As Economies Sink, Religious Radicals Suffer Setbacks.(International Edition; ELECTIONS)

Byline: Adam B. Kushner and Solenn Honorine

Alongside exports, employment and growth, the financial crisis is claiming a less-talked-about victim: political Islam. In Muslim countries worldwide, voters have begun turning their backs on Islamist and other values-based parties in favor of dry but competent economic technocrats.

Take Turkey, where the religious Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered badly in local elections last month. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been ignoring calls from the business community for IMF help and had downplayed the effects of the credit crisis on Turkey, suggesting it was all psychological. Instead of financial issues, Erdogan campaigned on a variety of Islamist platforms, including criticism of Israel. But Turkish voters were preoccupied with more-domestic concerns: their economy contracted 6.2 percent in the last quarter of 2008 alone. And the AKP dropped 8 points in popular support and lost votes even in its Anatolian heartland.

A similar pattern played out in Indonesia last week. Poll results are still being tallied, but Islamists seem to have performed poorly, winning less than 25 percent of the total--down from 38 percent in 2004. In a February survey by polling agency LSI, 76 percent of respondents said the government should focus on economic development, while just 0.8 percent said that religion and moral values should animate the nation's ...