Democracy and hypocrisy

In an article published in the influential Middle East Quarterly early this month, David Bukay, an Israeli lecturer in the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, fiercely criticised parts of western academia that champion the idea that Islam and democracy are compatible.

Bukay claimed that studies advocating this idea are influenced by politics and the often lucrative desire to please a wide Middle Eastern audience.

"Some Western researchers support the Islamist claim that parliamentary democracy and representative elections are not only compatible with Islamic law, but that Islam actually encourages democracy.

"They do this in one of two ways: either they twist definitions to make them fit the apparatuses of Islamic government - terms such as democracy become relative - or they bend the reality of life in Muslim countries to fit their theories".

Bukay reserved good part of his critique to attack John Esposito, Director of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.

"Among the best known advocates of the idea that Islam both is compatible and encourages democracy is John L. Esposito. Esposito built his arguments upon tendentious assumptions and platitudes such as "democracy has many and varied meanings; "every culture will mould an independent model of democratic government"; and "there can develop a religious democracy".

Bukay tries to undercut this idea by pressing the question that if these arguments "are true, then why is democracy not readily apparent in the Middle East? He answers this question by making reference to Abu Al A'la Al Mawdudi, an influential twentieth century Islamic scholar.

Al Mawdudi, Bukay argued, claimed that any "Islamic polity has to accept the supremacy of Islamic law over all aspects of political and religious life - hardly a democratic concept, given that Islamic law does not provide for equality of all citizens under the law regardless of religion and gender.

"Such a formulation also denies citizens a basic right to decide their laws, a fundamental concept of democracy".

Bukay would then conclude that "the Islamic world is not ready to absorb the basic values of modernism and democracy. Leadership remains the prerogative of the ruling elite.

"Arab and Islamic leadership are patrimonial, coercive and authoritarian. Such basic principles as sovereignty, legitimacy, political participation and pluralism and those individual rights and freedoms inherent in democracy do not exist in a system where Islam is the ultimate source of law".

Bukay's arguments are hardly new. He has, in fact, added absolutely nothing to western literature on Islam and democracy. His thesis is, by and large, a boring repetition of what his mentor Bernard Lewis, the veteran professor of the University of Princeton has written throughout his life.

Politics and religion

Lewis dedicated the past 30 years trying to solve the puzzle of why "Islam cannot be democratised". The anti-democratic nature of Islam, according to the Princeton professor, is based on Islam's rejection to recognise the borders between politics and religion.

In Islam, the Quran is the only source of Sharia and the Islamic state is a theocratic state governed by a ruler whose legitimacy is derived from God not from the people.

Accordingly, secularisation, which is a prerequisite for democratisation, has never taken root in Muslim societies. Moreover, Lewis argued, Islam, though officially tolerant toward minorities, tolerance was granted in the light of a superior-inferior relationship.

Equality between Muslims and non-Muslims was never perceived of and, hence, the concept of citizenship was alien to Muslim mind and traditions.

As for the authoritarian nature of Middle Eastern regimes, Bukay was absolutely right in describing their coercive and brutal practices. Yet, he does not tell us much about why they have endured for so long; and ignored the role of Western powers in backing their rule. On this also Bukay was lagging behind his teacher who was brave enough to admit this fact.

After the end of the Cold War, when democracy was gathering pace in Eastern Europe, Lewis urged the US not to allow democracy to spread in the Middle East.

"Pressure for democracy will present the US with a number of immediate dangers and few clear advantages." He believed that the Islamic world was not ripe enough to accept democracy. Democracy would certainly bring to power anti-US Islamists. The US should not, therefore, be hasty in promoting democracy that would replace the existing regimes with "ferocious and determined dictatorship".

Enough already of the tiresome intellectual tropes which, on the one hand, claim that Arab societies are not ready yet to live under democratic governments; and on the other hand, when these societies press for democracy, they warn western governments against handing power to "anti-western forces".

Dr Marwan Al Kabalan is a lecturer in media and international relations, Faculty of Political Science and Media, Damascus University, Syria.