Democracy can't thrive where theocracy holds sway
- From: pluto <pluto@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 08 Apr 2006 18:21:32 +0800
Wednesday, April 5, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
Floyd J. McKay / guest columnist
Democracy can't thrive where theocracy holds sway
AP
Abdul Rahman talks to the press.
The good news for Abdul Rahman is that the government of Afghanistan won't
kill him for converting from Islam to Christianity.
The bad news is that he now wears a bull's-eye on his back, just another
way for some holy warrior to kill an infidel (apostate in his case) and win
a free trip to heaven.
Dismissal of the charges against Rahman should make no one celebrate. It
was pure power politics, forced on the Afghan courts by American and
European pressure. As soon as the last NATO boot has left Afghan soil,
Shariah courts will be back on top, with their bloodthirsty versions of the
Quran.
Does anyone believe otherwise?
Does anyone believe that the same fate is not in store for Iraq once
American troops have left the country?
A Muslim hadith, believed to be the words of Muhammad, appears to call for
death to apostates, and as late as 1992 an apostate was executed in Saudi
Arabia. Similar language may be found in the Bible (Deuteronomy), but
although a remarkable number of Christians insist the Bible is infallible,
few would kill on that basis. Many Afghans, however, appeared to approve
Rahman's sentence.
More than any other factor, the inextricable tangle of religion and
government makes the formation of a democracy in anything other than name a
very long shot in Afghanistan and a virtual impossibility in Iraq.
Modern democracies have at their heart the freedoms we have enshrined in
the First Amendment: freedom of worship, speech, press, assembly and the
right to petition government.
None are honored in a theocracy.
Freedom of worship is the first casualty of theocracy, whether in
13th-century Spain or 21st-century Iran.
As we found in the case of the Danish cartoons, freedom of speech or press
is the next casualty. Depictions of Muhammad are only one of the images
banned in Islamic lands and, once government takes a sectarian form,
criticism of that government is also at great risk. Iraq's newly free mass
media are already taking on sectarian trappings, reflecting the country's
drift toward a religious civil war.
Elections become a charade in a theocracy, as we have seen in Iran. If the
candidates who compete for your vote are in turn beholden to theocratic
leaders, your vote is just a choice between nondemocratic alternatives.
It is not impossible for an Islamic society to be a democracy, but there is
no case in history in which democracy has been imposed on an Islamic
country by force ? which is what we are trying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Installing democracy was not the given reason for invading either country,
which would seem to indicate that our leaders did understand the
limitations of democracy at gunpoint.
We invaded Afghanistan ? properly in my opinion ? to rout the Taliban and
their al-Qaida guests. But the neocons were so anxious to invade Iraq that
we left Afghanistan incomplete, Osama bin Laden remains at large, and the
Taliban are back with a vengeance.
The places in the Islamic world where democracy has stuck are places where
it emerged from indigenous leadership.
Turkey is the best example. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk installed a democratic
system that has lasted most of a century, in large part because it
specifically separates mosque and state.
Democracies cling tenuously to life in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Malaysia
despite Islamic pressures, because the roots are in the people. Some form
of true democracy might survive in Afghanistan because it is a real nation,
not lines drawn on a colonial British map to be fought over by rival
versions of the same religion. But Afghan-style democracy will reflect
Afghan-style Islam, harsh and cruel, male-dominated and medieval. Vote for
the tyrant of your choice.
After Iraq sorts itself out with more sectarian strife, it's much more
likely to look like Iran than Turkey and it's not at all likely to look
like anything the West would call democracy.
Religious domination of secular affairs has never worked and never will,
because the test of true belief will always become more rigid with each
election. If politics is the art of compromise, most religion is absolute
in its insistence on acceptance of certain dogma contained in its primary
literature (the Bible, the Quran). Anything short of full acceptance will
bring pressure from the true believers and their clergy.
If you don't think so, consider the parade of Republican presidential
hopefuls fawning and reversing positions to please the religious right in
this country. The mullahs are never satisfied short of absolute control.
Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington
University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him
at floydmckay@xxxxxxxxx
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
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