Current democracy assistance is founded on the erasure of Islam. The Arab Spring is depicted as an eruption of the chaotic spirit that can only be salvaged through liberal inclusion
Sayyid 11-(S, director of the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, at the University of South Australia, “Dis-Orienting Clusters of Civility,” Third World Quarterly, 32:5, 981-987)
The ‘third democratic wave’, 10 which … enduring means of regulating violence.
This mode of democratic thought creates a zone of absolute exclusion – democracy in the Middle East is defined by a rejection of Islamism
Tuastad, 2003 (Dag Tuastad, Social Anthropology @ Oslo £ "Neo-Orientalism and the new barbarism thesis: aspects of symbolic violence in the Middle East Conflicts)" Third World Quarterly 24 (4) p. 594-596)
Since it is taken as … one between civilisation and barbarism.
‘Democracy’ has become a floating signifier, wielded in the service of anti-democratic exclusion. Only those who fit the pre-defined concept of democracy are deemed appropriate for assistance
Barkawi, 99 (Tarak Barkawi. Center for International Studies @ Univ. of Cambridge, Marke Laffev. Lecturer in International Politics @ SOAS, '99 \Eurovean Journal of International Relations 5.4, "The Imperial Peace: Democracy, Force and Globalization," p. 419-22)
Discarding the assumptions of embedded … post-Cold War international system.
In particular, targeting democracy assistance at secular actors demarcates a clear line between good and bad Islam – this ensures a political logic of pure assimilation
Kull, 11 (Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, September 5, 2011, http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/05/why-muslims-are-still-mad-at-america/)
America did not back away … seeking to undermine Islam itself.
The supposed openness of liberal democracy relies on a background of total exclusion. Those who fail to assimilate can be depicted as inhuman. This authorizes endless violence in the name of salvation
Rasch, 2003 (William, Henry H. H. Remak Professor of Germanic Studies at India University. “Human Rights as Geopolitics:” Cultural Critique 54 120-147)
Yes, this passage attests to … , that they have a reasonable understanding."12
The binary of repentant Muslims who must be managed and intransigent ones that must be eradicated is the pinnacle of Orientalism, obligating perpetual disciplinary management.
[Islamic groups must make themselves apostates and repent their identity before they can even be admitted to the terrain of political legitimacy]
Teti, 2007 (Andrea, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Aberdeen, “Confessions of a Dangerous Paradigm: Democratisation, Transitology and Orientalism”)
[latent causality [1] completeness & preconditionality … in France, Germany or the UK)
Valbjørn, 4 (Morten Valbjørn, PhD in the Department of Political Science @ Aarhus, ‘4 [Middle East and Palestine: Global Politics and Regional Conflict, “Culture Blind and Culture Blinded: Images of Middle Eastern Conflicts in International Relations,” p. 63-4])
From this perspective, it is … of the Middle East themselves.
The Arab Spring provides a unique opportunity to challenge the neoliberal stranglehold. We must articulate new conceptual language that can admit the democratic content of illberal actors
Sayyid 11-(S, director of the International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, at the University of South Australia, “Dis-Orienting Clusters of Civility,” Third World Quarterly, 32:5, 981-987)
Into what kind of narrative … and legitimacy over specific territory.4
Engaging Islamic alternatives alters the concept and practice of democracy assistance - it’s key to challenge the technocratic model of limited politics
Kurki (Aberystwyth University) 10 (Milja, Democracy and Conceptual Contestability: Reconsidering Conceptions of Democracy in Democracy Promotion, International Studies Review, 12: 362–386, 6 SEP 2010, ScienceDirect)
Reframed democracy promotion with essential … the contestation that currently exists.
The affirmative’s offer of assistance must be understood as a self-reflexive act. Willingness to expand the scope of our political engagement in the Middle East poses real danger. Our discomfort with the politics of radical Islam can only be expressed in a non-colonizing fashion if we begin from the premise of openness. Failure to start with the offer reproduces all the worst effects of liberal exclusion
[Uncritical endorsement of Islam and prefigured liberal exclusions are both wrong. The aff is a goldilocks position – we must preserve the agonistic relationship between commitment to the other and commitment to our own political position]
Mahmood, 5 (Saba Mahmood, associate professor of social cultural anthropology at UC Berkeley, The Politics of Piety, 2005, p. 36-39)
To begin with, the question … first embarked upon the inquiry.
Affirming the legitimacy of radical Islam within the scope of democracy changes our own sense of self. Accepting them as genuine Others and risking their enmity erases the potential for limitless war
Rasch, 5 (William, Henry H. H. Remak Professor of Germanic Studies at India University. 'Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a Structuring Principle', South Atlantic Quarterly, 104:2, 253-262)
But as Max Weber observed … political nightmares of absolute exclusion.
Mouffe 2k-(Chantal, professor of political theory at the University of Westminster, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism,” Reihe Politikwissenschaft / Political Science Series 72, www.ihs.ac.at/publications/pol/pw_72.pdf)
Envisaged from the point of … unavoidable conflicts that it entails.
The USFG should offer democracy assistance for Islamic political organizations in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.
