AH challenge: a better Middle East

Hendryk

Banned
By better, I mean more economically developed, less culturally entrenched, with a smaller radical influence, and especially with decently-functioning civil societies. Democratic rule would be best, regardless of whether the parties in power are secular or moderate Islamists on the Turkish model, but soft authoritarianism is acceptable so long as the governments are reasonably competent. Local sore spots may exist, and this or that country may still be overtly dictatorial, but the rest of the region should be doing okay.

Let's use contemporary Latin America and South-East Asia as benchmarks. This alternate Middle East should be doing about as well.

Now the POD has to be after 1918, and ideally after 1948. And Israel has to be around, in the same location as in OTL.

I got the idea for this challenge from reading this article by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker, and especially the following paragraph:

I went to the office of the Brotherhood to talk to Essam el-Erian, a prominent member of the movement. He is a small, defiant man with a large prayer mark on his forehead. I reminded him that when we last spoke, in April, 2002, he had just got out of prison. He laughed and said, “I’ve been back in prison twice more since then!” We sat in our stocking feet in the dim reception room. “From the start until now, the Muslim Brotherhood has been peaceful,” he maintained. “We have only three or four instances of violence in our history, mainly assassinations.” He added, “Those were individual instances and we condemned them as a group.” But, in addition to the killings of political figures, terrorist attacks on the Jewish community in Cairo, and the attempted murder of Nasser, members of the Muslim Brotherhood took part in arson that destroyed some seven hundred and fifty buildings—mainly night clubs, theatres, hotels, and restaurants—in downtown Cairo in 1952, an attack that marked the end of the liberal, progressive, cosmopolitan direction that Egypt might have chosen.
 
I think its almost impossible with Israel (at least I can't think of a peaceful ME with Israel around) around and its a pity that the POD has to be after 1918 because my ideal ME would be one politically united into a stable and prosperous (developed, westernized, liberal democratic) Ottoman Empire-dominated Islamic Commonwealth under the de jure leadership of the Caliph in Istanbul. Since the Caliph would have to be a modern, enlightened leader, any mashuganah radical ideology (like Wahabism, Talibanism and Bin Laden-Jihadism) would simply be labeled heresy by him and discredited by mainstream Islam, ensuring that the Islamic World is united and stable under the leadership of the Caliph and under a perfect fusion of Islamism and modern Western liberal democracy, embodied in the government of the surviving Ottoman Empire. Also, Arabia would still be a kingdom but under the more liberal Rashidis.
 
Nasser gets killed in '54.

With the primary leader of the Free Officers dead, the man who Nasser had nearly (and iOTL in fact did) push out from power, Muhammad Naguib, now comes back from his near political death.

Naguib is able to force a new election, in which he becomes the President, and using this popular mandate is able to carry out a purge of pro-Nasser elements in the army and government.

Naguib apparently had more belief than Nasser in the power of elections, and I think that he would have pursued a more Egypt-centric policy.

This is going to have a great impact on the whole history of the region. Without Nasser there is no paramount leader for pan-Arabism, or for the founding of the PLO, or for the fighting of the subsquent Arab-Israeli wars. These things may well still happen, but they will happen in an environment without Nasser, and thus I think not be as directed.

Naguib is probably going to end up stopping the elections at some point for one reason or another, but perhaps he doesn't. If he doesn't clamp down the way that Nasser did, then there is going to be more of a chance for other (secular) political parties to develop themselves.

I think Naguib would probably be someone that the Americans could work with, and he certainly wouldn't provoke something like the '56 crisis.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Nasser gets killed in '54.

With the primary leader of the Free Officers dead, the man who Nasser had nearly (and iOTL in fact did) push out from power, Muhammad Naguib, now comes back from his near political death.

Naguib is able to force a new election, in which he becomes the President, and using this popular mandate is able to carry out a purge of pro-Nasser elements in the army and government.

Naguib apparently had more belief than Nasser in the power of elections, and I think that he would have pursued a more Egypt-centric policy.

This is going to have a great impact on the whole history of the region. Without Nasser there is no paramount leader for pan-Arabism, or for the founding of the PLO, or for the fighting of the subsquent Arab-Israeli wars. These things may well still happen, but they will happen in an environment without Nasser, and thus I think not be as directed.
Interesting hypothesis. I know little about Naguib. Anyone care to comment?

I was also wondering about how nipping the Muslim Brotherhood in the bud might help. I know it's a controversial position considering how high tempers run on both sides of the debate, but I rather feel that religious revivalism hindered rather than helped the Arab world. I'm not saying that as in "teh evol Muslims are all backward ragheads!", and do acknowledge that in a number of instances religious activism has boosted the development of civil societies in Muslim countries. However, I think the way things have turned out in the past half-century shows that this wasn't the right path to follow.
 
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