Consider the History of the Middle East

I strongly believe in a gradual approach
towards democratization in the Middle East--undertaken with a clear
understanding of the religious, cultural, and historic contexts. Too often
these factors are dismissed as irrelevant by people who make simplistic
comparisons between the Middle East and post-WWII Japan, arguing that Japanese
culture did not prevent the country from embracing democracy. While Islam is
not inherently incompatible with democracy, the way in which Islam has evolved
as a political ideology in the Middle East is critically important. Political
Islam arose in the Arab Middle East as a reaction to the colonial period, the
creation of state of Israel, the perceived and actual double-standards of
American foreign policy, as well as from Saudi Arabia’s promotion of Wahhabism.
Turkey, on the other hand, despite being a majority-Muslim country, is a
secular democracy; this has a lot to do with the fact that Islam there has not
been politicized. I would recommend that we not blindly promote democracy in
the Middle East simply because we assume that Islam will become moderate in a
democracy. If the potential for the politicization of Islam is not taken into
consideration, we will only likely see groups such as Hamas come to power in
free elections.