"A Democratic Islam?" in Jerusalem Post

A Democratic Islam?

by Daniel Pipes Jerusalem Post April 17, 2008
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/5517

There's an impression that Muslims suffer disproportionately from the rule
of dictators, tyrants, unelected presidents, kings, emirs, and various
other strongmen – and it's accurate. A careful analysis by Frederic L.
Pryor of Swarthmore College in the Middle East Quarterly ("Are Muslim
Countries Less Democratic?") concludes that "In all but the poorest
countries, Islam is associated with fewer political rights."

The fact that majority-Muslim countries are less democratic makes it
tempting to conclude that the religion of Islam, their common factor, is
itself incompatible with democracy.

I disagree with that conclusion. Today's Muslim predicament, rather,
reflects historical circumstances more than innate features of Islam. Put
differently, Islam, like all pre-modern religions is undemocratic in
spirit. No less than the others, however, it has the potential to evolve
in a democratic direction.

Marsiglio of Padua

Such evolution is not easy for any religion. In the Christian case, the
battle to limit the Catholic Church's political role lasted painfully
long. If the transition began when Marsiglio of Padua published Defensor
pacis in the year 1324, it took another six centuries for the Church
fully to reconcile itself to democracy. Why should Islam's transition be
smoother or easier?

To render Islam consistent with democratic ways will require profound
changes in its interpretation. For example, the anti-democratic law of
Islam, the Shari'a, lies at the core of the problem. Developed over a
millennium ago, it presumes autocratic rulers and submissive subjects,
emphasizes God's will over popular sovereignty, and encourages violent
jihad to expand Islam's borders. Further, it anti-democratically
privileges Muslims over non-Muslims, males over females, and free persons
over slaves.

Mahmud Muhammad Taha

For Muslims to build fully functioning democracies, they basically must
reject the Shari'a's public aspects. Atatürk frontally did just that in
Turkey, but others have offered more subtle approaches. Mahmud Muhammad
Taha, a Sudanese thinker, dispatched the public Islamic laws by
fundamentally reinterpreting the Koran.

Atatürk's efforts and Taha's ideas imply that Islam is ever-evolving, and
that to see it as unchanging is a grave mistake. Or, in the lively
metaphor of Hassan Hanafi, professor of philosophy at the University of
Cairo, the Koran "is a supermarket, where one takes what one wants and
leaves what one doesn't want."

Islam's problem is less its being anti-modern than that its process of
modernization has hardly begun. Muslims can modernize their religion, but
that requires major changes: Out go waging jihad to impose Muslim rule,
second-class citizenship for non-Muslims, and death sentences for
blasphemy or apostasy. In come individual freedoms, civil rights,
political participation, popular sovereignty, equality before the law,
and representative elections.

Two obstacles stand in the way of these changes, however. In the Middle
East especially, tribal affiliations remain of paramount importance. As
explained by Philip Carl Salzman in his recent book, Culture and Conflict
in the Middle East, these ties create a complex pattern of tribal autonomy
and tyrannical centralism that obstructs the development of
constitutionalism, the rule of law, citizenship, gender equality, and the
other prerequisites of a democratic state. Not until this archaic social
system based on the family is dispatched can democracy make real headway
in the Middle East.

Globally, the compelling and powerful Islamist movement obstructs
democracy. It seeks the opposite of reform and modernization – namely,
the reassertion of the Shari'a in its entirety. A jihadist like Osama bin
Laden may spell out this goal more explicitly than an establishment
politician like Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but
both seek to create a thoroughly anti-democratic, if not totalitarian,
order.

Islamists respond two ways to democracy. First, they denounce it as
un-Islamic. Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna considered
democracy a betrayal of Islamic values. Brotherhood theoretician Sayyid
Qutb rejected popular sovereignty, as did Abu al-A'la al-Mawdudi, founder
of Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami political party. Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
Al-Jazeera television's imam, argues that elections are heretical.

Despite this scorn, Islamists are eager to use elections to attain power,
and have proven themselves to be agile vote-getters; even a terrorist
organization (Hamas) has won an election. This record does not render the
Islamists democratic but indicates their tactical flexibility and their
determination to gain power. As Erdoğan has revealingly explained,
"Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off."

Hard work can one day make Islam democratic. In the meanwhile, Islamism
represents the world's leading anti-democratic force.

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