The Egyptian writer ‘Ala Al-Aswany with Amara Lakhous

Looking at the recent electoral victory of Hamas and Muslim brothers in Egypt, there are those who are of the opinion that organising free, legitimate elections means handing over power to fundamentalists. What do you think?
There is the question of principals: the winner of correct elections has the legitimate support to govern. If we truly believe in democracy we must the people’s choice irrespective of the people indicated, be they communists or Islamic integrationalists or Satanists. This said, we must tackle a serious problem regarding religious and ideological extremism in the Arab world. At this point we should consider this extremism as a symptom and not as an illness. I am a dentist by profession, and by studying medicine I have learned that it is important to distinguish between the symptoms and the illness. We cannot cure a patient effectively if we only settle for the symptoms. Today our illness is tyranny while the symptoms are social injustice, poverty, corruption, and religious and ideological extremism. Therefore, if we want to crush extremism, we must cure tyranny with only one medicine called democracy.

Since September 11th 2001 the debate on the democratisation of the Arab world is still open. How does the argument of ‘exporting democracy’ value this?
First of all, democracy is a right and a value for all of humanity. Therefore, I find aberrant the theory which says some peoples deserve democracy and others do not. Furthermore, we must not forget that the United States have supported the worst dictatorships both in the Arab world and in Latin America. Still today, there are right-wing Western governments which are willing to support dictatorial regimes to protect their own interests and the benefits of multinationals.

The democratisation is also a priority on the internal Arabic agenda. Where do you need to start from: abolition of media censorship, facilitation of political parties, or teaching about democracy in schools?
All the justifications and demands to for a return to democracy are welcome for the Arabic regimes. Debates, conferences and meetings on conditions for democracy have no sense. We cannot talk of democracy only on a theoretical level; first we need to put it into practice. And to simplify the argument, I am of the opinion that democracy consists of respecting human rights, legitimate elections, alternating those in power without it leading to violence and coup d’états, and the people’s right to choose their own leaders.