Is greater democracy possible in the Muslim world?

Kazi Anwarul Masud, The Daily Star, Asia News Network/Dhaka

It is difficult to be sanguine if President Bush's insistence on bringing about democracy in the broader Middle East will ultimately serve the U.S. interest in the conflict-ridden zone, which for ages has acted as a politico-cultural contestant of the West. The Bush administration's logic behind the advocacy for democracy is manifold.

At one extreme the administration, stung by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has come to realise that "democracy deficit" tolerated by successive U.S. administrations responding to the situations demanded by the Cold War resulted in dictatorial regimes in many Muslim countries where dissent often meant being sent to the gulags while profligate elites lived life of moral degeneration ultimately acted against the interest of the West.

At the other end of the spectrum was the conviction of the liberal thinkers and embraced by the neo-cons that democracies do not go to war against one another simply because waging war by a democracy would need distilled approval of different branches of the administration thus making it a difficult venture.

This argument can be equally extended to non-state actors who have made terrorism their religion. The western world, therefore, is preoccupied with Islamic fundamentalism and political Islam due to its realisation that policies followed hitherto had given birth to failed states in the vacuum left by the Cold War which helped incubate the vitriolic contagion of al-Qaeda variety.

In the panic following Sept. 11 new Cold War warriors equated Islamic fundamentalism with political Islam. While Islamic fundamentalism encapsulates the emotional, spiritual, and political response of the Muslims to the acute politico-economic crisis in the Middle East and the Muslims' frustration over the inability of Pan-Arab nationalism to deliver political goods to the citizens, political Islam aims at establishing a global Islamic order through challenging the status quo within the Islamic states, and through establishing a transnational network of contacts.

The question has, however, arisen whether the democratisation of Muslim societies would necessarily reduce terrorism and prevent fresh recruits to the terrorist outfits. Vermont University Professor Gregory Gause holds the view that in the absence of data available showing a strong relationship between democracy and absence or reduction of terrorism, the phenomenon appears to stem from factors other than regime type. He argues that since the al-Qaedists are not fighting for democracy but for the establishment of what they believe to be a purist version of an Islamic state, there is no reason to believe that a tidal wave of democracy would wash away terrorist activities.

Some Middle East experts have suggested that as the root cause of al-Qaeda lie in poverty and educational deficiencies in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, for example, caused by the authoritarian nature of the rulers, the terrorist menace could have been better tackled through political reform.

But a counter argument proffered by liberal thinker Paul Berman states that this approach may not succeed as al-Qaeda ideology and radical Islam are driven by a fear and hatred of liberal Islam which they see as a "hideous schizophrenia" of the West that divides the state from religion and promotes individual freedom.

A similar strand of argument finds that modernity rather than democracy should be used as the most important tool to fight global terrorism. Since modernity involves more than improved material conditions and entails a transformation in beliefs and philosophies, al-Qaedists, with their narrow interpretation of religious dogmas interspersed with voyeuristic attractions and/or fearful retribution, would lose their way in the maze of diasporic struggle for identity.

But then again it has also been argued that al-Qaedist appeal is not due to lack of modernity in the Islamic society, but due to its excess which in the view of so-called purists is instrumental in contributing to social "degeneration" of the western culture, having contagion-effect on Muslim societies.

The continuing insurgency in Iraq is a case in point. Despite American assertion to the effect that the insurgents are mainly foreigners, the insurgents are by and large Iraqi Arab Sunnis who are fighting against being dispossessed, and now the list of their grievances has been added to by the new constitution rejected by the Sunnis (to be put to a country wide referendum in mid-October). Sunni insurgency does not mean Iraqi opposition to democracy, as more than half of the Iraqis went to the polls in the January parliamentary elections, despite threats from the insurgents not to turn up to vote.

Historian Bernard Lewis once said the democracy is a peculiarly western way of conducting business which may or may not be suitable for others. Perhaps disproving Lewis' contention, the 2003 Pew Global Attitude Project found that a strong majority of those surveyed in Kuwait (83 percent), Jordan (68 percent), and Palestine (53 percent) was supportive of democracy. This position was further strengthened by large voter turn out in Algeria, Palestine, Kuwait, and Yemen elections. The point that comes out is that the Islamic world may be averse to accepting American policies, but not American values which quintessentially are not very different from western liberal values.

If Iraq can be taken as a barometer then many Islamic countries spurred on by the U.S. to speed up the process of democratisation are more likely than not to opt for some kind of Islamic rule. Gregory Gause's findings show that only in Morocco where more secular leftist parties have a long history and established presence, or in Lebanon where the Christian-Muslim dynamic determines electoral politics, pluralities of people surveyed in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Egypt, etc would support greater role for clergy in their political system.

The creation of a democratic political and social order in the Islamic world would not be easy. But vigilance would have to be maintained to see that civil liberties and rule of law prevails, that state failure does not give way to extremist religious ideology.