Why Islam Hates Democracy
Posted on 06/07/2002 8:31:08 AM PDT by mhking
Why Islam Hates Democracy
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 6, 2002
IN 1989, Iran’s Islamic tyrant Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa – a compulsory religious decree in Islam – that condemned Salman Rushdie to death. Rushdie had committed the crime of writing his book The Satanic Verses, which was, in Khomeini’s mind, slanderous to the Prophet Muhammad. In Islam, those who insult Allah or the Prophet are subject to the death penalty.
In 1992, Farag Foda, an Egyptian writer known for his secularist views, was shot dead outside his office in the heart of Cairo. This intellectual consistently called out for open dialogue with Islamic fundamentalists. The militant Islamic group al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya gleefully claimed not only responsibility, but justification. One of the gunmen, Abdul-Shafi Ahmad Ramadan, who was apprehended after the attack, boasted to police: "We had to kill him, because he attacked our beliefs."
Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, a prominent and distinguished Egyptian cleric, testified at the Foda murder trial in defense of the accused. He stated that Ramadan had done his Islamic duty because Foda had revealed his apostasy in opposing the establishment of an Islamic state, in rejecting Sharia Law (the law of Islam), and in questioning the unity of the state and religion.
The circumstances surrounding the death bounty on Rushdie’s head and the execution of Foda illuminate to us one serious and critical phenomenon: Islam’s inability to join the modern world.
Question: what happens in a society where "slandering" Muhammad, which is punishable by death, can entail the smallest disagreement with an Islamic law or even the hint of the support of a Western idea? How can a culture grow when a voiced social criticism of any kind or a reinterpretation of the Koran can be easily construed as slandering Muhammad and, therefore, be punished by death?
Answer: it can’t.
The tremendous success that has driven Western civilization is secularism. Islamic civilization sees secularism as anathema. In order to catch up with the West, Islam must embrace secularism, but embracing secularism would force Islam to sacrifice its Islamic character. This is why a reformed Islam is an oxymoron, because Islam cannot reform and still remain Islam.
The very meaning of Islam is the unquestioning submission to Allah and to Islamic law. The Koran is a body of doctrine that Muslims are expected to accept unquestioningly - without scrutinizing it for any flaws. Any notion that exists outside of the literal understanding of the Koran is regarded as being associated with sin at best and heresy at worst.
Islam is seen as perfect by Muslims. It is a total way of life. It doesn’t need any new ideas or any legal revisions to complement any new learning or new needs of society. In fact, Islam regards even the suggestion of new ideas or legal revisions as being un-Islamic. And if something is un-Islamic, it could be construed as being slanderous to Muhammad. And guess what happens next?
The use of the human faculty of reason itself, upon which the Western Enlightenment was based, is considered to be a form of heresy in Islam. This is why literacy, science and mathematics have often been regarded by the ulama (the scholars in Islam) as a threat to Islam.
It doesn’t really take a rocket scientist, therefore, to figure out why, throughout its long history of being repeatedly overwhelmed by foreign invaders, foreign rule, and foreign influences, the Arab world has absorbed absolutely nothing from the outside world. Self-insulated, Islam is intrinsically resistant to change.
In the Islamic Arab world, any foreign idea is heavily suspect. Any Western notion is automatically associated with evil. Thus, if the infidels say that an object will fall because of the laws of gravity, Muslims will suspect this to be a demonic lie. But if the same laws of gravity are sanctioned by a voice that is seen as representing authentic Islam, then such laws are automatically believed.
Individualism, creativity and originality are non-existent in the Arab world. And it is no mystery why the worlds of competition and commerce have spawned economic success stories in places like Japan and other Pacific societies in the post-WWII era, while the Arab world has been ridden with falling incomes, economic lethargy and social stagnation.
The bottom line is that the very notion of any new invention or innovation (Bida) is seen in Islam as being an offense to Allah. This is why, whenever anything even remotely close to a debate occurs in the Islamic Middle East, the accusation of Bida, which remains the most popular and effective accusation in the Arab world, immediately terminates the debate. The individual accused of Bida knows where the accusation can lead.
This reality might help explain why a functional democracy is nowhere to be found in the entire Arab world.
In the eyes of Islam, the very notion of democracy is demonized. In Islam, after all, Allah is sovereign, which means that humans constructing their own laws is sinful. The Koran and Sharia Law give Muslims all the laws they need. This is why Islam sees faith and politics as a single domain and why Farag Foda had to be killed for questioning it.
In Islam, democracy, as well as the very notion of the freedom of human conscience, represents a dangerous deviation from the Koran and the Sharia. Elections are seen as a form of blasphemy. They are Satan’s vehicle to destroy the Koran.
The Taliban in Afghanistan perfectly represented the logical extension of this despotic, impoverished and impotent way of Islamic life. They implemented Islamic belief in the most literal manner possible: everything that was prohibited in the Koran, and everything that was not mentioned in the Koran, simply became illegal.
Thus, aside from engaging in the typical oppression of women that is found in every Islamic Arab society, the Taliban banned television, film, books, photography, music (even at weddings) and sports. They also illegalized laughing.
The Taliban weren’t too concerned about the utter emptiness and insipidity they had left in the environment of the people they ruled. After all, there were always the passages from the Koran to memorize. And, as Mullah Hassan, the former Taliban governor of Kandahar, patiently explained: "Of course, we realize that people need some entertainment. We tell them to go to the parks and see the flowers. From this, they will absorb the essence of Islam."
Flowers are indeed beautiful. But building a prosperous and dynamic society, nurturing democratic institutions, fostering economic growth, and safeguarding the sacredness and freedom of the human conscience demands much more than just the aesthetic appreciation of flowers.
It demands what the West has and the Islamic world miserably lacks.
But how does the Islamic world gain it if it cannot shed itself of how and why Salman Rushdie must live the rest of his life in hiding – escaping the fate of Farag Foda?
Jamie Glazov holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies. He is the author of 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist and of Canadian Policy Toward Khruschev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002). Born in the U.S.S.R., Jamie is the son of prominent Soviet dissidents, and now resides in Vancouver, Canada. He writes the Dr. Progressive advice column for angst-ridden leftists at EnterStageRight.com. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.
Ahem, not quite, Jaime.
"It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States. . . . No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. . . . We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained." -- George Washington, in his first inaugural address (April 30, 1789), reprinted in The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1931-44),vol. 30, pp. 292-6."Religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and, therefore, that all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate, unless under color of religion any man disturb the peace, the happiness, or safety of society, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other." -- James Madison, ca. 1789, cited in Gaillard Hunt, James Madison and Religious Liberty (Washington: American Historical Association, Government Printing Office, 1902), p. 166.
The Koran does not say that any idiot can spout a self-decreed "fatwah" compulsory to all Islams.
Thus, at least two "Islamic" countries disowned, debarred, and expelled Osama and his "fatwa".
But maybe they just hate Clinton's version of 'Democracy'. Seems like when Bush, the elder, left office he handed on an Islam coalition. Obviously Democracy was not hated then. Maybe what Clinton did in his eight years might have something to do with the way Islam feels.
I am more inclined to the opinion that this success is more a result of free-market capitalism than religious orientation; its counterpart in theology is a religious laissez faire that in the U.S. has come to be regarded as "separation of church and state."
In Islam no such distinction exists. Islamic law subsumes what in the west is both the laws of God and civil law as well. In its infancy Islam was not incompatible with democracy or any other form of government - there were no imams, no ayatollahs, and every man's interpretation of the Koran was as good as anyone else's. That changed, and what came to be Doctors of Islam were not only its "church fathers," but its civil judges and arbiters as well.
The upshot was theocracy, and it is theocracy per se that is incompatible with democracy, IMHO - St. Augustine certainly thought so, as did other early fathers of the Christian church. Where the law of God is specific in either the Bible or the Koran there is no difficulty in interpretation; where it is not somebody must interpret, and here the law of God ineluctably becomes the law of men. Therein lies the problem.
To Islamists: So you want a Jihad, do you? Wellllllllllllllllllllllll, we'll give you a Jihad.
You're absolutely correct! The U.S. is a Republic!
Actually, give it a couple of weeks, and Pakistan will be a parking lot made of glass...
Actually, you are close.
For years, the Soviet Union funneled millions of dollars of arms and aid to various radical Islamic groups and regimes ("useful idiots") in its drive to foster worldwide terrorism on the road to world communist domination. In fact, if it wasn't for all that Soviet aid that went to these groups and regimes, there would probably not be problems with these groups anywhere near the scale of today. Yassir Arafat and his PLO was a major beneficiary of much of this aid (he is purported to have billions collecting interest in Swiss bank accounts), and if you study the history of Arafat and his murderous brigades, you will find that Arafat himself was never a fundamentalist Muslim, but a revolutionary Marxist. He merely utilized the underlying class hatreds to rally the fanatical Muslims under his terrorist umbrella. If you look at the photos of the intifada, you will see numerous red "hammer & sickle" flags side by side with "Palestinian" flags and green banners of Allah.
The Magna Carta and the Protestant Reformation changed all that. The roots of our nation's freedoms, steeped in the fundamental tenets of Christianity, are the underlying basis of our liberties. That is why the Aamerican War for Independence was not the "secularist" bloodbath like the French revolution.
That's it in a nutshell. Few people seem to understand this because most journalists don't understand this.
Little has changed since this was written for the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia:
In matters political Islam is a system of despotism at home and aggression abroad. The Prophet commanded absolute submission to the imâm. In no case was the sword to be raised against him. The rights of non-Moslem subjects are of the vaguest and most limited kind, and a religious war is a sacred duty whenever there is a chance of success against the "Infidel". Medieval and modern Mohammedan, especially Turkish, persecutions of both Jews and Christians are perhaps the best illustration of this fanatical religious and political spirit.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
"Life of Brian" anyone?
Brian: "I am not the Messiah!"
Bannerchaser: "The true Messiah denies his divinity."
Brian: "What!? What chance does that give me?"
And the beat goes on...
...and thanks for the headsup knight!
There seem to be great similarities between Japan prior to and during WWII and present Muslim attitudes.
The Western nations realized the importance of secularization of Japan (the emperor's denouncement of his divine nature in 1946.).
Political Correctness run amok seems to be depriving the Western nations of the ability to make a common sense judgment that was patently obvious 57 years ago. It's the religion, stupid.
"Slay the infidel and plunder his wealth!"
All of islam in one evil line. The mission and the reward.
Godspeed
Somehow, the West managed to survive him.
They can and do, however, hate the results of democracy.
Rational progress, unlimited intellectual and scientify inquiry, enlightened self-interest...
You know... all the things that lifted us all out of barbarism?
And it is curious, is it not, that since this occured when Islam was still self-isolated and convinced that there was "nothing of value to learn from the infidel", that they went out of their way to send missions to Europe to "study" the French Revolution", but not the American one?
There must be a greater affinity and attraction for the French technique, when they began to awaken to the fact that they were being left far behind, technically, socially and scientifically.
No it didn't.
We all know he referred to the "pure" variety: the Mobocracy.
Most historical thinkers, (including Cicero) agreed with him.
Plato, in his Republic, tells us that tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy. Historically, this process has occurred in three quite different ways. Before describing these several patterns of social change, let us state precisely what we mean by "democracy."
Pondering the question of "Who should rule," the democrat gives his answer: "the majority of politically equal citizens, either in person or through their representatives." In other words, equality and majority rule are the two fundamental principles of democracy. A democracy may be either liberal or illiberal.
Genuine liberalism is the answer to an entirely different question: How should government be exercised? The answer it provides is: regardless of who rules, government must be carried out in such a way that each person enjoys the greatest amount of freedom, compatible with the common good. This means that an absolute monarchy could be liberal (but hardly democratic) and a democracy could be totalitarian, illiberal, and tyrannical, with a majority brutally persecuting minorities. (We are, of course, using the term "liberal" in the globally accepted version and not in the American sense, which since the New Deal has been totally perverted.)
How could a democracy, even an initially liberal one, develop into a totalitarian tyranny? As we said in the beginning, there are three avenues of approach, and in each case the evolution would be of an "organic" nature. The tyranny would evolve from the very character of even a liberal democracy because there is, from the beginning on, a worm in the apple: freedom and equality do not mix, they practically exclude each other. Equality doesn't exist in nature and therefore can be established only by force. He who wants geographic equality has to dynamite mountains and fill up the valleys. To get a hedge of even height one has to apply pruning shears. To achieve equal scholastic levels in a school one would have to pressure certain students into extra hard work while holding back others.
The first road to totalitarian tyranny (though by no means the most frequently used) is the overthrow by force of a liberal democracy through a revolutionary movement, as a rule a party advocating tyranny but unable to win the necessary support in free elections. The stage for such violence is set if the parties represent philosophies so different as to make dialogue and compromise impossible. Clausewitz said that wars are the continuation of diplomacy by other means, and in ideologically divided nations revolutions are truly the continuation of parliamentarism with other means. The result is the absolute rule of one "party" which, having finally achieved complete control, might still call itself a party, referring to its parliamentary past, when it still was merely apart of the diet.
A typical case is the Red October of 1917. The Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party could not win the elections in Alexander Kerenski's democratic Russian Republic and therefore staged a coup with the help of a defeated, marauding army and navy, and in this way established a firm socialistic tyranny. Many liberal democracies are enfeebled by party strife to such an extent that revolutionary organizations can easily seize power, and sometimes the citizenry, for a time, seems happy that chaos has come to an end. In Italy the Marcia su Roma of the Fascists made them the rulers of the country. Mussolini, a socialist of old, had learned the technique of political conquest from his International Socialist friends and, not surprisingly, Fascist Italy was the second European power, after Laborite Britain (and long before the United States) to recognize the Soviet regime.
The second avenue toward totalitarian tyranny is "free elections." It can happen that a totalitarian party with great popularity gains such momentum and so many votes that it becomes legally and democratically a country's master. This happened in Germany in 1932 when no less than 60 per cent of the electorate voted for totalitarian despotism: for every two National Socialists there was one international socialist in the form of a Marxist Communist, and another one in the form of a somewhat less Marxist Social Democrat. Under these circumstances liberal democracy was doomed, since it had no longer a majority in the Reichstag. This development could have been halted only by a military dictatorship (as envisaged by General von Schleicher who was later murdered by the Nazis) or by a restoration of the Hohenzollerns (as planned by Brüning). Yet, within the democratic and constitutional framework, the National Socialists were bound to win.
How did the "Nazis" manage to win in this way? The answer is simple: being a mass movement striving for a parliamentary majority, they singled out unpopular minorities (the smaller, the better) and then rallied popular support against them. The National Socialist Workers' Party was "a popular movement based on exact science" (Hitler's words), militating against the hated few: the Jews, the nobility, the rich, the clergy, the modern artists, the "intellectuals," categories frequently overlapping, and finally against the mentally handicapped and the Gypsies. National Socialism was the "legal revolt" of the common man against the uncommon, of the "people" (Volk) against privileged and therefore envied and hated groups. Remember that Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler called their rule "democratic" - demokratiya po novomu, democrazia organizzata, deutsche Demokratie-but they never dared to call it "liberal" in the worldwide (non--American) sense.
Carl Schmitt, in his 93rd year, analyzed this evolution in a famous essay entitled "The Legal World Revolution": this sort of revolution - the German Revolution of 1933 simply comes about through the ballot and can happen in any country where a party pledged to totalitarian rule gains a relative or absolute majority and thus takes over the government "democratically. " Plato gave an account of such a procedure which fits, with the fidelity of a Xerox copy, the constitutional transition in Germany: there is the "popular leader" who takes to heart the interest of the "simple people," of the "ordinary, decent fellow" against the crafty rich. He is widely acclaimed by the many and builds up a body guard only to protect himself and, of course, the interests of the "people. "
In the Name of the People
Think of Hitler's SA and SS and also of the tendency to apply wherever possible the prefix Volk (people): Volkswagen (people's car), Volksempfänger (people's radio set), das gesunde Volksempfinden (the healthy sentiments of the people), Volksgericht (people's law court). Needless to say that this verbal policy continues in the "German Democratic Republic" where we see a "People's Police," a "People's Army," while Moscow's satellite states are called "People's Democracies."
All this implies that in earlier times only the elites had a chance to govern and that now, at long last, the common man is the master of his destiny able to enjoy the good things in life! It matters little that the realities are quite different. A very high-ranking Soviet official recently said to a European prince: "Your ancestors exploited the people, claiming that they ruled by the Grace of God, but we are doing much better, we exploit the people in the name of the people."
Then there is the third way in which a democracy changes into a totalitarian tyranny. The first political analyst who foresaw this hitherto-never-experienced kind of evolution was Alexis de Tocqueville. He drew an exact and frightening picture of our Provider State (wrongly called Welfare State) in the second volume of his Democracy in America, published in 1835; he spoke at length about a form of tyranny which he could only describe, but not name, because it had no historic precedent. Admittedly, it took several generations until Tocqueville's vision became a reality.
He envisaged a democratic government in which nearly all human affairs would be regulated by a mild, "compassionate" but determined government under which the citizens would practice their pursuit of happiness as "timid animals," losing all initiative and freedom. The Roman Emperors, he said, could direct their wrath against individuals, but control of all forms of life was out of the question under their rule. We have to add that in Tocqueville's time the technology for such a surveillance and regulation was insufficiently developed. The computer had not been invented and thus his warnings found little echo in the past century.
Tocqueville, a genuine liberal and legitimist, had gone to America not only because he was concerned with trends in the United States, but also on account of the electoral victory of Andrew Jackson, the first Democrat in the White House and the man who introduced the highly democratic Spoils System, a genuine invitation to corruption. The Founding Fathers, as Charles Beard has pointed out, hated democracy more than Original Sin. But now a French ideology, only too familiar to Tocqueville, had started to conquer America.
This portentous development lured the French aristocrat to the New World where he wanted to observe the global advance of "democratism," in his opinion and to his dismay bound to penetrate everywhere and to end in either anarchy or the New Tyranny - which he referred to as "democratic despotism." The road to anarchy is more apt to be taken by South Europeans and South Americans (and it usually terminates in military dictatorships in order to prevent total dissolution), whereas the northern nations, while keeping all democratic appearances, tend to founder in totalitarian welfare bureaucracy. The lack of a common political philosophy is more conducive to the development of outright revolutions in the South where civil wars tend to be "the continuation of parliamentarism with other (and more violent) means," while the North is rather given to evolutionary processes, to a creeping increase of slavery and a decrease of personal freedom and initiative. This process can be much more paralyzing than a mere personal dictatorship, military or otherwise, without an ideological and totalitarian character. The Franco and Salazar regimes and certain Latin American authoritarian governments, all mellowing with the years, are good examples.
Slouching Toward Servitude
Tocqueville did not tell us just how the gradual change toward totalitarian servitude can come about. But 150 years ago he could not exactly foresee that the parliamentary scene would produce two main types of parties: the Santa Claus parties, predominantly on the Left, and the Tighten-Your-Belt parties, more or less on the Right. The Santa Claus parties, with presents for the many, normally take from some people to give to others: they operate with largesses, to use the term of John Adams. Socialism, whether national or international, will act in the name of "distributive justice," as well as "social justice" and "progress," and thus gain popularity. You don't, after all, shoot Santa Claus. As a result, these parties normally win elections, and politicians who use their slogans are effective vote-getters.
The Tighten-Your-Belt parties, if they unexpectedly gain power, generally act more wisely, but they rarely have the courage to undo the policies of the Santa parties. The voting masses, who frequently favor the Santa parties, would retract their support if the Tighten-Your--Belt parties were to act radically and consistently. Profligates are usually more popular than misers. In fact, the Santa Claus parties are rarely utterly defeated, but they sometimes defeat themselves by featuring hopeless candidates or causing political turmoil or economic disaster.
A politicized Saint Nicholas is a grim taskmaster. Gifts cannot be distributed without bureaucratic regulation, registration, and regimentation of the entire country. Countless strings are attached to the gifts received from "above." The State interferes in all domains of human existence - education, health, transportation, communication, entertainment, food, commerce, industry, farming, building, employment, inheritance, social life, birth, and death.
There are two aspects to this large-scale interference: statism and egalitarianism, yet they are intrinsically connected since to regiment society perfectly, you must reduce people to an identical level. Thus, a "classless society" becomes the real aim, and every kind of discrimination must come to an end. But, discrimination is intrinsic to a free life, because freedom of will and choice is a characteristic of man and his personality. If I marry Bess instead of Jean, I obviously discriminate against Jean; if I employ Dr. Nishiyama as a teacher of Japanese instead of Dr. O'Hanrahan, I discriminate against the latter, and so forth. (One should not be surprised if an opera house that rejects a 4-foot tall Bambuti singer for the role of Siegfried in Wagner's "Ring" is accused of racism!)
There is, in fact, only either just or unjust discrimination. Yet, egalitarian democracy remains adamant in its totalitarian policy. The popular pastime of modern democracies of punishing the diligent and thrifty, while rewarding the lazy, improvident, and unthrifty, is cultivated via the State, fulfilling a demo-egalitarian program based on a demo-totalitarian ideology.
Democratic tyranny, evolving on the sly as a slow and subtle corruption leading to total State control, is thus the third and by no means rarest road to the most modern form of slavery.
Bump to a great post #46. A sage like K-L literally blows a blowhard like Glazov---who doesn't even know the meaning of the language he is using, or, if he does chooses not to show it for fear of offending the sensibilities of the suckers--off the playing field.
It's amazing how sterile, how thoroughly dessicated our political polemics are these days. What is the Mongolian name for a long period of extreme drought alternating with severe winters? Dzud, I think it is.
We are living in a very dzudish age......
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