Can a good Muslim be a good democrat?
Feb 17th 2000
ARE Islam and democracy compatible? Iran’s parliamentary election this Friday will not provide a definitive answer, but it may provide some hints. It turns, in any event, on the issue of how democratic an Islamist regime can be. Iranians can elect, in a tolerably fair way, the representatives they want; the question is how much authority and freedom their system then allows these representatives. Our conclusion, suggested in another article, is not much. President Muhammad Khatami has succeeded in making the theocratic state less restrictive. But a growing number of Iranians—the bold, the thoughtful, the young—want an administration and a judiciary that are free from clerical despotism. The turbaned are finding it ever harder to slap these hungry reformers down.
Outside Iran, political Islam has long since lost the cohesive, cataclysmic energy that the western world, perhaps wrongly, detected in the years after Iran’s 1979 revolution. It has not, however, lost its power to alarm. The concept of “Islamic terrorism” still chills people, in Moscow these days as well as in New York. Christians in Nigeria’s Muslim states quail at the introduction of the sharia (religious law). And most Arab countries are still so wary of political Islam that they refuse to allow it any political licence at all.
Secularists share a simple fear: they believe that once Islamist politicians have got themselves into a position of control, they will never let go. The Islamists themselves feed that fear when they preach of power coming from God, of religion and state being one, and the separation of the two a secular aberration. But, so far, Iran is the sole example of radical Islamists running anything like a democracy. With democratic reform strongly promoted in this election, and with Iran’s braver prelates now admitting publicly that political power, even if divine in origin, belongs to the people, it is much too soon to pronounce that the Iranian test case has proved democracy and political Islam to be incompatible.
Don’t blame Islam for bad behaviour
Alas, the Islamic world is not burdened with examples of good government, let alone democracy. But religion is seldom the culprit: look, rather, for cruel autocrats, corrupt feudal systems, overbearing armies or any combination of the above. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, is now working its difficult way through a bad inheritance, but its new, democratically chosen president is an Islamist of welcome moderation and its Islamic tradition has long been tolerant. Pakistan, a state specifically designed for Muslims, is in a poor way, but not on account of its religion (see article). Turkey would shine more convincingly as a democracy if its army had not thrown out a government dominated by mild Islamists.
The scene darkens as one moves west, with the Arabs inhabiting the least democratic patch on God’s earth. Most Arab rulers, be they kings or presidents, take all the decisions that matter; their minions then carry them out. If they cannot claim a crown, they are re-elected through soft-flowing referendums. Arab ruling parties, with cash and patronage in their gift, can usually win without cheating, though to be safe they usually cheat too. Religion is largely irrelevant to this common misbehaviour.
Adherence to an austere, even cruel, form of Islamic law puts Saudi Arabia at the bottom of most tourists’ wish-lists. But it is its feudal ruling family, not Islamic precept, that bars even the pretence of democracy. Syria’s President Hafez Assad, having rid himself of the Islamist “threat” by murdering many thousands at Hama in 1982, rules as an undisputed despot who intends, in feudal fashion, to pass the job on to his son. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, who let his Islamists live, but then had to fight the movement’s armed wing, now locks up civilian Islamists to prevent them from taking part in politics. Algeria’s army preceded Turkey’s in pushing Islamists out of power, but in a manner that led to a savage eight-year civil war in the 1990s.
There are exceptions, of course, when Islamism itself is a principal villain. In Sudan, an unrelenting Islamist government in a religiously divided country has exacerbated a painfully long civil war. And the Taliban has enforced a primitive form of Islam on Afghanistan that has had the Iranians, as well as everybody else, in shock. Making matters worse, both regimes have trained and been host to the bands of roving mercenaries who keep alive the fear of Islamic terrorism.
The West has paternity rights to these terrorists, claims Russia, which says—perhaps disingenuously—that it was Islamist allies of the Chechens who blew up blocks of flats in Moscow last year. But Russia is correct about the paternity. In the 1980s, America, with Pakistan, financed, trained and equipped some 50,000 volunteers, mainly Arab, to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. When the Afghan war was won, the volunteers dispersed, looking for ways to practise the only skill they knew. One of them, Osama bin Laden, turned against America during the war with Iraq. A rich and clever Saudi, Mr bin Laden at one time ran a lethal network. He has now, it seems, been contained, a liability to the Taliban regime that may well eventually hand him over in exchange for international respectability. But there are many other “Afghanis”, capable of individual acts of great evil.
The actions of a few zealots have helped to discolour understanding of political Islam. The importance of the movement, these days, is not what it can achieve in the political field, and even less what it can do with its bombs. It is rather its mole-like incursions into ordinary life. In many Muslim countries, particularly in the Middle East, people are behaving, or finding themselves obliged to behave, in a stricter Islamic manner. Suddenly, there are more curbs on what they can read, or how they can entertain themselves. Women, not always unwillingly, are having to cover up.
The happy exception to this trend is Islamist Iran. Here, people are beginning to find that they can burst out of old restrictions, not enter into new ones. Political Islam still provides dangers, but it also provides reasons for hope
Feb 17th 2000
ARE Islam and democracy compatible? Iran’s parliamentary election this Friday will not provide a definitive answer, but it may provide some hints. It turns, in any event, on the issue of how democratic an Islamist regime can be. Iranians can elect, in a tolerably fair way, the representatives they want; the question is how much authority and freedom their system then allows these representatives. Our conclusion, suggested in another article, is not much. President Muhammad Khatami has succeeded in making the theocratic state less restrictive. But a growing number of Iranians—the bold, the thoughtful, the young—want an administration and a judiciary that are free from clerical despotism. The turbaned are finding it ever harder to slap these hungry reformers down.
Outside Iran, political Islam has long since lost the cohesive, cataclysmic energy that the western world, perhaps wrongly, detected in the years after Iran’s 1979 revolution. It has not, however, lost its power to alarm. The concept of “Islamic terrorism” still chills people, in Moscow these days as well as in New York. Christians in Nigeria’s Muslim states quail at the introduction of the sharia (religious law). And most Arab countries are still so wary of political Islam that they refuse to allow it any political licence at all.
Secularists share a simple fear: they believe that once Islamist politicians have got themselves into a position of control, they will never let go. The Islamists themselves feed that fear when they preach of power coming from God, of religion and state being one, and the separation of the two a secular aberration. But, so far, Iran is the sole example of radical Islamists running anything like a democracy. With democratic reform strongly promoted in this election, and with Iran’s braver prelates now admitting publicly that political power, even if divine in origin, belongs to the people, it is much too soon to pronounce that the Iranian test case has proved democracy and political Islam to be incompatible.
Don’t blame Islam for bad behaviour
Alas, the Islamic world is not burdened with examples of good government, let alone democracy. But religion is seldom the culprit: look, rather, for cruel autocrats, corrupt feudal systems, overbearing armies or any combination of the above. Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, is now working its difficult way through a bad inheritance, but its new, democratically chosen president is an Islamist of welcome moderation and its Islamic tradition has long been tolerant. Pakistan, a state specifically designed for Muslims, is in a poor way, but not on account of its religion (see article). Turkey would shine more convincingly as a democracy if its army had not thrown out a government dominated by mild Islamists.
The scene darkens as one moves west, with the Arabs inhabiting the least democratic patch on God’s earth. Most Arab rulers, be they kings or presidents, take all the decisions that matter; their minions then carry them out. If they cannot claim a crown, they are re-elected through soft-flowing referendums. Arab ruling parties, with cash and patronage in their gift, can usually win without cheating, though to be safe they usually cheat too. Religion is largely irrelevant to this common misbehaviour.
Adherence to an austere, even cruel, form of Islamic law puts Saudi Arabia at the bottom of most tourists’ wish-lists. But it is its feudal ruling family, not Islamic precept, that bars even the pretence of democracy. Syria’s President Hafez Assad, having rid himself of the Islamist “threat” by murdering many thousands at Hama in 1982, rules as an undisputed despot who intends, in feudal fashion, to pass the job on to his son. Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, who let his Islamists live, but then had to fight the movement’s armed wing, now locks up civilian Islamists to prevent them from taking part in politics. Algeria’s army preceded Turkey’s in pushing Islamists out of power, but in a manner that led to a savage eight-year civil war in the 1990s.
There are exceptions, of course, when Islamism itself is a principal villain. In Sudan, an unrelenting Islamist government in a religiously divided country has exacerbated a painfully long civil war. And the Taliban has enforced a primitive form of Islam on Afghanistan that has had the Iranians, as well as everybody else, in shock. Making matters worse, both regimes have trained and been host to the bands of roving mercenaries who keep alive the fear of Islamic terrorism.
The West has paternity rights to these terrorists, claims Russia, which says—perhaps disingenuously—that it was Islamist allies of the Chechens who blew up blocks of flats in Moscow last year. But Russia is correct about the paternity. In the 1980s, America, with Pakistan, financed, trained and equipped some 50,000 volunteers, mainly Arab, to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. When the Afghan war was won, the volunteers dispersed, looking for ways to practise the only skill they knew. One of them, Osama bin Laden, turned against America during the war with Iraq. A rich and clever Saudi, Mr bin Laden at one time ran a lethal network. He has now, it seems, been contained, a liability to the Taliban regime that may well eventually hand him over in exchange for international respectability. But there are many other “Afghanis”, capable of individual acts of great evil.
The actions of a few zealots have helped to discolour understanding of political Islam. The importance of the movement, these days, is not what it can achieve in the political field, and even less what it can do with its bombs. It is rather its mole-like incursions into ordinary life. In many Muslim countries, particularly in the Middle East, people are behaving, or finding themselves obliged to behave, in a stricter Islamic manner. Suddenly, there are more curbs on what they can read, or how they can entertain themselves. Women, not always unwillingly, are having to cover up.
The happy exception to this trend is Islamist Iran. Here, people are beginning to find that they can burst out of old restrictions, not enter into new ones. Political Islam still provides dangers, but it also provides reasons for hope
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