Islam and Democracy

I attended a speech at my university on Wednesday night that was quite thought provoking. The lecture was by a Saudi woman, an academic, who works at the Royal Institute for International Affairs and is one of their Middle East experts. Her name escapes me, but in the field, she's very well known and is especially famous here in the UK and in the Middle East. Well, 'famous' is a bit strong. She's a big name in the IR field and she's seen as a dangerous and destabilizing voice in Saudi Arabia. She is not allowed to return to her country of origin because of things she's said and written.

The topic of the lecture was something on the lines of "Can Islam and Democracy co-exist?" That's a misnomer of a title, however, as the talk was much more philosophical than that. Instead, her question was, are Western values (Judeo-Christian) that are implicit in Western democracy and human rights compatible with Islam in the Arabic world. Her knowledge base is quite deep having grown up in a male dominated culture of Saudi Arabia, studied in the UK and the US as well as taught in both the US and UK as well as Saudi Arabia, and having worked in a political aspect at the RIAA (think tanks are political by nature).

To answer her question, she proposed that Islam had to change, primarily because of the exclusion of women from politics, business, and social life. Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, nor are they allowed to leave the country without a male 'guardian'. It's an incredibly repressive place - a place where women who commit adultery are stoned to death, thieves get their hands chopped off, and other criminals (homosexuals) get beheaded publicly. She focused a great deal of attention on the cultural and societal impact of these traditions, rightly labeling them "barbaric", "medieval", and "ossified". All of which, it should be noted, is essentially sacriledge to large sections of the Muslim world as those practices are lifted straight from the Koran. There was a considerable amount of palpable anger in the room from the male Arabic Muslims. I was not the only one who felt it. My colleagues felt it as well. It left us with the sense that violence was only a stones throw away.

Anyway, when the topic finally turned political (although I'd have to say any discussion of religion is necessarily political but that's just my personal cynicism I suppose), I found her argument weakened to the point of naivete. See, this woman, brilliant and brave (I likened her to the Saudi Susan Faludi) is an anthropologist. She's not a political science. And that became very clear when she answered questions that were political and economic in nature.

Case in point: she strongly argued that if the Arab world does not begin to grant rights to women and the underprivileged, there will be an uprising and eventual revolution against the dictatorships that currently run the Arab world. That argument, to me, is indicative of a fundamental lack of understanding of what causes revolutions. Classical revolution theory suggests that revolts occur for economic reasons, or that economic motivations are the strongest motivations. It's my argument that the Arab oil regimes have actually been quite clever in how they control and dominate their societies. Not only do they appeal to an outdated, medieval view of Islam for cultural and societal roles, but they buy out opposition with free everything - health care, housing, education, etc. Not only that, the economic disparity that exists in places like Saudi Arabia is primarily present with imported labor. Saudis generally have it pretty good. The government takes care of them, gets them decent services, ensures they have a fairly good lifestyle. It's the Filipinos, Indonesians, and Malaysians that have it the worst and they have no political rights or interests in Saudi Arabia because they're not citizens.

Here's my point: When the middle classes are mostly contented economically, it's exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to generate momentum for political violence aimed at changing the system of government. What is much more likely is a slow, long term transition from repression to openness and inclusion of women in various aspects of public life. In fact, it's my hypothesis that the transition will occur for economic reasons. It's a simple fact that oil will not last forever and that the world is slowly (like the heroin addict) shifting away from its reliance on fossil fuels. The Arab world is pretty much reliant on oil as its only source of industry meaning that they have strong incentives to diversify their economies if they want to maintain long-term growth. They can't do it without women. In Saudi Arabia alone, 95% of women university graduates are unemployed. As the economic necessity grows, the country will be forced to include that burgeoning sector of intellectuals in economic, social, and political spheres just to compete in the global economy. It's a long process, but in the end, Islam changes or the Middle East becomes irrelevant economically.

Ok, that's Stage 1 of rant mode. Stage 2 is on a very different level. Also discussed, although briefly, was the role of Islam in democracy. But I want to generalize. It's not just Islam, it's religion. The central question, as I see it, is one of secularism. Is it possible for non-secular democracies to survive? Can religion and the democratic process be combined successfully?

It's my presumption that secular democracy is the strongest, most effective form but that's not an unconditional position. Israel, for example, appears to be an effective, functioning democracy that has clearly integrated its theocratic position into its constitution and political processes. In ethnically homogeneous states, I believe it can be done.

But it shouldn't be done in Islamic states. I base this conclusion on two factors: the success of Turkey and the Iraqi constitution.

Turkey is the only Islamic country in the world with a secular democracy. Islam is fundamentally important to the people and the country, but it is not formally integrated with the government. And, not surprisingly, Turkey is one of the most stable democracies of the "developing" world. While not yet a fully first world country, political stability in Turkey has vastly aided the country's long term development to the point that there is talk of Turkey joining the EU. This example just proves that it can be done.

Iraq is the flip side. Obviously, we won't know the long-term situation there for 10 or 20 years, but I have almost no optimism about it. The constitution, which I read most of the other day, is fundamentally flawed to the point that I'm actively hoping that it gets rejected. Democracy, at a basic level, is ordered by the rule of law. Things have to be firmly established in constitutions to ensure basic rights and responsibilities. Sadly, the Iraqi constitution starts off wrong and only gets worse.

Case in point, the constitution clearly states at the beginning that "Islam is a source of law" and that "no law can be passed that violates Islam". Question: What's Islam? Last I checked there were a variety of different types of Islam. Writing that in a constitution is akin to writing "Christianity is a source of law..." From the start, I think the effort is doomed because it doesn't specify which interpretation or sect of Islam and there is no global voice for Islam like there is for the Catholic Church. Instead, it's likely that those phrases will be used depending on who actually has power in the country. Radical fundamentalists could realistically use the constitution to institute a Taliban style society claiming it's a democratically supported proposition.

Beyond that however, most of the rights outlined in the constitution are conditional. Free speech, press, etc. are all conditioned on "morality" yet another term not defined in the constitution. And this is the specter of integrating religion into democracy or Islam into Western civilization. One thing we know is that our rights (as Americans) are inviolable. They are not conditional rights. That's a central premise of the American experiment and it's not being replicated in the Muslim world. To condition those rights on something as indefinable as 'morality' essentially means those rights don't exist unless you're speaking praise for the governing coalition.

Even still, some people could argue that conditional rights is just the Arab view and that my ideas are just neo-colonialism wrapped in sheep's clothing. I say bollocks. To answer the question, is it possible to successfully integrate Islam and democracy, one has to define 'success'. My argument is that pseudo-democracies are not 'successes' no matter how much George Bush wants them to be.

What does all this mean? Well, for Iraq, not too much. It doesn't look like the constitution is going to pass anyway, so it's likely that violence will continue with the prospect of all out civil war looming larger. For the greater Arab world, I think we'll see greater economic integration and opening of their countries to the West out of economic necessity. This will bring greater freedom and prosperity for the underprivileged (women, homosexuals, etc) but I am not optimistic that we'll see sweeping changes across those countries. This is a topic for a later discussion, but the great gamble of the West over the last 30+ years was that economic integration with repressive governments could liberalize those governments and result in improved human rights records. I'd say the jury is still out on that one.