On the pitfalls of the Islamic democracy
I've heard the term "Islamic democracy" now for some time, and the more I hear it, the more harmful I start to think it is. To understand why, I think we should ask ourselves, what is this Islamic democracy?
Let's take Turkey, a commonly cited example of a successful Islamic democracy. It is said that an Islamist party controls it, that these Islamists are committed democrats, and that they want EU integration (more than the secularists), and therefore here we have it, the proof of the virtues of Islamic democracy. It brings EU integration and more liberalism! What else can we want than this?
I actually like the Turkish party in power (AK), but why is AK Islamist? It doesn't claim to be, its proposed constitutional amendments seem to embrace free exercise of religion American style, it has strong ties with Israel, it wants to remove the army from public life, or limit its role, it campaigns on being less corrupt than other parties, not more religious, it seeks freer and more open trade and it is committed to secularism in public affairs. All of that is probably why it won,too. Sure their members are religious in large part, sure that's their base, but we must need something more than this, or else the United States is a "Christian democracy" because both parties here profess faith far more than AK does. Surely something in their platform has to be identifiably Islamist, and proposing allowing women to wear veils in college does not qualify--that's the position of the US Supreme Court. But I can't find anything, save a few Islamophobic McCarthyites running around claiming there's a secret agenda nobody except them knows about that AK has and that it will spring upon us any day--a claim growing more ridiculous by the year, in my opinion and apparently in the opinion of the Turkish electorate too judging by their continued victories.
So to me, Turkey seems to answer a different question, the one sort of considered by friends of the blog Andrew March and Mohammad Fadel, which is whether or not Islam is compatible with liberal democracy, or liberalism generally. THAT question I understand, I am Muslim, can I also live,and be loyal to a liberal democracy, whether it be Turkey or the US? This is important and serious, and deserving of consideration. (Whether the question is a legal one or not, I think Professor March and I disagree, but that's 2-3 posts ago, and the comments thereto. I agree with him that the question is important to answer, for devout Muslims.)
So the fact that the base of a profoundly liberal democratic party is religious should be sung from the mountaintops, but as proof that in the real world, there are lots of devout Muslims out there who believe, sincerely, in liberal democracy. They like it, they embrace it, they find no contradiction between it and Islam, and they are fighting for more of it. There's your story.
But Islamic democracy, that sounds different. It seems to suggest there is something wrong with the regular democracy model that Turkey adopts (or at least that AK is pushing it towards), and what you need to do is make it "Islamic" to make it work with Islam. And generally, that's done through some number of techniques. On one side, there's Egypt, where the Constitutional Court can void legislation that is in conflict with sharia. One another, there's Iran, where the democratic part is sort of folded into a larger whole that involves theocratic control of the state, so that Parliament's laws can not only be invalidated, but candidates can be stricken from lists, judges are selected without the Parliament's control, and any number of issues from foreign affairs to the army are controlled by unelected jurists. Of course there are any number of permutations or combinations of these models.
The interesting thing though is that where in Turkey, the "Islamic" modifier seems misleading (it's a regular democracy with a lot of Muslims in it), in Iran or Egypt, the "Islamic" does not so much help describe the term "democracy" as qualify it. In other words, there is democracy, it's a regular democracy, and then when you slip the "Islamic" part in, that's to place limitations, sometimes big,sometimes small, on the democratic process. It's the undemocratic part of the phrase "Islamic democracy."
Compare to "constitutional democracy". In that case, the constitution can limit the democratic process through judicial review of course, but the constitution also defines the democracy. Who gets elected, what they do, how many terms they serve, any number of issues. I'd say the same for "liberal" democracy, where the term may limit, but also defines the nature of the democracy in the state.
Here there is no definition of the nature of the democracy itself--it's a Western adaptation. The addition, the "Islamic" part, is to derogate from the democracy, to limit it and control it, not to help define what it is. This becomes painfully obvious when you really try to take apart the Muslim Brotherhood chant "The Qur'an is our constitution."
Really? Okay then, how many branches of government in the Qur'an? which branch controls the military? How long is the term of the state officials? Two years? Four years? Is it bicameral? The Qur'an is a Sacred Text, a Book I revere over all others, a guide, to me, on how to live my life in accordance with God's Will, but it is decidedly NOT a constitution. It doesn't create, define, structure a government. That's not its purpose.
So then here is the result. All sorts of folks, Islamists to sympathetic Western scholars, go running around touting the virtues of the Islamic democracy. Apparently Muslims in a regular democracy is not going to do it, we have to have an "Islamic" one. And what emerges, in theory, is something that is basically a democracy, with a bunch of roadblocks, impediments, interferences, and that's the "Islamic" part. This theory of course leaves Middle Eastern countries some justification to be profoundly undemocratic, because the theory runs (from Mubarak to Abdullah), if we democratize, these Islamic guys take over and they aren't democratic, because Islam limits democracy when it becomes "Islamic democracy".
In the process, devout Muslims, sincere Muslims, believing Muslims, practicing Muslims who actually want a real democracy, are shunted aside. When they're here (An Naim, Abou El Fadl), they're dismissed as far too Western influenced. When they run a majority Muslim state (Turkey), they're told by Western intelligentsia they are "Islamic democrats" no matter how much they seek to deny it, and no matter how much their own electorate disagrees with that conclusion. And this is our current state of affairs.
Gee, no wonder Islam and democracy seem so irreconcilable to so many.
HAH
Let's take Turkey, a commonly cited example of a successful Islamic democracy. It is said that an Islamist party controls it, that these Islamists are committed democrats, and that they want EU integration (more than the secularists), and therefore here we have it, the proof of the virtues of Islamic democracy. It brings EU integration and more liberalism! What else can we want than this?
I actually like the Turkish party in power (AK), but why is AK Islamist? It doesn't claim to be, its proposed constitutional amendments seem to embrace free exercise of religion American style, it has strong ties with Israel, it wants to remove the army from public life, or limit its role, it campaigns on being less corrupt than other parties, not more religious, it seeks freer and more open trade and it is committed to secularism in public affairs. All of that is probably why it won,too. Sure their members are religious in large part, sure that's their base, but we must need something more than this, or else the United States is a "Christian democracy" because both parties here profess faith far more than AK does. Surely something in their platform has to be identifiably Islamist, and proposing allowing women to wear veils in college does not qualify--that's the position of the US Supreme Court. But I can't find anything, save a few Islamophobic McCarthyites running around claiming there's a secret agenda nobody except them knows about that AK has and that it will spring upon us any day--a claim growing more ridiculous by the year, in my opinion and apparently in the opinion of the Turkish electorate too judging by their continued victories.
So to me, Turkey seems to answer a different question, the one sort of considered by friends of the blog Andrew March and Mohammad Fadel, which is whether or not Islam is compatible with liberal democracy, or liberalism generally. THAT question I understand, I am Muslim, can I also live,and be loyal to a liberal democracy, whether it be Turkey or the US? This is important and serious, and deserving of consideration. (Whether the question is a legal one or not, I think Professor March and I disagree, but that's 2-3 posts ago, and the comments thereto. I agree with him that the question is important to answer, for devout Muslims.)
So the fact that the base of a profoundly liberal democratic party is religious should be sung from the mountaintops, but as proof that in the real world, there are lots of devout Muslims out there who believe, sincerely, in liberal democracy. They like it, they embrace it, they find no contradiction between it and Islam, and they are fighting for more of it. There's your story.
But Islamic democracy, that sounds different. It seems to suggest there is something wrong with the regular democracy model that Turkey adopts (or at least that AK is pushing it towards), and what you need to do is make it "Islamic" to make it work with Islam. And generally, that's done through some number of techniques. On one side, there's Egypt, where the Constitutional Court can void legislation that is in conflict with sharia. One another, there's Iran, where the democratic part is sort of folded into a larger whole that involves theocratic control of the state, so that Parliament's laws can not only be invalidated, but candidates can be stricken from lists, judges are selected without the Parliament's control, and any number of issues from foreign affairs to the army are controlled by unelected jurists. Of course there are any number of permutations or combinations of these models.
The interesting thing though is that where in Turkey, the "Islamic" modifier seems misleading (it's a regular democracy with a lot of Muslims in it), in Iran or Egypt, the "Islamic" does not so much help describe the term "democracy" as qualify it. In other words, there is democracy, it's a regular democracy, and then when you slip the "Islamic" part in, that's to place limitations, sometimes big,sometimes small, on the democratic process. It's the undemocratic part of the phrase "Islamic democracy."
Compare to "constitutional democracy". In that case, the constitution can limit the democratic process through judicial review of course, but the constitution also defines the democracy. Who gets elected, what they do, how many terms they serve, any number of issues. I'd say the same for "liberal" democracy, where the term may limit, but also defines the nature of the democracy in the state.
Here there is no definition of the nature of the democracy itself--it's a Western adaptation. The addition, the "Islamic" part, is to derogate from the democracy, to limit it and control it, not to help define what it is. This becomes painfully obvious when you really try to take apart the Muslim Brotherhood chant "The Qur'an is our constitution."
Really? Okay then, how many branches of government in the Qur'an? which branch controls the military? How long is the term of the state officials? Two years? Four years? Is it bicameral? The Qur'an is a Sacred Text, a Book I revere over all others, a guide, to me, on how to live my life in accordance with God's Will, but it is decidedly NOT a constitution. It doesn't create, define, structure a government. That's not its purpose.
So then here is the result. All sorts of folks, Islamists to sympathetic Western scholars, go running around touting the virtues of the Islamic democracy. Apparently Muslims in a regular democracy is not going to do it, we have to have an "Islamic" one. And what emerges, in theory, is something that is basically a democracy, with a bunch of roadblocks, impediments, interferences, and that's the "Islamic" part. This theory of course leaves Middle Eastern countries some justification to be profoundly undemocratic, because the theory runs (from Mubarak to Abdullah), if we democratize, these Islamic guys take over and they aren't democratic, because Islam limits democracy when it becomes "Islamic democracy".
In the process, devout Muslims, sincere Muslims, believing Muslims, practicing Muslims who actually want a real democracy, are shunted aside. When they're here (An Naim, Abou El Fadl), they're dismissed as far too Western influenced. When they run a majority Muslim state (Turkey), they're told by Western intelligentsia they are "Islamic democrats" no matter how much they seek to deny it, and no matter how much their own electorate disagrees with that conclusion. And this is our current state of affairs.
Gee, no wonder Islam and democracy seem so irreconcilable to so many.
HAH
"The Qur'an is our constitution."
"Really? Okay then, how many branches of government in the Qur'an? which branch controls the military? How long is the term of the state officials? Two years? Four years? Is it bicameral?"
Thats the argument that just gets me going. I confronted some Muslims with the idea of started a think-tank and a few brothers' responses were that "the think-tank must be based on Quran and Sunnah". And the same ideologues hold that any government, here democratic government has to be Islamic. The only slippery grape they can hold onto is the concept of shura. And even then they can't explain how the masses fit into that concept.
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I agree, it always is the shura. And yet to make the verses of the shura into something akin to a constitutional democracy takes a few steps. I think it's completely fine to take those steps, but then acknowledge it isn't the Qur'an that is actually the constitution in that case. Thanks again brother for your comments. Assalamu Alaikum
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