Do Muslims deserve democracy?

What’s stopping democracy from taking root in Muslim countries? Abdelwahab El-Affendi tackles a thorny issue.

To gain a revealing insight into why many Muslim countries fail to develop or sustain democratic systems, one has just to follow the news stories of recent times. Prominent among these was the vigorous campaign by Britain and its allies against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as he appeared increasingly intent on rigging the March general elections. Mugabe was vociferously criticized and threatened with sanctions, while the media seemed about to run out of loathsome epithets to bestow on the would-be dictator.

During the same period, however, Muslim leaders, whom nobody elected and compared to whom Mugabe is a saint, continue to be fêted in Western capitals or wooed in their own. Syrian President Bashar Asad even offered visiting American dignitaries the opportunity to ‘benefit from the Syrian experience in combating terrorism’, while the Tunisian Foreign Minister asked France during a recent visit to hand over ‘terrorists’ who have been given political asylum in Europe. These despots may thus be excused for seeing in the ruins of the World Trade Centre the reverse of what others saw in the collapse of the Berlin Wall: a vindication of their autocratic, even genocidal, methods for hanging on to power at any price.

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That the world loves muslim despots is a major factor in sustaining anti-democratic regimes

Western leaders have been effortlessly converted to the despots’ view that Muslims neither need nor deserve democracy. Intellectual analyses have emerged with a glorified recasting of common prejudices as ‘scientific’ revelations about why the Muslims were anti-democratic, have always been so and will forever remain thus. Instead of highlighting the brutality sustaining the incumbent regimes in power, these analysts blame the victims.

The weakness of civil society in Muslim countries is ascribed by some to cultural factors, rather than to the sheer ruthlessness of regimes that did not permit society any room to manoeuvre: no free trade unions, no real opposition, no free press, no tolerance of even a hint of dissent. What is rarely highlighted is the miracle of a stubborn civil society in countries like Indonesia where, after over 30 years of brutal military rule underwritten by generous external economic and diplomatic support, the determination of courageous pro-democracy activists succeeded in restoring democracy against heavy odds. The fact that the world loves Muslim despots is no doubt a major factor in sustaining the anti-democratic regimes in the Muslim world. Take the recent civil unrest in Argentina that accompanied its economic collapse. The idea of a military take-over to restore order was unthinkable. But in Pakistan, a minor crisis was exploited by the military to step into power. Both Argentina and Pakistan are heavily dependent on international support for their economy, which makes international backing for any military dictatorship absolutely crucial. This support was not forthcoming in the case of Argentina, but became readily available for Pakistan.

It is easy to exaggerate the international factor. Regimes such as those of in Iraq, Libya, Syria or Sudan maintain their ruthless hold on power without foreign support. But even in the face of sustained attempts at destabilization from abroad, foreign connections still play a role. Rentier states cannot survive if they do not find someone to sell oil to. The West, which has imposed sanctions on Iraq as ruthless as its regime, continues to buy Iraqi oil and has never stopped buying Libyan crude. More important, though, is the fact that the West did turn a blind eye to unbelievable atrocities in Iraq — including the use of chemical weapons against civilians and systematic liquidation of opponents — and Syria, guilty of genocidal destruction of entire cities and repeated massacres of civilians.

But why does the outside world not support democracy in Muslim countries?

There are some easy answers, especially in relation to the Middle East. Industrialized nations’ interests in cheap oil and the survival of Israel are better served by authoritarian regimes which will resist demands for a fairer share of oil revenues or for a fair deal for the Palestinians.

In other parts of the world, countries like Pakistan or Indonesia were more useful as Cold War allies under despotic regimes.

There are other factors at play, however. The Muslim world is deeply divided. The main divide is between those seeking a more central role for religion in public life and those opposed to this. The rising support for Islamists, and the divisions within Islamist trends, coupled with the capture of power by some Islamist groups in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan, has worsened the tensions and increased the worries of the dominant secular regimes. Since the Algerian democratic experiment of 1988-91 came within a whisker of putting Islamists in power through the ballot box, democracy became a dirty word in Arab political circles. The West swung decisively behind the autocrats, pleading concern for human rights and democracy’s long-term prospects.

High and dry

Students in Tunisia where democratic hopes are flourishing. Giacomo Pirozzi / Panos Pictures

Such bitter internal divisions within societies are hindering democracy. This serves as a reminder that although democracy in its normative sense has a long history as an ideal, democratic modes of governance have been notoriously unstable. In former times, including Classical Greece and Rome, consensual government could only really be maintained within small areas where face-to-face communication was the norm. In modern times it has become possible to stabilize democracies thanks to a number of factors including: improved communications, economic and educational empowerment of the masses and the development of effective institutions of governance and representation. But the wave of democratization that has swept over many parts of the world during the past two decades has left the Muslim world high and dry. It is the only region where despotism appears to thrive. Some analysts search for ‘cultural’ reasons for this anomaly. Democracy, some argue, is ‘alien to the Muslim mind’. Islam emphasizes conformity and obedience, and Muslim societies have failed to develop civil society institutions. Muslim societies remain excessively patriarchical and rigid, while Islam has proved ‘secularization-resistant’. Secularization is seen by these theorists as essential for democratisation. Others point to economic and social factors, such as low literacy rates, the state’s economic independence from society, and the weakness of civil organizations and of the middle class.

Whatever the ‘Muslim mind’ dictates, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are actively demanding democracy. And while it is true that economic, political and social factors make the fight for democracy a steep uphill struggle, yet in many Muslim countries courageous individuals have emerged to challenge, at great risk to themselves, the monopoly of power by dominant cliques.

In Syria, a burgeoning civil society movement is fighting to establish itself against heavy odds. In Egypt, members of the moderate Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as human-rights activists and journalists, are routinely hauled before military tribunals and summarily jailed. Political prisoners in Egypt are estimated to be as high as 30,000, down from double this figure in the mid-1990’s, and torture is routinely used.

Turkey is often cited as the only genuine democracy in the Muslim world. However, even if specifically Western models are adopted, it would be difficult to regard Turkey as a full democracy. Discrimination against ethnic minorities is both systematic and brutal, extending to denial of basic cultural rights, something which even Israel or apartheid South Africa did not do. Like Iran, Turkey imposes a state ideology which impinges on the most personal freedoms, such as what names individuals may choose for their children, what they could wear and what they could say in private or public.

A more credible contender could be Malaysia, which has strong social movements, Islamist parties and a vibrant multi-cultural society. In spite of its recent slide towards autocracy, it has remained a democracy since independence and appears to show how the Islamist-secular divide could be bridged.

Tunisia offers another example where the promise of democratization is apparent. Over the past few months, a vigorous and courageous democracy movement has emerged there, representing a broad and loose coalition of human-rights activists, media personalities, opposition politicians, and at least one senior judge. Protesters paid a heavy price for challenging the ruthless regime of General Zine El-Abine ben Ali, who came to power in a military coup in November 1987. Activists were sacked from jobs, banned from travel, imprisoned on trumped-up charges, harassed, denied medical treatment and had their phones disconnected. Some were beaten up or saw their families assaulted and harassed.

But Tunisia represents an important test case due to the emergence of a genuine pro-democracy movement, transcending the divisions within civil society between Islamist and secularist, Left and Right, men and women. All are agreed on one thing: they want pluralist democracy and they want it now.

Tunisia thus looks increasingly like the first Arab country where the democratic movement has achieved maturity and become unstoppable. Ironically, this is an indirect result of the success of the Government in achieving stability and relative economic prosperity. The highly educated and prosperous middle class in Tunisia could no longer tolerate leaders who have a tendency to treat them as children or colonized people.

To varying degrees Malaysia, Indonesia and Tunisia show how democracy could come to the Muslim world. In all these countries a broad alliance of democratic forces, which do not exclude Islamists or anyone else, has emerged to champion democratic reforms. Success is conditional on reaching and sustaining a democratic consensus, based on inclusion for all. And of central importance will be resolving the role of Islam in the public arena.

Abdelwahab El-Affendi is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster.

Democratic regimes are thin on the ground in the Muslim world. Abdelwahab El-Affendi explores the reasons why. | May 2002 | New Internationalist

When John Paul II traveled to Syria in 2000, he became the first pope ever to visit a mosque. He stood in Damascus’s Umayyad Masjid, kissed the Qur’an and stated, “For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and to offer each other forgiveness.” It’s no wonder many Muslims look back on John Paul’s reign as the golden days of interfaith relations–and as Pope Benedict XVI’s first few years as anything but.

Today, more than a few U.S. Muslims wonder if Pope Benedict is simply tone deaf when it comes to interfaith sensitivity, or if he really does have it in for Islam. During a 2006 lecture at a German university, he quoted these lines from a 14th-century Christian Byzantine emperor: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The lecture spurred outcry and protests, and though Benedict said that he was “very upset” that Muslims were offended, he never clearly apologized. A visit to Turkey, where he prayed in a noted Istanbul mosque, seemed to cool things off … until Easter Day of this year. At Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica, the pope himself baptized Italian journalist Magdi Allam–an Egyptian Muslim who’d moved to Europe and become an outspoken critic of Islam. “The act of conversion itself was not offensive, but rather, the high-profile nature of how the conversion was carried out was insulting to Muslims,” said Washington’s Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) in a recent statement. “The fact that the conversion took place at St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the most sacred locations for Christians, and on the holiest day of the Christian calendar carried a negative message of competition and superiority. Unfortunately, these recent events are neither constructive, nor conducive to effective interfaith dialogue.”

Though the pope’s first official trip to the U.S. is likely aimed at energizing America’s 77 million Roman Catholics, the nation’s 8 million Muslims will also be listening–closely–for any comments or clarifications that might soothe Benedict’s strained relations with the followers of Islam. Though the pope has not scheduled any sort of meeting specifically with Muslim leaders, he will host an interfaith dinner in Washington, D.C., on Thursday night with 150 representatives of every major world religion. Dr. Muhammad Shafiq, director and imam of the Islamic Center of Rochester, N.Y., and head of Interfaith Studies at Nazareth College, will be one of at least 15 Muslim attendees. “There’s an awakening in Muslim America, and we know that we cannot live in isolation,” says Shafiq. “We need to be global partners. If I get a chance, I would like to ask [the pope] for an international agreement that will bring us together–a mission statement from each community to abide by. We need that from the pope, and our top Muslim leaders.”

Other representatives of Islam in the United States, skeptical about the depth of the pope’s commitment, declined the invitation. “We’ve had no indication that the pope would engage in any meaningful dialogue beyond the exchange of gifts, and perhaps a photo op,” said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director at MPAC. “We want a meeting with his bishops and key Muslim figures in the U.S. The topic should specifically be Muslim-Catholic issues. But it doesn’t seem to be a priority [for them] right now, even though the pope seems to be a person with very strong views about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.”

For Muslims not on the Vatican’s VIP list, the pope’s elicits mixed reactions. Zaheer Ali,  a doctoral student in history at New York’s Columbia University, says the pope’s ideas about Islam are not a priority right now in terms of defending the faith. “I’m more concerned about some of the things American religious leaders have to say about Islam,” he says. “Pastors Rod Parsley and John Hagee, who are closely aligned with the McCain campaign, have said some really disparaging things about Islam, and a lot of other groups, including Catholics. Political pundits have accepted this idea of the word Muslim being a slur when discussing the ‘accusations’ that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Those things are more concerning to me than something the pope said.”

Political sociologist Younes Abouyoub, who grew up in Morocco, f

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eels that while the pope may not have as much influence in America as he does in Europe, the Vatican should do something to smooth their now bumpy relationship with the Muslim world. “The pope could explain in his speeches the strong relationship that exists between the three monotheist religions instead of accusing Islam of being a violent and irrational religion,” says Abouyoub. “He could mention that Muslims have to believe in the Virgin Mary and Jesus to be considered Muslim. Why not stress the common characteristics–and there are many–instead of mentioning the disparities?”

Highlighting commonalities may be the key to improved relations, especially at a time when new data–cited by the Vatican, no less–shows that Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world. “We know it’s important to have dialogue of civilizations,” says M. J. Kahn, a Houston city council member and a Muslim. “We believe the more people talk, the better off we will be. But we as Muslims don’t need to have some sort of confirmation from the pope to say we’re OK. We know we are, it would just be nice if he noticed, too.”

The Pope and American Muslims | Newsweek Religion | Newsweek.com

Furor over Islam taught at US public school

2 hours ago

CHICAGO (AFP) — Police have stepped up patrols of an elementary school in Minnesota after it received threats in the wake of accusations that it was using public funds to teach Islam.

The threats came after a local columnist wrote that the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a suburban Minneapolis charter school run by an Islamic charity, appeared to be violating a ban on teaching religion in public schools.

Charter schools are public schools run by private organizations with public funds.

While many have been started by religious groups, they are bound to US rules that public schools must accommodate the religious needs of their students but are not allowed to promote religious views or lead prayer services.

The brewing controversy came to head in recent days when a substitute teacher said she saw students “corralled” into involuntary prayer services, and a local television station criticized the school for failing to fly a US flag.

The story got picked up on anti-Muslim websites and the school started getting threatening calls and e-mails, including threats to burn it down and “destroy” its students and leaders.

“These vile and vicious attacks on us have resulted in death threats against my students, myself and my family,” Asad Zaman, executive director of the academy, told AFP Wednesday.

Tarek ibn Ziyad is run by the charity Islamic Relief USA and specializes in teaching Arabic language and culture in addition to standard public grade school subjects.

The majority of the students are Muslim and the school offers regular prayer services and after-school Islamic instruction, but officials say they are careful to follow state guidelines.

Zaman scoffs at the idea that the school is secretly Islamic or that students are forced to attend prayer services, noting that it is inspected regularly by the state Department of Education and has hosted a number of reporters and high-profile politicians.

“We do not teach religion. We do not favor any religion,” he said in a telephone interview.

“We specialize in dramatic turnarounds. More than 90 percent of our students are in poverty and we outperform schools in the (wealthy) suburbs.”

But the columnist who sparked the controversy says that while the reports of threats are “repellant” they should not “distract attraction from the central issue here, and that is, whether this publicly-financed school is skirting or breaking the law that all others must observe when it comes to religious endorsement.”

“If this were a bunch of Baptists or Catholics with the kids being led to the rosary on Mondays through Thursday and led to Mass on Fridays there wouldn’t be any question that this is crossing the line,” said Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten.

Kersten is also concerned that the school, which has a long waiting list and has recently expanded to a second campus, will prevent the assimilation of the area’s growing population of new Muslim immigrants.

“If you have a very large immigrant Muslim population being educated at taxpayer expenses in a separate system where Arabic is mandatory and there’s an emphasis on the culture of the so-called Eastern world, it seems to me you are setting up a very problematic situation,” she told AFP.

The Minnesota Department of Education said it goes to “great lengths” to ensure that charter schools understand they must be “non-sectarian” in nature while also accommodating the religious beliefs of students.

“We take seriously the concerns raised regarding Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy and are conducting an appropriate review,” Minnesota Education Commissioner Alice Seagren said in a statement.

AFP: Furor over Islam taught at US public school

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.

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.

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 Erdogan, 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 Erdogan 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.

The writer is director of the Middle East Forum and the Taube/Diller Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

A democratic Islam? | Jerusalem Post

Can There Be an Islamic Democracy?
Review Essay

by David Bukay
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2007, pp. 71-79

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Are Islam and democracy compatible? A large literature has developed arguing that Islam has all the ingredients of modern state and society. Many Muslim intellectuals seek to prove that Islam enshrines democratic values. But rather than lead the debate, they often follow it, peppering their own analyses with references to Western scholars who, casting aside traditional Orientalism for the theories of the late literary theorist and polemicist Edward Said, twist evidence to fit their theories. Why such efforts? For Western scholars, the answer lies both in politics and the often lucrative desire to please a wider Middle East audience. For Islamists, though, the motivation is to remove suspicion about the nature and goals of Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and, perhaps, even Hezbollah.

Western Apologia

Some Western researchers support the Islamist claim that parliamentary democracy and representative elections are not only compatible with Islamic law, but that Islam actually encourages democracy. They do this in one of two ways: either they twist definitions to make them fit the apparatuses of Islamic government—terms such as democracy become relative—or they bend the reality of life in Muslim countries to fit their theories.

Among the best known advocates of the idea that Islam both is compatible and encourages democracy is John L. Esposito, founding director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and the author or editor of more than thirty books about Islam and Islamist movements. Esposito and his various co-authors build their arguments upon tendentious assumptions and platitudes such as “democracy has many and varied meanings;”[1] “every culture will mold an independent model of democratic government;”[2] and “there can develop a religious democracy.”[3]

He argues that “Islamic movements have internalized the democratic discourse through the concepts of shura [consultation], ijma’ [consensus], and ijtihad [independent interpretive judgment]“[4] and concludes that democracy already exists in the Muslim world, “whether the word democracy is used or not.”[5]

If Esposito’s arguments are true, then why is democracy not readily apparent in the Middle East? Freedom House regularly ranks Arab countries as among the least democratic anywhere.[6] Esposito adopts Said’s belief that Western scholarship and standards are inherently biased and lambastes both scholars who pass such judgments without experience with Islamic movements[7] and those who have a “secular bias” toward Islam.[8]

For example, in Islam and Democracy,[9] Esposito and co-author John Voll, associate director of the Prince Alwaleed Center, question Western attempts to monopolize the definition of democracy and suggest the very concept shifts meanings over time and place. They argue that every culture can mold an independent model of democratic government, which may or may not correlate to the Western liberal idea.[10]

Only after eviscerating the meaning of democracy as the concept developed and derived from Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece through Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in eighteenth century America, can Esposito and his fellow travelers advance theories of the compatibility of Islamism and democracy.

While Esposito’s arguments may be popular within the Middle East Studies Association, democracy theorists tend to dismiss such relativism. Larry Diamond, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, and Leonardo Morlino, a specialist in comparative politics at the University of Florence, ascribe seven features to any democracy: individual freedoms and civil liberties; rule of the law; sovereignty resting upon the people; equality of all citizens before the law; vertical and horizontal accountability for government officials; transparency of the ruling systems to the demands of the citizens; and equality of opportunity for citizens.[11] This approach is important, since it emphasizes civil liberties, human rights and freedoms, instead of over-reliance on elections and the formal institutions of the state.[12]

Esposito ignores this basic foundation of democracy and instead draws inspiration from men such as Indian philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), Sudanese religious leader Hasan al-Turabi (1932-), Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati (1933-77), and former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami (1943-), who argue that Islam provides a framework for combining democracy with spirituality to remedy the alleged spiritual vacuum in Western democracies.[13] They endorse Khatami’s view that democracies need not follow a formula and can function not only in a liberal system but also in socialist or religious systems; they adopt the important twentieth century Indian (and, later, Pakistani) exegete Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi’s concept of a “theo-democracy,”[14] in which three principles: tawhid (unity of God), risala (prophethood) and khilafa (caliphate) underlie the Islamic political system.[15]

But Mawdudi argues that any Islamic polity has to accept the supremacy of Islamic law over all aspects of political and religious life[16]—hardly a democratic concept, given that Islamic law does not provide for equality of all citizens under the law regardless of religion and gender. Such a formulation also denies citizens a basic right to decide their laws, a fundamental concept of democracy. Although he uses the phrase theo-democracy to suggest that Islam encompassed some democratic principles, Mawdudi himself asserted Islamic democracy to be a self-contradiction: the sovereignty of God and sovereignty of the people are mutually exclusive. An Islamic democracy would be the antithesis of secular Western democracy.[17]

Esposito and Voll respond by saying that Mawdudi and his contemporaries did not so much reject democracy as frame it under the concept of God’s unity. Theo-democracy need not mean a dictatorship of state, they argue, but rather could include joint sovereignty by all Muslims, including ordinary citizens.[18] Esposito goes even further, arguing that Mawdudi’s Islamist system could be democratic even if it eschews popular sovereignty, so long as it permits consultative assemblies subordinate to Islamic law.[19]

While Esposito and Voll argue that Islamic democracy rests upon concepts of consultation (shura), consensus (ijma’), and independent interpretive judgment (ijtihad), other Muslim exegetes add hakmiya (sovereignty).[20] To support such a conception of Islamic democracy, Esposito and Voll rely on Muhammad Hamidullah (1908-2002), an Indian Sufi scholar of Islam and international law; Ayatollah Baqir as-Sadr (1935-80), an Iraqi Shi’ite cleric; Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), an Indian Muslim poet, philosopher and politician; Khurshid Ahmad, a vice president of the Jama’at-e-Islami of Pakistan; and Taha al-Alwani, an Iraqi scholar of Islamic jurisprudence.[21] The inclusion of Alwani underscores the fallacy of Esposito’s theories. In 2003, the FBI identified Alwani as an unindicted co-conspirator in a trial of suspected Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders and financiers.[22]

Just as Esposito eviscerates the meaning of democracy to enable his thesis, so, too, does he twist Islamic concepts. Shura is an advisory council, not a participatory one. It is a legacy of tribalism, not sovereignty.[23] Nor does ijma’ express the consensus of the community at large but rather only the elders and established leaders.[24] As for independent judgment, many Sunni scholars deem ijtihad closed in the eleventh century.[25]

Amplifying Esposito

Esposito’s arguments have not only permeated the Middle Eastern studies academic community but also gained traction with public intellectuals through books written by journalists and policy practitioners.

In both journal articles and book length works as well as in underlying assumptions within her reporting, former Los Angeles Times and current Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Robin Wright argues that Islamism could transform into more democratic forms. In 2000, for example, she argued in The Last Great Revolution that a profound transformation was underway in Iran in which pragmatism replaced revolutionary values, arrogance had given way to realism, and the “government of God” was ceding to secular statecraft.[26] Far from becoming more democratic, though, the supreme leader and Revolutionary Guards consolidated control; freedoms remain elusive, political prisoners incarcerated, and democracy imaginary.

Underlying Wright’s work is the idea that neither Islam nor Muslim culture is a major obstacle to political modernity. She accepts both the Esposito school’s arguments that shura, ijma’, and ijtihad form a basis on which to make Islam compatible with political pluralism.[27] She shares John Voll’s belief that Islam is an integral part of the modern world,[28] and she says the central drama of reform is the attempt to reconcile Islam and modernity by creating a worldview compatible with both.[29]

In her article “Islam and Liberal Democracy,” she profiles two prominent Islamist thinkers, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the exiled leader of Tunisia’s Hizb al-Nahda (Renaissance Party), and Iranian philosopher and analytical chemist Abdul-Karim Soroush. While she argues that their ideas represent a realistic confluence of Islam and democracy,[30] she neither defines democracy nor treats her cases studies with a dispassionate eye. Ghannouchi uses democratic terms without accepting them let alone understanding their meaning. He remains not a modernist but an unapologetic Islamist.

Wright ignores that Soroush led the purge of liberal intellectuals from Iranian universities in the wake of the Islamic Revolution.[31] While Soroush spoke of civil rights and tolerance, he applied such privileges only to those subscribing to Islamic democracy.[32] He also argued that although Islam means “submission,” there is no contradiction to the freedoms inherent in democracy. Islam and democracy are not only compatible but their association inevitable. In a Muslim society, one without the other is imperfect. He argues that the will of the majority shapes the ideal Islamic state.[33] But, in practice, this does not occur. As in Iran, many Islamists constrain democratic processes and crush civil society. Those with guns, not numbers, shape the state. Among Arab-Islamic states, there are only authoritarian regimes and patrimonial leadership; the jury is still out on whether Iraq can be a stable exception. Soroush, however, contradicts himself: Although Islam should be an open religion, it must retain its essence. His argument that Islamic law is expandable would be considered blasphemous by many contemporaries who argue that certain principles within Islamic law are immutable. Upon falling out of favor with revolutionary authorities in Iran, he fled to the West. Sometimes, academics only face the fallacy of what sounds plausible in the ivy tower when events force them to face reality.

What Ghannouchi and Soroush have in common, and what remains true with any number of other Islamist officials, is that, regardless of rhetoric, they do not wish to reconcile Islam and modernity but to change the political order. It is easier to adopt the rhetoric of democracy than its principles.

While time has proven Wright wrong, the persistence of Esposito exegetes remains. Every few years, a new face emerges to revive old arguments. The most recent addition is Noah Feldman, a frequent media commentator and Arabic-speaking law professor at Harvard University. In 2003, Feldman published After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, which explores the prospects for democracy in the Islamic world.[34] His thesis rehashes Esposito’s 1992 book The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?[35] and the 1996 Esposito-Voll collaboration Islam and Democracy.[36] Even after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Feldman argues that the age of violent jihad is past, and Islamism is evolving in new, more peaceful, and democratic directions.[37] Included in Feldman’s list of Islamic democrats[38] is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Islamist theoretician who has endorsed suicide bombing and the murder of homosexuals.[39]

While most academic debates do not exit the classroom, the debate over the compatibility of Islam and democracy affects policy. Feldman pushes the conclusion that the Islamist threat is illusionary. Accordingly, he argues that Islamist movements should have a chance to govern.[40] Feldman concludes with the prescription that U.S. policymakers should adopt an inclusive attitude toward political Islam. “An established religion that does not coerce religious belief and that treats religious minorities as equals may be perfectly compatible with democracy,” he explained in a September 2003 interview.[41]

Shireen Hunter, a former Iranian diplomat who now directs the Islam program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also repackages Esposito’s general arguments in her book, The Future of Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence?,[42] and, more recently, in Modernization, Democracy, and Islam,[43] her edited collection with Huma Malik, the assistant director of Esposito’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Both books deny the Islamist threat and try to reconcile Islamic teachings with Western values. She seeks to counter Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilization[44] and gives an assessment of the relative role of both conflictual and cooperate factors of Muslim-Western relations. She argues that the fusion of the spiritual and the temporal in Islam is no greater than in other religions. Therefore, the slower pace of democratization in Muslim countries cannot be attributed to Islam itself. Although Hunter acknowledges that Muslim countries have a poor record of modernization and democracy, she blames external factors such as colonialism and the international economic system.[45]

Other scholars take obsequiousness to new levels. Anna Jordan, who gives no information about her expertise but is widely published on Islamist Internet sites, argues[46] that the Qur’an supports the principles of Western democracy as they are defined by William Ebenstein and Edwin Fogelman, two professors of political science who focus on the ideas and ideologies that define democracy.[47] By utilizing various Qur’anic verses,[48] Jordan finds that the Islamic holy book supports rational empiricism and individual rights, rejects the state as the ultimate authority, promotes the freedom to associate with any religious group, accepts the idea that the state is subordinate to law, and accepts due process and basic equality.

Most of her citations, though, do not support her conclusions and, in some cases, suggest the opposite. Rather than support the idea of “rational empiricism,” for example, Sura 17:36 mandates complete submission to the authority of God. Other citations are irrelevant in context and substance to her arguments. Her assertion that the Qur’an assures the “basic equality of all human beings” rests upon verses commanding equality among Muslims and Muslims only, plus a verse warning against schisms among Muslims.

Gudrun Kramer, chair of the Institute of Islamic Studies at the Free University in Berlin, also accepts the Esposito thesis. She writes that the central stream in Islam “has come to accept crucial elements of political democracy: pluralism, political participation, governmental accountability, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights.” In her opinion, the Muslim approach to human rights and freedom is more advanced than many Westerners acknowledge.[49]

Islamist Rejection of Esposito’s Theory

Ironically, while Western scholars perform intellectual somersaults to demonstrate the compatibility of Islam and democracy, prominent Muslim scholars argue democracy to be incompatible with their religion. They base their conclusion on two foundations: first, the conviction that Islamic law regulates the believer’s activities in every area of life, and second, that the Muslim society of believers will attain all its goals only if the believers walk in the path of God.[50] In addition, some Muslim scholars further reject anything that does not have its origins in the Qur’an.[51]

Hasan al-Banna (1906-49), the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood,[52] sought to purge Western influences. He taught that Islam was the only solution and that democracy amounted to infidelity to Islam.[53] Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), the leading theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, objected to the idea of popular sovereignty altogether. He believed that the Islamic state must be based upon the Qur’an, which he argued provided a complete and moral system in need of no further legislation.[54] Consultation—in the traditional Islamic sense rather than in the manner of Esposito’s extrapolations—was sufficient.

Mawdudi, while used by Esposito, argued that Islam was the antithesis of any secular Western democracy that based sovereignty upon the people[55] and rejected the basics of Western democracy.[56] More recent Islamists such as Qaradawi argue that democracy must be subordinate to the acceptance of God as the basis of sovereignty. Democratic elections are therefore heresy, and since religion makes law, there is no need for legislative bodies.[57] Outlining his plans to establish an Islamic state in Indonesia, Abu Bakar Bashir, a Muslim cleric and the leader of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, attacked democracy and the West and called on Muslims to wage jihad against the ruling regimes in the Muslim world. “It is not democracy that we want, but Allah-cracy,” he explained.[58]

Nor does acceptance of basic Western structures imply democracy. Under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic adopted both a constitution and a parliament, but their existence did not make Iran more democratic. Indeed, Khomeini continued to wield supreme power and formed a number of bodies—the revolutionary foundations, for example—which remained above constitutional law.

Is Islamic Democracy Possible?

The Islamic world is not ready to absorb the basic values of modernism and democracy. Leadership remains the prerogative of the ruling elite. Arab and Islamic leadership are patrimonial, coercive, and authoritarian. Such basic principles as sovereignty, legitimacy, political participation and pluralism, and those individual rights and freedoms inherent in democracy do not exist in a system where Islam is the ultimate source of law.

The failure of democracies to take hold in Gaza and Iraq justify both the 1984 declaration by Samuel P. Huntington and the argument a decade later by Gilles Kepel, a prominent French scholar and analyst of radical Islam, that Islamic cultural traditions may prevent democratic development.[59]

Emeritus Princeton historian Bernard Lewis is also correct in explaining that the term democracy is often misused. It has turned up in surprising places—the Spain of General Franco, the Greece of the colonels, the Pakistan of the generals, the Eastern Europe of the commissars—usually prefaced by some qualifying adjective such as “guided,” “basic,” “organic,” “popular,” or the like, which serves to dilute, deflect, or even reverse the meaning of the word.[60]

Islam may be compatible with democracy, but it depends on what is understood as Islam. This is not universally agreed on and is based on a hope, not on reality. Both Turkey and the West African country of Mali are democracies even though the vast majority of their citizens are Muslim. But, the political Islam espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists is incompatible with liberal democracy.

Furthermore, if language has an impact on thinking, then the Middle East will achieve democracy only slowly, if at all. In traditional Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, there is no word for “citizen.” Rather, older texts use cognates— in Arabic, muwatin; in Turkish, vatandaslik; in Persian, sharunad— respectively, closer in meaning to the English “compatriot” or “countryman.” The Arabic and Turkish come from watan, meaning “country.” Muwatin, is a neologism and while it suggests progress, the Western concept of freedom—understood as the ability to participate in the formation, conduct, and lawful removal and replacement of government—remains alien in much of the region.

Islamists themselves regard liberal democracy with contempt. They are willing to accommodate it as an avenue to power but as an avenue that runs only one way.[61] Hisham Sharabi (1927-2005), the influential Palestinian scholar and political activist, has said that Islamic fundamentalism expresses mass sentiment and belief as no nationalist or socialist (and we may add democratic) ideology has been able to do up until now.[62]

Conclusion

Why then are so many Western scholars keen to show the compatibility between Islamism and democracy? The popularity of post-colonialism and post-modernism within the academy inclines intellectuals to accommodate Islamism. Political correctness inhibits many from addressing the negative phenomenon in foreign cultures. It is considered laudable to prove the compatibility of Islam and democracy; it is labeled “Islamophobic” or racist to suggest incompatibility or to differentiate between positive and negative interpretations of Islam.

Many policymakers are also conflict-adverse. Islamists exploit the Western cultural desire to accommodate while Western thinkers and policymakers attempt to ameliorate differences by seeking to find common ground in definitions if not reality.

Into the mix comes Islamist propaganda, portraying Islam as peace-loving, embracing of civil rights and, even in its less tolerant forms, compatible with all democratic values. The problem is that the free world ignores the possibility that political Islam can threaten democracy not only in Middle Eastern societies but also in the West. The legitimization of political Islam has lent democratic respectability to an ideology and political system at odds with the basic tenets of democracy.

Esposito’s statement that “the United States must restrain its one-dimensional attitude to democracy and recognize [that] the authentic roots of democracy exist in Islam”[63] shows a basic ignorance of both democracy and Islamist teachings. These conclusions are exacerbated when Esposito places blame for the aggressiveness and terrorism of Islamic fundamentalism on the West and on Said’s “Orientalists.” It is one thing to be wrong in the classroom, but it can be far more dangerous when such wrong-headed theories begin to affect policy.

David Bukay is a lecturer in the school of political science at the University of Haifa.

[1] John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 211-2; John O. Voll and John L. Esposito, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 18-21.
[2] Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 211-2; Voll and Esposito, Islam and Democracy, pp. 18-21.
[3] Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 211-2; Voll and Esposito, Islam and Democracy, pp. 18-21; John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, “Islam and Democracy,” Humanities, Nov./Dec. 2001.
[4] John L. Esposito and James Piscatory, “Democratization and Islam,” Middle East Journal, Summer 1991, p. 434; John O. Voll and John L. Esposito “Islam’s Democratic Essence,” Middle East Quarterly, Sept. 1994, pp. 7-8; Voll and Esposito, Islam and Democracy, pp. 27-30, 186; Esposito and Voll, “Islam and Democracy“; Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 49-50; John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 45, 83, 142-8.
[5] John L. Esposito, What Everybody Needs to Know about Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 159-61; John L. Esposito, “Contemporary Islam,” in John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 675-80; Esposito and Piscatory, “Democratization and Islam,” p. 440.
[6] “Table of Independent Countries 2006,” Freedom in the World, 2006 (Washington, D.C.: Freedom House, 2006).
[7] Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 203-4.
[8] John L. Esposito, “The Secular Bias of Scholars,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 26, 1993.
[9] New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
[10] Voll and Esposito, Islam and Democracy, pp. 6-8, 27-30.
[11] Larry Diamond, et. al., eds., Democracy in Developing Countries (London: Adamantine Press, 1988), pp. 218-60; Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino, “The Quality of Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, Oct. 2004; Robert A. Dahl, Ian Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Cheibub, eds., The Democracy Sourcebook (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
[12] See Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
[13] Esposito, The Oxford History of Islam, pp. 661-7; Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, pp. 137, 141, 181-3, 231, 245-6; Esposito and Piscatory, “Democratization and Islam,” pp. 436-7.
[14] Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in Khurshid Ahmad, ed., Islam: Its Meaning and Message (London: Islamic Council of Europe, 1976), pp. 159-61.
[15] Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, Islamic Way of Life (Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Islami, 1967), p. 40; Esposito and Piscatory, “Democratization and Islam,” pp. 436-7, 440; Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 125-6; Voll and Esposito, Islam and Democracy, pp. 23-6.
[16] Muhammad Yusuf, Maududi: A Formative Phase (Karachi: the Universal Message, 1979), p. 35.
[17] Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in John J. Donahue and John L. Esposito, eds., Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 253.
[18] Voll and Esposito, “Islam’s Democratic Essence,” p. 7.
[19] Esposito, The Islamic Threat, p. 126.
[20] Taqi ad-Din Ibn Taymiyah, “Mas’alah fil-’Aql wal-Nafs,” in A.A.M. Qasim and M.A.A. Qasim, eds., Majmu’a fatawat Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah (Riyyad: Matba’at al-Hukumah, 1996), vol. 9, pp. 47-9; Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, “Political Theory of Islam,” in Ahmad, Islam, pp. 149-51; Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Ma’alim fil Tariq) (Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1990), pp. 111-3, 130-7.
[21] Voll and Esposito, Islam and Democracy, pp. 27-30, 186; Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 49-50; Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, pp. 45, 83; Esposito and Piscatory, “Democratization and Islam,” p. 434.
[22] See, for example, J. Michael Waller, Annenberg Professor of International Communication, Institute of World Politics, statement before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Oct. 14, 2003.
[23] Clifford Edmond Boseworth, The Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), vol. 9, s.v. “shura.”
[24] M. Bernard, The Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), vol. 3, s.v. “idjma.”
[25] Joseph Schacht, The Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), vol. 3, s.v. “idjtihad.”
[26] Robin B. Wright, The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran (London: Vintage, 2001), pp. 256-73, 292-9.
[27] Robin B. Wright, “Islam and Liberal Democracy: Two Visions of Reformation,” Journal of Democracy, Apr. 1996, pp. 65-7.
[28] John Voll, Islam: Continuity and Change in Modern World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994), pp. 378-87.
[29] Wright, “Islam and Liberal Democracy,” p. 67.
[30] Ibid., pp. 67-75.
[31] “Soroush among Those For and Against,” interview, Jameah (Tehran), June 16, 17, 1998; John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 7.
[32] Abdol Karim Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 123-55.
[33] Ibid., pp. 245, 247.
[34] New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003.
[35] Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[36] New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
[37] Feldman, After Jihad, pp. 222-7; “‘Islamic Democracy’ in a New Iraq: An Interview with Noah Feldman,” Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, Sept. 30, 2003.
[38] Feldman, After Jihad, p. 182.
[39] “The Qaradawi Fatwas,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004, pp. 78-80.
[40] Feldman, After Jihad, pp. 210-21, 228-30, 234.
[41] “‘Islamic Democracy’ in a New Iraq: An Interview with Noah Feldman.”
[42] New York: Praeger, 1998.
[43] New York: Praeger, 2005.
[44] Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
[45] Hunter, The Future of Islam and the West, pp. 19-28, 106-14.
[46] Anna Jordan, “The Principles of Western Democracy and Islam,” Submissions.org, Dec.1998, accessed Nov. 17, 2006.
[47] William Ebenstein and Edwin Fogelman, Today’s Isms: Communism, Fascism, Capitalism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1980), pp. 170-8.
[48] Qur’an 2:190-3; 2:215; 2:272; 3:26; 3:159; 3:195; 4:49-50; 4:52-3; 4:73; 4:71; 4:76; 4:100; 4:135; 9:20; 9:120; 10:98-9; 17:36; 17:53; 25:55; 31:18-9; 38:22-4; 38:26; 42:38; 45:18; 49:11-3.
[49] Gudrun Kramer, “Islamic Notions of Democracy,” Middle East Report, July-August 1993.
[50] Faris Jedaane, “Notions of the State in Contemporary Arab Political Writings,” in G. Luciani, ed., The Arab State (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 247-83; Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), pp. 69-139.
[51] Ahmad, Islam: Its Meaning and Message, pp. 159-61.
[52] Richard Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 209-94.
[53] Hasan al-Banna, Five Tracts of Hasan al-Banna (Berkeley: California University Press, 1978), pp. 142-54.
[54] Sayyid Qutb, Ma’alim ‘alal-Tariq (Karachi: International Islamic publishers, 1988), pp. 73-8, 80-1, 112; Sayed Khatab, The Political Thought of Sayyid Qutb: The Theory of Jahiliyah (London: Routledge, 2006).
[55] Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, Political Theory of Islam (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1976), pp. 13, 15-7, 38, 75-82.
[56] Abu al-A’la al-Mawdudi, “Suicide of Western Civilization,” in Wakar Ahmad Gardezi and Abdul Wahid Khan, eds., West versus Islam (New Delhi: International Islamic Publishers, 1992), pp. 61-73.
[57] Geneive Abdo, No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 107-36.
[58] Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Special Dispatch Series, no. 1285, Sept. 8, 2006.
[59] Samuel P. Huntington, “Will More Countries Become Democratic?” Political Science Quarterly, Summer 1984, p. 214; Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), p. 194.
[60] Bernard Lewis, “Islam and Liberal Democracy: A Historical Overview,” Journal of Democracy, Apr. 1996, p. 52.
[61] Ibid., pp. 53-7.
[62] Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 136.
[63] Esposito and Voll, Islam and Democracy, p. 31.

Can There Be an Islamic Democracy?: Review Essay - Middle East Quarterly

Documentary About Muslim Homosexuals Screened at Turkish Film Festival

By Dorian Jones
Istanbul
16 April 2008

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At this year’s Istanbul International Film Festival, one of the major attractions is A Jihad for Love, a documentary about a taboo subject: homosexuality in Islamic countries. Homosexuality is strictly banned in most interpretations of the Koran. This is the first time the film is being screened in a Muslim country. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from the festival.

The ending of A Jihad for Love, was greeted with rapturous applause from a packed audience. The film, which Indian Muslim director Pervez Sharma filmed in 12 countries and took six years to make, is an intimate look at the lives of 12 gay Muslim men and women.

Much of the material was filmed in secret in Muslim countries that ban homosexuality. But Sharma says the film is as much about the Muslim faith as it is about homosexuality.

“The world’s first film, about Islam and homosexuality, because what is central to this film is Islam. The Koran is central to this film. I always say that I made this film with a Muslim camera, and if I had been a white Western filmmaker, as opposed to a gay Muslim filmmaker, I don’t think I would been able to make this film, or get the kind of access that I did into these communities, that had been surrounded by silence.” said Sharma.

Sharma argues the film is not intended as an attack on Islam, but rather a defense of it. He says the movie is aimed as much at Western audiences as at Muslims, with the goal of challenging stereotypes about the Islamic faith, which exist in the post-September 11 world.

“It shows people, Islam is not a problematic monolith, but that is lived in very diverse ways, in different countries, that it is living religion. It is the world’s fastest growing religion, for a reason, and it certainly enables the discourse about Islam to shift. It takes it away from violence and takes it towards love, and that is why I called the film a Jihad for Love,” added Sharma.

While homosexuality is legal in Muslim-majority Turkey, it remains a taboo subject for many. This member of the audience appreciated that the wall of silence was broken.

Warm responses came as a major relief to the filmmakers. The festival flew in several people who were featured in the documentary, including Egyptian-born Mazen, who now lives in self-imposed exile in Paris, because he is homosexual. He said he had concerns about attending the Istanbul festival.

“I was afraid when I came to Turkey, I was nervous, when I arrived to audience for the question and answer. I was shaking. I did not know from where I will get the questions and what they will be, but I saw the people , I saw them applauding me, applauding everybody in the film. I said phew, I was very happy,” said Mazen.

The response was not all positive. Several of Turkey’s Islamic newspapers condemned the film, calling it an attack on the Islamic faith. According to orthodox interpretations of the Koran, homosexuality is strictly forbidden.

Festival organizers placed security guards in the audience during the screening and the question-and-answer period after the film.

Hostility toward the film is nothing new, according to A Jihad for Love producer Sandi Dubowski. That is why he says its screening in Istanbul was so important.

“It is groundbreaking because we have been submitting to film festivals in the Arab world and we’ve been rejected,” he said. “So it is quite a landmark for us to be here. We are doing a tour to Indonesia but it is kind of ironic because we have been just banned in Singapore.”

The film and its filmmakers will tour the world for the next couple of years. Screenings are planned in India and Indonesia. The filmmakers hope the Arab world will eventually open its doors and allow A Jihad for Love to be seen.

VOA News - Documentary About Muslim Homosexuals Screened at Turkish Film Festival