July 7, 2008
Islam and Democracy
T.E. Lawrence’s perspective still has some merit it seems:
There is a powerful rhetoric around today that claims Islam – not just fundamentalist or Wahhabist or Safalist Islam, but Islam itself is a religion hostile to democracy. Hostile not only to liberty, pluralism and the open society, but to modernity itself as it is defined by liberal values. The attitude evident in Samuel Huntington’s discredited notion of a “clash of civilizations” in which the West and the rest are locked in a struggle for survival, so foreign to discussions like our here in Istanbul, in fact remains ubiquitous in Western politics and media.
It is found not only in Bush’s zealous conduct of a disastrous war on the “axis of evil,” or Donald Rumsfeld’s assertion that Islamic fundamentalism is a “new form of fascism;” or in right wing paranoiac events like David Horowitz’s “Islamofascism Awareness Week,” but is reflected also in writings of liberals like Paul Berman who talk about how the West is “beset with terrorists from the Muslim totalitarian movements who have already killed an astounding number of people;” or in scholars like Bernard Lewis who announce in hushed tones of sympathy that “the world of Islam has become poor, weak and ignorant;” or in Muslim apostates like Ali Hirsi who combine a seemingly liberal appeal to feminist values with a total rejection of not just fundamentalism but Islam itself.
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5 Responses to “Islam and Democracy”
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Do you not read anything?
How democratic do you think it is for women under Shafi’i Islam who get their clitorises cut out without anaesthetic.
If what they did was cut off 2″ of each man’s penis and throw him in a portable tent so women wouldn’t have to go through any normal experience of sexual attraction over him, I wonder if you opinion of those evil “Islamophobes” would be different.
Shari’a law is 90% hadith, written by warlords after Muhammad’s death, but it is the darling of Islam, and until the Qur’an is expunged of its anti-female, anti-infidel, anti-Semitic, anti-knowledge precepts, and until the hadith are thrown out entirely, this is a fascist religion, at least for women.
If women don’t count, which apparently they don’t with you, then I guess you can call it democratic and egalitarian, but it is so only for …
MUSLIM MEN.
Andrew, despite what is maintained in the comments made above, those of us who have lived in the Muslim world and know it well can attest to the accuracy of the article you have cited. The majority of Muslims across the globe are moderate and largely egalitarian. It is the rhetoric of neo-con ideology that is turning Islam into the monster of a single, monolithic, dangerous enemy what we must then, in turn, fight against and defeat. It is also the same bankrupt rhetoric that brought us to the brink of chaos in Iraq that now mires us down in self-defeating foreign policies. It is time to become a wiser, smarter nation, that does not allow any ideological rhetoric to dictate how we must act in a very complex, nuanced world. It would be far better to listen to such scholars as Vali Nasr and Farid Zakariah who are both Muslim and have a clear eyed understanding that agree in large part with this article, than to the ideologues of the Bush administration. As to the comments on women and clitorectomy, that is practiced in some African societies. This has more to do with the cultural conditions and practices of tribal cultures than it has to do with Islam. Its like saying that witch-burning emerged in Colonial America because of Christianity’s belief in a doctrine about Satan. It may have influenced their behavior, but it did not cause it. Islam, like every society, is working out issues of gender, and interestingly is far more advanced on racial equality than are many Christian societies and denominations. Thanks, Andrew
You bet, Lynn.
I have not had the fortune to live in the Muslim world, but I have a dear friend who has been studying it, Iran in particular, for a number of years now. She made me more sensitive to some of the issues. (She’s headed down to Austin, incidentally, to do some more historical study, I believe).
The best way to change the negative perception of Islam in the West is for peaceful Moslems to prevent other Moslems from reacting with such hostility, hatred and violence to every perceived slight such as newspaper cartoons (the Danish cartoons), books (Salman Rusdie, Hirsi Ali, and many others), videos (Fitna, Obsession, etc), and people’s words (e.g. the Pope’s comment almost two years ago). And we haven’t even mentioned all the bombings and other murders which militant Moslems have been committing regularly in the name of Islam in over a dozen countries. If the peaceful Moslems cannot prevent all the violence being perpetrated by Moslems in the name of Islam, then at least they can condemn the perpetrators by name, specifically and unequivocally. Peaceful Moslems could also condem, by name and unequivocally, all the imams, ayatollahs and Islamic religious scholars who openly support Islamic supremacy, such as Yusuf Qaradawi and even Tariq Ramadan. Peaceful Moslems should also condemn, in no uncertain terms, the 1991 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which declares that Islam is superior to every other religion and which makes all human rights subject to the Shariah. If peaceful Moslems did these things, loudly and unequivocally, people in the West would then have little justification for their negative attitude toward Islam. However, until that happens, there is good reason to hold those negative attitudes.
Andrew writes: “…Samuel Huntington’s discredited notion of a “clash of civilizations”…” Actually, the “notion” is not discredited at all. It is no secret that the values of our Western civilization are enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which proclaims freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom from religion, equality of religion and also gender equality. It is an unfortunate fact that not a single Moslem country has signed on to this Declaration. Not one! Instead, all of the Moslem majority countries created and signed on to their own 1991 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) which proclaims that Islam is superior to all other religions and which specifically says that the only source of human rights is the Shariah. It is clear that the UDHR enshrines the fundamental values of western civilization while the CDHRI enshrines the fundamental values of Islamic civilization. It is also clear that the two sets of values are mutually incompatible. This is the best and clearest proof that, yes, there is a clash of civilizations.