in this case, it would be cause for revenge—as well as governmental remuneration of the bomber’s family—which can be exacted from any citizen of the hated nation of Israel, man, woman, or child. Preferably all three.

There is depression among world diplomats over the election of Hamas to power in the Palestinian parliament, since it probably  represents a major setback on the road to a peaceful two-state solution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, but given the history and facts behind the struggle, such hope was perhaps misplaced from the beginning. Not only is Hamas in favor of wiping Israel off the map, but so too are the Palestinian people and, as voiced by Ahmadinejad, the majority of the Islamic world.

The greatest problem in this situation, of course, is the pointed refusal of the western world to address the problem as one of religion, which it clearly is. Hamas believes it is, the Palestinian Liberation Front believed it was, Iran believes it is, and the Iraqi insurgency believes it is. The Saud clerics who are busily exporting hateful extremism to the poor countries of the Muslim world believe it is. However, western cultures have hamstrung themselves into a neo-liberal position of expressing tolerance even for the most reprehensible of beliefs by calling it “culture.” No xenophobia, sexism, absolutism, or authoritarianism is too vile or depraved—only “different.”

The fact is that tolerance has become crippling, and has blinded us to very objective comparisons between western values and any other culture. Some cultures are, unfortunately, worse than others. Oppression is bad. Stifling free speech is bad. Autocratic policies of murder and torture are bad. But if someone says those things in a non-Romance language, western liberals will fall over themselves to support his right to enact those fearsome ideas into policy under the banner of “divergent culture.”

When Newsweek ran a story last year about a copy of the Koran being “flushed down a toilet” in front of a Muslim detainee in Guantanamo Bay, riots ensued in the Muslim world. Eight people were killed in the resulting violence. Riots continued, even after Newsweek printed a retraction saying the source for the article had retracted his statement about the Koran.

Blame was immediately leveled at Newsweek and on the U.S. military’s detainment policies. But few asked why a story about a slight desecration of a copy of a holy book could incense a people to the point of manslaughter.

When Hamas’ policies go into effect and a new intifada begins in Israel, who will be blamed? Voting practices? The press? Israeli military policy toward immigration and security?

Chances are, blame will not be placed where it clearly belongs: at the feet of fundamentalist Islamic culture. 

UPDATE:  By now it's clear that the violence that's erupted in the Middle East over the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons in a Danish newspaper is pure political grandstanding and opportunism on the part of several Arab leaders, Hamas included. Palestinians set fire to the Danish Embassy and have taken to the streets, calling for the heads of those responsible for the publication of the cartoon caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. That the cartoons appeared four months ago in a newspaper published in a country few, if any, of the rioters had ever even visited was immaterial - the point was that it presented an opportunity for the newly-elected Hamas to express its displeasure with the West's tentativeness to continue to supply international money to its "public works" programs. In the eyes of Hamas and other extremists, there can be no compromises.