Islam & Democracy

[Isiah 2:4]

Islam and democracy: the impossible union

Iranian Muslim Amir Taheri says his faith cannot embrace western liberalism because our notions of equality are antithetical to the basis of Islam

In recent weeks there has been much soul-searching, in the Islamic world and among the wider Muslim diaspora about whether Islam is compatible with democracy. This sparked a debate hosted by Intelligence2, a forum I took part in last week. As an Iranian now living in a liberal democracy, I would like to explain why Islam and democracy are essentially incompatible.
To understand a civilisation it is important to comprehend the language that shapes it. There was no word in any of the Muslim languages for democracy until the 1890s. Even then the Greek word entered Muslim vocabulary with little change: democrasi in Persian, dimokraytiyah in Arabic, demokratio in Turkish.

Democracy is based on one fundamental principle: equality.

The Greek word isos is used in more than 200 compound nouns, including isoteos (equality), isologia (equal or free speech) and isonomia (equal treatment).

Again we find no equivalent in any of the Muslim languages. The words we have such as barabari in Persian and sawiyah in Arabic mean juxtaposition or separation.

Nor do we have a word for politics. The word siassah, now used as a synonym for politics, initially meant whipping stray camels into line. (Sa’es al-kheil is a person who brings back lost camels to the caravan.) The closest translation may be: regimentation.

Nor is there mention of such words as government and the state in the Koran. Early Muslims translated numerous ancient Greek texts, but never those related to political matters.

The idea of equality is unacceptable to Islam. For the non-believer cannot be the equal of the believer. Even among the believers only those who subscribe to the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, known as the “people of the book” (Ahl el-Kitab), are regarded as fully human. Here, too, there is a hierarchy, with Muslims at the top.

Non-Muslims can, and have often been, treated with decency, but never as equals. There is a hierarchy even for animals and plants. Seven animals and seven plants will assuredly go to heaven while seven others of each will end up in hell.

Democracy means the rule of the demos, the common people, or what is now known as popular or national sovereignty. In Islam, however, power belongs only to God: al-hukm l’illah. The man who exercises that power on Earth is known as Khalifat al-Allah, the regent of God. Even then the Khalifah, or Caliph, cannot act as legislator. The law has already been spelt out and fixed forever by God.

The only task that remains is its discovery, interpretation and application. That, of course, allows for a substantial space in which different styles of rule could develop.

But the bottom line is that no Islamic government can be democratic in the sense of allowing the common people equal shares in legislation. Islam divides human activities into five categories from the permitted to the sinful, leaving little room for human interpretation, let alone ethical innovations.

To say that Islam is incompatible with democracy should not be seen as a disparagement of Islam. On the contrary, many Muslims would see it as a compliment because they believe that their idea of rule by God is superior to that of rule by men, which is democracy.

The great Persian poet Rumi pleads thus:

Oh, God, do not leave our affairs to us
For, if You do, woe is us.

Islamic tradition holds that God has always intervened in the affairs of men, notably by dispatching 124,000 prophets or emissaries to inform the mortals of his wishes and warnings.

Many Islamist thinkers regard democracy with horror.

The late Ayatollah Khomeini called democracy “a form of prostitution”, because he who gets the most votes wins the power that belongs only to God.

Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian who has emerged as the ideological mentor of Salafists (fundamentalists who want to return to the idyllic Islamic state of their forebears) spent a year in the United States in the 1950s. He found “a nation that has forgotten God and been forsaken by Him; an arrogant nation that wants to rule itself”.

Last year Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of the leading theoreticians of today’s Islamist movement, published a book in which he warned that the real danger to Islam did not come from American tanks and helicopter gunships in Iraq but from the idea of democracy and the government of the people.

Maudoodi, another of the Islamist theoreticians now fashionable, dreamt of a political system in which humans would act as automatons in accordance with rules set by God.

He said that God has arranged man’s biological functions in such a way that their operation is beyond human control. For our non-biological functions, notably our politics, God has also set rules that we have to discover and apply once and for all so that our societies can be on autopilot, so to speak.

The late Saudi theologian, Sheikh Muhammad bin Ibrahim al-Jubair, a man I respected though seldom agreed with, believed that the root cause of contemporary ills was the spread of democracy.

“Only one ambition is worthy of Islam,” he liked to say, “to save the world from the curse of democracy: to teach men that they cannot rule themselves on the basis of man-made laws. Mankind has strayed from the path of God, we must return to that path or face certain annihilation.”

Those who claim that Islam is compatible with democracy should know that they are not flattering Muslims.

In the past 14 centuries Muslims have, on occasions, succeeded in creating successful societies without democracy. And there is no guarantee that democracy never produces disastrous results (after all, Hitler was democratically elected).

The fact that almost all Muslim states today can be rated as failures or, at least, underachievers, is not because they are Islamic but because they are ruled by corrupt and despotic elites that, even when they proclaim an Islamist ideology, are, in fact, secular dictators.

Socrates ridiculed the myth of democracy by pointing out that men always call on experts to deal with specific tasks, but when it comes to the more important matters concerning the community, they allow every Tom, Dick and Harry an equal say.

In response his contemporary, Protagoras, one of the original defenders of democracy, argued: “People in the cities, especially in Athens, listen only to experts in matters of expertise, but when they meet for consultation on the political art, ie of the general question of government, everybody participates.”

Traditional Islamic political thought is closer to Socrates than to Protagoras. The common folk, al-awwam, are regarded as “animals”. The interpretation of the divine law is reserved only for the experts.

Political power, like many other domains including philosophy, is reserved for the “khawas” who, in some Sufi traditions, are even exempt from the rituals of the faith.

The “common folk”, however, must do as they are told either by the text and tradition or by fatwas (edicts) issued by the experts. Khomeini used the word “mustazafeen” (the feeble ones) to describe the general population.

Islam is about certainty (iqan) while democracy is about doubt. Islam cannot allow people to do as they please, even in the privacy of their bedrooms, because God is always present, all-hearing and all-seeing.

There is consultation in Islam: wa shawerhum fil amr (and consult them in matters). But, here, consultation is about specifics only, never about the overall design of society.

In democracy there is a constitution that can be amended or changed. The Koran, however, is the immutable word of God, beyond amendment or change.

This debate is not an easy one to have, because Islam has become an issue of political controversy in the West.

On the one hand we have Islamophobia, a particular affliction of those who blame Islam for all the ills of our world. Some Muslims regard any criticism of Islam as Islamophobia.

On the other hand we have Islamoflattery, which claims that everything good under the sun came from Islam. (According to a recent BBC documentary on Islam, even cinema was invented in the 9th century by a Muslim lens maker in Baghdad, named Abu-Hufus!)

This is often practised by a new generation of the Turques de profession, westerners who are prepared to apply the rules of critical analysis to everything under the sun except Islam.

They think they are doing Islam a favour. They are not.

Depriving Islam of critical scrutiny is bad for Islam and Muslims, and ultimately dangerous for the whole world. There are 57 nations in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Not one is yet a democracy.

We should not allow the everything-is-equal-to-everything-else fashion of postmodernist multiculturalism and political correctness to prevent us from acknowledging differences and even incompatibilities in the name of a soggy consensus. If we are all the same, how can we have a dialogue of civilisations?

Muslims should not be duped into believing that they can have their cake and eat it. Muslims can build successful societies provided they treat Islam as a matter of personal, private belief and not as a political ideology that seeks to monopolise the public space shared by the whole of humanity and dictate every aspect of individual and community life. Islam is incompatible with democracy.

Sunday Times (UK)

[Isiah 2:4]

There you have it, straight from the horses mouth. If anyone was disillusioned into thikning we can overcome the threat of Islamofacism by encouraging democracy - it is not going to work. we cannot do it. Only Islam itself we reform or change, and if it ever does, it wont become anyhting like the democracy we have in the Christian world.

We should stop trying to impose our values on others. Lets fight terrorism, and clamp down on the illegal Arms trade. Lets defend our societies and values. Get rid of the terrorist threat, and then if the Islamic world doesn't want to progress or change, leave em to it. Why should we spend billions of our capital trying to help them? Let them fight, squabble and wade in their own misery and squalor.

[Isiah 2:4]

Comment: Minette Marrin: Children are at the heart of the battle for Islam’s soul

Last week the home secretary boldly urged Muslim leaders in Britain to increase efforts to restrain the extremists in their communities whose teachings inflame racial tension.
A paper published by the Home Office said Britain needs “to break out of the cycle of ignorance and prejudice that fracture communities”. David Blunkett singled out Muslim leaders and called on them as well as the media to deal with the “myths and misrepresentation” that divide communities.

The day before, a public forum called Intelligence2 had held a debate in London to an audience of 700 on the motion that “Islam is incompatible with democracy”. The motion was carried, the majority swayed I suspect by some powerful arguments from Amir Taheri, a distinguished Muslim journalist. After heated debate it became clear how difficult it is, even for well meaning and well informed people, to deal with myths and misrepresentations.

There are serious problems in this country between some British Muslims and the rest of the population and a better accommodation must urgently be found. Some Muslims, particularly the less educated, find it hard to integrate here and to become British in ways that matter. Instead there are too many who are indifferent, contemptuous or enraged to the point of violence and conspiracy.

This sense of disengagement seems to be more marked and growing among the young, according to surveys. Hence the new insistence on the hijab, for example. (Of course there are many who have settled into being British successfully; they are not the problem but part of the solution.) At the same time there is suspicion and anger among the non-Muslim majority, among the educated as well as the uneducated. Anybody who dismisses this as Islamophobia is refusing to face the problem.

Here public discussion is long overdue, however provocative. And it certainly is provocative to suggest that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Belief in the virtue of democracy is a central article of faith in the West, so deeply rooted as to be hardly noticed. Anyone who dissents from belief in democracy is, in western terms, apostate (however much westerners try to avoid that sort of talk). It is to deny those western absolute values — equal rights, equality under the law and the sovereignty of the people.

Of the 57 Islamic states in the world today hardly any have a full democracy in the western sense. Many others are shameful tyrannies. This does not by itself demonstrate that Islam is incompatible with democracy — there could be many historical explanations for that, including interference by western colonialists — but it is suggestive.

Islam, according to the winning debating team, has traditionally not had the language for discussion about democracy. There was no word for democracy itself in Muslim languages until modern times nor even apparently a word for equality. Democracy depends on an idea of equality but, they argued, in Koranic teaching the idea of equality is unacceptable; an unbeliever cannot be equal to a believer. There are other inequalities. To this day Muslim women are not the equals of Muslim men, strictly speaking.

One of the speakers drew up an Islamic hierarchy, from Muslim free men at the top, followed by Muslim slaves and Muslim women, then Jews, then Christians and so on down. There is even a hierarchy for animals and plants. This does not mean inferior beings are to be treated badly, merely differently, according to Koranic teaching. Muslims have shown at some stages in their civilisation far greater tolerance (although not equality) to their subject infidels than have Christians.

However, sovereignty cannot be given to the people under Islam. That would be blasphemy because sovereignty belongs to God and he has laid down the law and the Koran is the last word.

If correct, these are all knock-down arguments. However, they are difficult to square with my experience of Muslim friends and acquaintances — pretty much secularised I suppose — who do not appear to think like this at all and who are clearly thoroughly at home in western culture. The problem seems to be not Islam but religion, and not just religion but religion in its most fundamentalist, literal-minded, proselytising forms....

....There seems to be a trajectory in most religions — I won’t say development or progress, although that is my bias — from early dogmatic fundamentalism, through some sort of reformation and enlightenment to a period of tolerance made possible by a trickling away of faith — that long withdrawing roar of the sea of faith of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach — so that in the end there are no articles of belief for which anyone is prepared any longer to kill or die...

...Believers in any faith, Muslim or other, hotly resist such “reform” and fight for their own “reform”, a return to the early certainties, like America’s Christian fundamentalists. All religions have seen long battles between the literalists and those inclined to metaphorical interpretations, tending towards humanism and finally secularism...

...In the Muslim world today the literalists appear to be in the ascendant. In fact, however, among educated Muslims, particularly in the West, the metaphorists (or humanists) seem to be increasing. So much crucially depends, hard though it is for British post-Christians to understand, on the religious education of Muslim children here (and all across Europe)...

Blunkett should therefore take the advice of Lord Ahmed, the new Labour peer, and look as a matter of urgency into the training, recruitment and licensing of imams in Britain. The accommodation we all need is in their hands.

Sunday Times

[Mediocrates]

Well boy children at any rate. Sharia women are for the most part slaves and breeders. I'm waiting for the non-response when large segments of the education system are turned over to Islamic foundations and they stop allowing girls to go to school at all.

[Isiah 2:4]

Hmm. Yeh i agree about boys. But about schools. There shouldnt be any Relgious schools for compulsory education. Yeh colleges, seminaries, yeshivas whatever, when people are adults. Primary and secondary school should not be Religious. Relgion is for the home, the family and the community.

Things is in the UK the Education system was standardised and funded by the Chruch in the Victorian era. So there are still loads and loads of Christian schools, Catholic, Protestant and Non-Conformist. of course there are Jewish and some Islamic schools, but i say get rid of em all.

[RichardP]

Originally posted by Isiah 2:4
Hmm. Yeh i agree about boys. But about schools. There shouldnt be any Relgious schools for compulsory education. Yeh colleges, seminaries, yeshivas whatever, when people are adults. Primary and secondary school should not be Religious. Relgion is for the home, the family and the community.

Things is in the UK the Education system was standardised and funded by the Chruch in the Victorian era. So there are still loads and loads of Christian schools, Catholic, Protestant and Non-Conformist. of course there are Jewish and some Islamic schools, but i say get rid of em all.

Though, there are many parents of all faiths who are 'fighting' to get their children into a 'religious educational' environment. Why? Because, they feel that their children in the public system are being denied the bare rudiments of any moral teachings. Though, admittedly, it is the home, family and community which should bare the major responsibility.
I rue the day when people are denied their own religious schools. As I fear that religion or the practice of religion is being beaten to a pulp by the leftist mindset. That isn’t to say, that any religion is beyond reproach, because that’s obviously not the case.

[Lisa-loo]

Hi, my name is Julia, and I work for Children of Abraham with Lisa.

Basically, our organization seeks to promote dialogue between Jews and Muslims all over the world largely through blogging and forums like this one. Our forums discuss issues really similar to the ones talked about here -- lots of stuff about Islam and democracy, about how the world views muslims and about how muslims and jews can work together to resolve conflicts in Israel and trouble spots in the Middle East. The problem is that there are virutally no Jews contributing to the blogs, it's all Muslim voices. The participants in these discussions really want some Jewish opinions, as well as some more Muslim opinions, so I strongly suggest that people in this forum take the time to check us out. I think you could make some really useful contributions that would lead to some insightful discussions. Go to www.children-of-abraham.org and go to public forums. You can create a username or read/post as a guest. Hope to hear your voices!

[Mediocrates]

Lisa-loo I took a quick look @ your forum. I found the level of hostility very troublesome. I found that the ratio was about 90-10 Muslim to Jew. And as a result an awful lot of ignorance goes unchecked. I think you need a full time Jewish/Israeli etc. moderator or a contributor or two who can be fully engaged. I think if you want to promote peace you need to educate all of those people who come out with all sorts of (frankly) crazy racist hateful nonsense. Maybe it's an age thing - maybe most of the posters are teenagers. But at any rate you need first to educate before you can magically create cooperation.

[Lisa-loo]

Mediocrates,

Thanks for the message, the tone is quite different from your previous ones....I really appreciate that you understand what we're trying to do, and I take your suggestions to heart. It's hard to have successful cooperation without education first, you're right, but at the same time it's hard to educate someone about something they feel hostile towards. We're seeking to build a community where people can educate each other, as opposed to having education handed down to them from some anonymous higher source. Also, we believe that discussion provokes understanding, which provokes tolerance and eventually acceptance.

You're also right that the balance on the forum is not really a balance at all. This is where people like you come in. We really need the voices of the people on this forum on our website. I strongly believe that there are people who are not preaching hateful things, who genuinely want to have progressive discussion, and are looking for partners. There is a real opportunity for peace if we keep working at it. We're not saying we're perfect at all, but we're saying this is a start. And we want you to help.

[Arjunn]

yes, i agree, islam is not compatible with democracy as the islamic countries in todays world show us quite clearly

[Aziz]

idiot.
just becuz there are dictatorships in our countries doesn't mean Islam is not compatible.really smart statement.
Islam is not compatible with a liberal democracy.
I know what you will say after this so save it.
oh BTW,what about the Hamas?I know Palestine is not state but still.

[MGB8]

There is "democracy" and there is "Democracy." The thread was "Democracy" - which includes the basic principles underpinning "one man one vote" of equal rights (regardless of sex, race or religion), rights of the minority, etc. Sharia is not compatible with the latter. For example, KW's Israel would be a democracy, but not a Democracy.

[CLL1709]

idiot.
just becuz there are dictatorships in our countries doesn't mean Islam is not compatible.really smart statement.
Islam is not compatible with a liberal democracy.
I know what you will say after this so save it.
oh BTW,what about the Hamas?I know Palestine is not state but still.

But still what, you that has no manners. Islam is absolutely the most perverted religion on the earth. It has no redeeming social value whatsoever. It demeans all women, all other belief systems and it totally incompatible with freedom and with all life on earth. What else is there to say about it? It proves it's perversion each and every day in every country where there are Islamic cells. It is a cancer inflicted on humanity by satan.

[golani]

idiot.
just becuz there are dictatorships in our countries doesn't mean Islam is not compatible.really smart statement.
Islam is not compatible with a liberal democracy.
I know what you will say after this so save it.
oh BTW,what about the Hamas?I know Palestine is not state but still.

As islam discriminates men from women
master from slave
muslim from non muslim
it is not compatible with democracy .

[karma]

As islam discriminates men from women
master from slave
muslim from non muslim
it is not compatible with democracy .

Islam is compatible with democracy it isn't compatible with our sick form of liberal kapitalism wich destroys our world.

Think about that!