Islamic Democracy
When Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed the French revolutionary slogans of Democracy and People Power when he conquered Egypt no one had a clue about what he was talking about. Not many do today either. Islamic fundamentalism has been changing slowly since then. Very slowly. To put things in perspective, let’s keep in mind that not one of the 22 Arab states represented at the Arab summit held in Beirut in 2002 had a democratically-elected government. Including those that walked out! Archaic totalitarian regimes govern one-fifth of the world’s population and control roughly a quarter of our energy resources.
However, there is hope in the New World Order. Reformist Islamic intellectuals are openly talking about new interpretations of the holy word. Political power, they argue, should rest with We the People. The clerics should not believe that they have a mission from God to run peoples’ affairs. Some even appear to question the Islamic republic’s most sacrosanct concepts -- and one has been put on trial in Iran for his audacity. But the rethinking has started. The phrase Islamic Reformation is now sometimes even heard in Iran. Reformasi has also been heard loudly and publicly in Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia. These non-Arab Muslim countries, with their Asian brothers and sisters in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, are Islam’s center of gravity. They are home to over 60 percent of the world’s Muslim population. A Muslim population that is moderate, tolerant and becoming democratic.
The Islam practiced by the Taleban was an extreme mixture of religion and politics recognized by only three Muslim countries. “The whole policy of the Taleban was opposed by the vast majority of Muslim and Arab countries,” Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, said, “so the cause of supporting bin-Laden and so forth by the Afghan regime was a strange cause…”
The tiny Arab state of Qatar adheres to the same Wahabbi strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. Yet it has managed to modernize the practice. Alcohol is openly consumed, women drive, vote and run for office and its Al Jazeera TV station openly criticizes Arab leaders.
In the Muslim world, however, only 23 percent of countries are democratic. Eleven of the 47 countries that are predominantly Muslim are democratic. “Since the early 1970s, when the third major historical wave of democratization began, the Islamic world, and in particular its Arab core, have seen little evidence of improvements in political openness, respect for human rights and transparency,” concluded the Freedom House survey, Freedom in the World 2001-2002.
“In countries where there is an Islamic majority, there is just one free country, Mali, while 18 are rated partly free and 28 are not free,” the report said. The most democratic nations after Mali are Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey and Morocco.
In the final years of the last millennium, 100 Arabs from 15 countries did meet, at great danger to themselves, to send a cry for Arab rights to the world, which eagerly avoided it, and to their own people, those who somehow get word despite censorship and the religious police.
The statement deals bravely with the “grim” truth that even the few scraps of liberties Arabs do hold are declining. Saudi Arabia and some Gulf States, it says, lack even the symbols of democracy -- no constitution, parliament or modern legal system. Countries that had made progress are back-pedalling -- Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan. In Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Bahrain there are “massive and dangerous human rights violations”. Only Morocco got some praise for a “relative improvement” this past decade. A present for the host but a very conditional one.
The statement attacked armed Muslim groups for physical and intellectual terrorism. Going further, the signatories denounced regimes that used “Islam’s specificity” as an excuse to reject reform. This was an overt attack on fundamentalism.
Is it because of religion that Islam has so miserably failed to create democracy and tolerate human rights? The Crusaders and the Catholic Inquisition acted in a similar spirit, but this kind of fanaticism gradually became less fashionable in Europe as the Enlightenment and modern science began to undermine traditional religious certainties.
Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and particularly Protestantism often overcame bigotry and the calls for eyeball-plucking in their own pasts and have produced representative government through debate as well as war. Isn’t it time Muslims, American-Muslims in particular, peacefully bridge the misperception of their fellow Muslims? Isn’t it time that they share their knowledge and benefits of balancing the best of Islam and other civilizations? Isn’t it time they actively engage in overcoming the propaganda of the extremists?
However, there is hope in the New World Order. Reformist Islamic intellectuals are openly talking about new interpretations of the holy word. Political power, they argue, should rest with We the People. The clerics should not believe that they have a mission from God to run peoples’ affairs. Some even appear to question the Islamic republic’s most sacrosanct concepts -- and one has been put on trial in Iran for his audacity. But the rethinking has started. The phrase Islamic Reformation is now sometimes even heard in Iran. Reformasi has also been heard loudly and publicly in Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia. These non-Arab Muslim countries, with their Asian brothers and sisters in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, are Islam’s center of gravity. They are home to over 60 percent of the world’s Muslim population. A Muslim population that is moderate, tolerant and becoming democratic.
The Islam practiced by the Taleban was an extreme mixture of religion and politics recognized by only three Muslim countries. “The whole policy of the Taleban was opposed by the vast majority of Muslim and Arab countries,” Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, said, “so the cause of supporting bin-Laden and so forth by the Afghan regime was a strange cause…”
The tiny Arab state of Qatar adheres to the same Wahabbi strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. Yet it has managed to modernize the practice. Alcohol is openly consumed, women drive, vote and run for office and its Al Jazeera TV station openly criticizes Arab leaders.
In the Muslim world, however, only 23 percent of countries are democratic. Eleven of the 47 countries that are predominantly Muslim are democratic. “Since the early 1970s, when the third major historical wave of democratization began, the Islamic world, and in particular its Arab core, have seen little evidence of improvements in political openness, respect for human rights and transparency,” concluded the Freedom House survey, Freedom in the World 2001-2002.
“In countries where there is an Islamic majority, there is just one free country, Mali, while 18 are rated partly free and 28 are not free,” the report said. The most democratic nations after Mali are Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey and Morocco.
In the final years of the last millennium, 100 Arabs from 15 countries did meet, at great danger to themselves, to send a cry for Arab rights to the world, which eagerly avoided it, and to their own people, those who somehow get word despite censorship and the religious police.
The statement deals bravely with the “grim” truth that even the few scraps of liberties Arabs do hold are declining. Saudi Arabia and some Gulf States, it says, lack even the symbols of democracy -- no constitution, parliament or modern legal system. Countries that had made progress are back-pedalling -- Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan. In Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Bahrain there are “massive and dangerous human rights violations”. Only Morocco got some praise for a “relative improvement” this past decade. A present for the host but a very conditional one.
The statement attacked armed Muslim groups for physical and intellectual terrorism. Going further, the signatories denounced regimes that used “Islam’s specificity” as an excuse to reject reform. This was an overt attack on fundamentalism.
Is it because of religion that Islam has so miserably failed to create democracy and tolerate human rights? The Crusaders and the Catholic Inquisition acted in a similar spirit, but this kind of fanaticism gradually became less fashionable in Europe as the Enlightenment and modern science began to undermine traditional religious certainties.
Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and particularly Protestantism often overcame bigotry and the calls for eyeball-plucking in their own pasts and have produced representative government through debate as well as war. Isn’t it time Muslims, American-Muslims in particular, peacefully bridge the misperception of their fellow Muslims? Isn’t it time that they share their knowledge and benefits of balancing the best of Islam and other civilizations? Isn’t it time they actively engage in overcoming the propaganda of the extremists?
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 9:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home