Posted on 01/13/2004 6:26:46 PM PST by quidnunc
The New York Times reports that on January 4, "Delegates at a national meeting approved a new Constitution for Afghanistan on Sunday, concluding three weeks of often tense debate. Their decision heralded a new era of democracy after a quarter-century of war."
According to reports, Afghanistan will be renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in its effort to "combine democracy and religion." Elections will be held in six months within the newly-created democratic presidential system, including directly elected president and a two-chamber national assembly (one chamber will be the Wolsei Jirga or "house of people" and the other chamber will be Meshrano Jirga or "house of elders"). An independent judiciary has also been created.
Civil rights of religious minorities are afforded legal protection and women are given special consideration: women are recognized as equal citizens before the law and 25 percent of the seats in the national legislature are allocated for them.
Interestingly, the document is thoroughly Islamic: Islam has been declared the state's official and "sacred religion", no law can be contrary to the beliefs and practices of Islam, and in addition to the notable name change to the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan", the new flag contains a prayer niche and pulpit with two inscribed Islamic core ideological tenets, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his Prophet" and "Allah Akbar" ("God is Great").
Thus, the conflation of robust Islam with democracy seems to have created an "Islamic democracy." But is such a moniker a contradiction within its own definitional parameters? Traditional arguments have viewed Islam as diametrically opposed to democracy (arguments have even been extended to suggest that Islam and oppressive systems of government have a wide swathe of overlapping characteristics. To be certain, there are elements of both entities that resemble each other, i.e. are both "oppressive" in some form. However, a major Abrahamic religion and various theoretical systems of governments are so radically incomparable that any resemblance must be inept, largely contrived, coincidental if at all true, and likely of no substantive value). The Christian Science Monitor summarizes the argument against combining Islam and democracy:
Islam, the argument goes, breeds a submissive attitude — not only to Allah but also to political and religious leaders as well — that makes Muslims inherently incapable of participating in the rough-and-tumble world of electoral politics and of respecting the rights of minorities who follow a different religious or cultural path.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at dfn.org ...
No, Luke. It is an effort to "combine democracy and theocracy." I'm sure you see the difference.
Uh...is "legal protection" a euphemism for "dhimmitude"???
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