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

Technorati Tags: Islam democracy

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

ISLAMIC SHARI’AH IN THE WESTERN WORLD

by Asghar Ali Engineer

As the population of Muslims is increasing in western countries like U.K., USA, Canada etc. the demand for applying Shari’ah law to Muslims is being voiced. The Government of Canada was toying with the idea of enforcing Shari’ah law in the state of Toronto but none other than progressive Muslim women and men themselves opposed government’s intention to apply Shari’ah law and in view of stiff opposition by these Muslims, government gave up the idea’

Now comes the news that the U.K. Government may also think of applying Shari’ah law to Muslims of U.K. the Archbishop of Canterbury has also favored this measure. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop is reported to have said that the adoption of some aspects of Shari’ah law in the UK seems unavoidable. May be Archbishop is extending hand of friendship towards the Muslim minority which is of considerable size by now and is seeking some kind of accommodation with Muslim leaders. Or, may be he is under pressure to approve of application of Muslim law.

The BJP in this country wants Muslim law to be abolished although Muslim majority in India is much greater in size than in the UK. At one time it was unthinkable for Muslims of UK to have Islamic law applied to them but fast increasing population is creating pressure on the government. Though as yet we have not heard any opposing voice from progressive Muslims of UK, it may be matter of time before it is heard.

If Islamic law as codified by Muslim jurists of medieval ages is applied, it will create more problems for Muslim women. Our ‘Ulama voice stiff opposition to any change in the law in keeping with the Qur’anic spirit, it can certainly better the modern laws pertaining to marriage, divorce and property rights. But problem is our jurists and ‘ulama are too rigid to agree for any re-thinking even in the sprit of Qur’an.

Also, as rightly pointed out by some commentators there is no single law. Islamic law is different for Muslims of different sects. Even Sunni Muslims are divided into various legal schools like Shafi’I, Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali and in U.K. there are Muslims, following all these schools besides Shi’ah Ithna ‘Asharis and Isma’ilis. Though marriage may not be much of a problem but divorce and inheritance laws can cause major problems in these different schools of law.

Though men will certainly gain but Muslim women will be great loosers, if one goes by traditional Shari’ah laws. The Qur’anic provisions were interpreted in medieval cultural ethos and women, in that cultural milieu was far from equal. In western countries discrimination on the basis of gender is a major issue and educated Muslim women mainly complain against discriminatory practices in the extant Shari’ah laws.

In all Muslim countries there is movement for change in existing Shari’ah laws and particularly women are demanding change and progressive men conscious of gender equality support them. If Shari’ah law is applied in countries like UK, will it be applied as it exists, say in Sunni schools or it will be reformed? If it is reformed who will bring about reforms? In India Muslim women are against oral divorce pronounced in one breath and ‘Ulama oppose any such change. It is ultimately secular courts, which are rejecting triple divorce insisting on proof for divorce.

The Muslim women in India are also pressing for standard nikahnama which is perfectly Islamic as marriage is contract in Islam and yet ‘Ulama are not agreeing to nikah contract favoring women in Iran too, there is women’s movement and many women have been condemned to death by stoning on charges of adultery and the Islamic jurists are not prepared to effect any change in traditional Ithna Ashari law prevalent in Iran. Those women demanding reforms have been sent to jail. There is also muta’ marriage in force in Iran which again favors men.

In Saudi Arabia there are much severer problems and women cannot even enter into business deal directly without a male member apart from being forbidden to drive vehicles. They cannot vote in elections also. Recently municipal elections were introduced in Saudi Arabia but women were not allowed to vote despite demand from women.

I have met many ‘ulama in UK. They are as conservative as in Islamic countries, perhaps even more in the alien environment of UK and other Western countries. If any attempt is made to apply Islamic law in UK it will trigger off bitter controversy between Muslims and non-Muslims, on one hand, and between Muslims and Muslims, on the other. The Muslim women are bound to protest.

Large number of Muslims is from various Arab and African countries with extremely conservative background and if ‘ulama oppose any change in Muslim law or its selective application and these conservative Muslims will fully back up these ‘ulama. Obviously, progressive Muslims wanting change in Shari’ah law will be outnumbered and the Government will have to listen to the conservatives.

Though there is provision for re-thinking in Islamic law called ijtihad, to this day ‘ulama never allowed any one including one of their own tribe, to resort to ijtihad. An ‘alim of standing of Muhammad ‘Abduh in Egypt in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century had to face stiff opposition for his advocacy of change and re-thinking of Islamic laws. Though he rose to the high status of grand mufti of Egypt, yet he could not bring any change.

When the then President Sadat’s wife Jehan Sadat used her influence to introduce a law by interpreting a verse of the Qur’an that a marriage would be registered only if husband bought a house in the name of his wife, it was removed immediately after the assassination of Sadat. Hosni Mubarak, the present president of Egypt also faced stiff opposition from the ‘ulama of al-Azhar when he introduced a bill empowering women to obtain khula’ (women’s right to obtain divorce without husband’s consent). He had to agree to a compromise formula before he could get the law passed.

This is the state of affairs in Islamic countries where reform should have been easier in totally Islamic milieu. How difficult it would be in non-Islamic countries, one can well imagine. In India where there are largest number of Muslims next only to Indonesia, ulama have opposed any change saying it is Muslim minority country and non-Muslim government has not right to interfere in Islamic laws.

When the Supreme Court of India granted maintenance to an aged woman beyond iddah period, the ‘ulama, as well as Muslim political leaders, raised storm of protest and ultimately Government of India reversed the judgment of the highest court by enacting a law restricting maintenance within the iddah period. Thus UK Muslims will also face these dilemmas once Islamic law is introduced in UK or for that matter in any European and other western countries like USA or Canada.

The ‘ulama consider formulations of medieval ages sacred and even divine. For them the Qur’anic concept of justice is secondary to men’s authority over women. Men’s right to divorce is considered as absolute whereas women’s right is constrained by men’s consent. Thus it is men who has authority to divorce although there is no such authority given by the Qur’an to men.

The ‘ulama consider women as weak and emotional and incapable of taking proper decision and hence only men should take crucial decisions though women could be consulted. By the same reason they also think that a woman should not become head of state as it would be disaster for the state. This view is supposedly based on one hadith authenticity of which has been questioned.

Today there is great need for re-codification of Islamic laws and if Qur’anic spirit is followed in re-codification of Islamic laws in the areas of marriage, divorce and inheritance, these laws will be as good as modern laws based on the concept of gender equality and also much of the differences between various madhahib (schools of law) can be minimized.

These differences between various schools of law are precisely because of differences of opinion between jurists as also due to impact of local conditions, customs and traditions. Despite these differences all the jurists of the time were agreed on one thing: women are sinferior to men in every respect though there is no such assumption in Qur’an at all. This assumption of inferiority of female sex was introduced by the ‘ulama and jurists who were themselves product of patriarchal ethos.

The Qur’anic injunctions on personal laws have no such direct or even indirect assumption and hence these injunctions prioritize women’s rights. However, the right-based discourse for women could not be accepted by patriarchs of the time even though it was divine and hence Shari’ah laws were based more on patriarchal opinions and divinity was subjected to patriarchy.

Gender equality, originally found in Qur’an and lost in medieval patriarchal ethos has to be rediscovered buried in Qur’anic revelation and then only gender justice can be restored.

(Secular Perspective March-1-15, 2008)

The American Muslim (TAM)

Should we meet with him? 

US Muslim Group Declines to Meet Pope

By RACHEL ZOLL – 17 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Unease with Pope Benedict XVI’s approach to Islam has led a U.S. Muslim group to decline joining in an interfaith event with him later this week.

Several other U.S. Muslim leaders expressed similar concerns about the pope, but pledged to participate in the Washington gathering, saying the two faiths should do everything possible to improve relations.

“Our going there is more out of respect for the Catholic Church itself,” said Muzammil H. Siddiqi, chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, which interprets Islamic law. “Popes come and go, but the church is there.”

Siddiqi, co-chairman of the West Coast Muslim-Catholic Dialogue, is among the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Jain and Hindu leaders scheduled to meet Benedict on Thursday at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center. Muslims and Roman Catholics each have more than 1 billion followers worldwide. U.S. Catholic and Muslim leaders started holding interfaith talks in the early 1990s, and many of the Muslim leaders invited to the event Thursday are veterans of those discussions.

But Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group based in Los Angeles, said the event seemed “more ceremonial than substantive” and his organization would not participate. He said he was disappointed that no time was made in the pope’s six-day trip for even a brief private meeting with U.S. Muslim leaders.

This is the first trip to the U.S. that Benedict has made since he was elected in 2005 to succeed John Paul. He turns 81 on Wednesday.

“It would have been a good opportunity for him to have a dialogue,” al-Marayati said.

The pope has been praised by supporters for his frankness in approaching Islam and interfaith dialogue in general, but critics have called him insensitive.

Muslims in many nations reacted angrily when the pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor connecting Islam with violence in a 2006 speech at Germany’s Regensburg University. Tensions eased after Benedict traveled to Turkey that same year, visiting Istanbul’s famous Blue Mosque.

The pope was applauded for organizing a Nov. 4-6 meeting in Rome with Muslim religious leaders and scholars, as part of a push for more dialogue between Catholics and Muslims.

But many Muslims said the pontiff insulted them on Easter Sunday in St. Peter’s Basilica, when he baptized Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born commentator who has criticized what he called the “inherent” violence in Islam. Islamic leaders said the prominence of the ceremony, not the conversion itself, was troubling.

“It’s true that some of the gestures, some of the statements make us uncomfortable and we feel badly about it,” said Sayyid Syeed, national interfaith director of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest communal group for American Muslims. “But our challenge is to not let those challenges hamper progress.” Syeed will attend the meeting Thursday.

Imam Yahya Hendi, a leading advocate of interfaith dialogue and chaplain at the Jesuit-founded Georgetown University, had met John Paul and said he would participate in the interfaith gathering, because “I believe in the power of love and the power of dialogue.” Hendi will also be among the thousands of people at a ceremony for the pope Wednesday at the White House.

But Hendi said that he and other Muslims were concerned that the pope wasn’t visiting a mosque or meeting with leaders who represent the millions of Muslims living in the U.S.

“Since he came to office, things have happened that have been used on both sides to build up walls,” Hendi said. “I think this could be a good opportunity for Pope Benedict to help people to build bridges.”

American Muslims are unlike any Islamic migrant community Benedict has encountered in Europe. Many Muslims in the U.S. came for higher education and are now professionals — academics, business people, physicians and engineers — who are settled in the wealthier suburbs.

They’ve battled discrimination and intensive government scrutiny following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Yet they have also benefited from American constitutional protection for religious freedom. The U.S. Justice Department, along with civil rights groups that usually represent Jews and Christians, often help Muslims secure their religious rights in the workplace, public schools and elsewhere.

Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith Youth Core based in Chicago, said that he was inspired as a boy by the interreligious outreach of the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.

Patel, a Muslim born in India, said he had no concerns at all about participating in the Washington gathering, even though he wished the Easter conversion hadn’t been so public.

“I think that we have to find ways to cooperate on important matters concerning the earth, including climate change, reducing disease, reducing poverty, increasing respect,” he said. “That’s where our focus should be.”

The Associated Press: US Muslim Group Declines to Meet Pope

“Islam is undemocratic in spirit,” he said. “It takes a lot of learning to have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association. These are things that are learnt over a period of time and it is that which the West has achieved and which Islam is a long way from learning.” Daniel Pipes

Islam passes the democratic test … just

Chairperson Simon Longstaff speaks to the crowd.
Photo: Dallas Kilponen

Latest related coverage

• Poll: Is Islam incompatible with democracy?

IT was a debate over one of the most vexed issues of our times - one that pitted not only ideas and opinions against each other, but entire civilisations.

In front of a packed audience of 1200 passionate souls, a panel of experts on politics and Islam opened the Intelligence² debate series by ripping into the proposition that Islam is incompatible with democracy.

The security guards and flyer-wielding campaigners at the doors gave some indication of the fraught nature of the subject matter from the outset. And those on stage did not disappoint, taking the discussion from the soaring heights of Islam’s philosophical antecedents to the cold, hard reality of suppression under Sharia law.

Having told another Sydney audience earlier this week that Islam would dominate Europe, the director of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, immediately provided a cutting criticism of the world’s second largest religion.

“Islam is undemocratic in spirit,” he said. “It takes a lot of learning to have freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association. These are things that are learnt over a period of time and it is that which the West has achieved and which Islam is a long way from learning.

“Yes, there are Muslim states which are democratic in form, but true democracy is yet to take root. The great obstacle to this change is the fact that in the Middle East the social system is fundamentally tribal and that obstructs the development of the key requisites of democracy.”

The rebuttal from the Pakistan-born director of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Muslim States and Societies, Samina Yasmeen, was a cool cloth to Pipes’s fire.

“You will see what you want to see and if you want to identify Islam as incompatible I have no doubt that you will continue seeing that,” she said.

“How is it, though, that Muslims in non-Muslim societies are able to get on so well when Islam is incompatible? I would argue that Muslim majority states do show a lot of tolerance, not only of the Muslim community, but also of the non-Muslim community.”

Amina Rasul, a human rights activist and director of the Philippine Council on Islam and Democracy, followed the theme. “What the West should not do is criticise states which are not democratic while supporting despots who suppress human rights because it is in their economic benefit,” Rasul said.

“There are 800 million Muslims living happily and successfully in democratic nations - why is it that the extremes are always focused on?”

The Herald columnist Paul Sheehan brought the question into stark relief by comparing a trip to Mecca with a trip to Rome.

“When you visit the Vatican, one thing that is for certain is that you will be allowed in,” Sheehan said. “When you visit Saudi Arabia the checks at the airport and for those travelling into Mecca are not just for security reasons, they are to prevent non-Muslims from coming in.”

Finally the statements were brought back to first principles by Waleed Aly, the young lawyer, writer and spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria.

“My opponents have defined terms such as Islam and Sharia law to suit their arguments and in so doing have ignored the myriad interpretations of these terms.”

In the end, the audience had the final call and it delivered a victory to hope - but only just. A poll conducted as the audience entered found 38 per cent for the affirmative, 42 per cent for the negative and the remaining 20 per cent undecided. In the tradition of many a democratic poll, the numbers had tightened by the end of the night - with the proposition going down by a narrow margin of 52 to 48 per cent.

“The response to this debate has been phenomenal and I’ve been trying to find an explanation for this overwhelming response,” said Simon Longstaff from the St James Ethics Centre. “For the past decade people have not really engaged with these issues. People have formed hasty judgments and not engaged with the details. They’ve been more focused on their own concerns in their community and in their backyard. But there has been a change in mood in Australia.”

Indeed, it could have been a hostile affair, but there were no howls from the audience. Sheehan referred to threats against Pipes before the event and the need for security to protect him. As it turned out, the guards had little to do.

Not even Michael Darby could get a reaction in the foyer afterwards as he handed out pamphlets on “how you can ensure Australia remains a Christian nation”. Darby said: “I may have handed out some to Muslim people but I can’t tell who is Muslim. I can say ladies with scarves did not rush me.”

The Herald columnist Paul Sheehan brought the question into stark relief by comparing a trip to Mecca with a trip to Rome.

“When you visit the Vatican, one thing that is for certain is that you will be allowed in,” Sheehan said. “When you visit Saudi Arabia the checks at the airport and for those travelling into Mecca are not just for security reasons, they are to prevent non-Muslims from coming in.”

Finally the statements were brought back to first principles by Waleed Aly, the young lawyer, writer and spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria.

“My opponents have defined terms such as Islam and Sharia law to suit their arguments and in so doing have ignored the myriad interpretations of these terms.”

In the end, the audience had the final call and it delivered a victory to hope - but only just. A poll conducted as the audience entered found 38 per cent for the affirmative, 42 per cent for the negative and the remaining 20 per cent undecided. In the tradition of many a democratic poll, the numbers had tightened by the end of the night - with the proposition going down by a narrow margin of 52 to 48 per cent.

“The response to this debate has been phenomenal and I’ve been trying to find an explanation for this overwhelming response,” said Simon Longstaff from the St James Ethics Centre. “For the past decade people have not really engaged with these issues. People have formed hasty judgments and not engaged with the details. They’ve been more focused on their own concerns in their community and in their backyard. But there has been a change in mood in Australia.”

Indeed, it could have been a hostile affair, but there were no howls from the audience. Sheehan referred to threats against Pipes before the event and the need for security to protect him. As it turned out, the guards had little to do.

Not even Michael Darby could get a reaction in the foyer afterwards as he handed out pamphlets on “how you can ensure Australia remains a Christian nation”. Darby said: “I may have handed out some to Muslim people but I can’t tell who is Muslim. I can say ladies with scarves did not rush me.”

The IQ2 debate series is a partnership between the St James Ethics Centre, The Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC and the City of Sydney.

Islam passes the democratic test … just - National - smh.com.au

Is Brigitte Bardot Bashing Islam?

Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2008 By BRUCE CRUMLEY/PARIS

Brigitte Bardot in “Only for Love”

She may be better remembered as the revolutionary sex kitten of 1960s French cinema, but these days Brigitte Bardot is better known as a standard-bearer of the anti-immigrant wing of France’s political spectrum. Bardot went on trial Tuesday charged with “inciting racial hatred,” and in view of her four previous convictions on similar charges, prosecutors sought exceptionally stiff penalties of $22,000 and a two month suspended sentence.

“I’m a bit tired of trying Madame Bardot,” admitted assistant prosecutor Anne de Fonette, as she urged the court to impose “the most striking and remarkable” punishment in the case. A verdict is expected on June 3.

The current charge against Bardot was lodged by the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP), citing a letter Bardot wrote to French officials in 2004 in which she alluded to Muslims as “this population that leads us around by the nose, [and] which destroys our country.” The former actress-turned-animal rights crusader had written that letter to protest the ritual slaughter of sheep during the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Kabir. Her missive, whose contents were later leaked to the media, had been sent to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose rising popularity was based in part on his hard line on immigration and tough stand against troublesome youths from immigrant backgrounds.

Lawyers for the 73 year-old Bardot, who did not attend the trial, argued the offending sections of the letter had been taken out of the context of her militant defense of animal rights over the years, a cause in support of which she has raised and spent millions of dollars. Her work in the area has been hailed by French political leaders and organizations around the world, although more recently French courts have interpreted some of her statements as Islamophobia.

Bardot’s defense Tuesday was that her passionate denunciation of the ritual slaughter of Eid-al-Kabir had been misinterpreted as an attack on Islam in France. A similar defense had failed to spare her from conviction in four earlier trials. In 1997, for example, Bardot was first convicted on the charge of “inciting racial hatred” for her open letter to French daily Le Figaro, complaining of “foreign over-population”, mostly by Muslim families.

The following year she was convicted anew for decrying the loss of French identity and tradition due to the multiplication of mosques “while our church bells fall silent for want of priests.” Darkening Bardot’s public image in both cases was her marriage to an active supporter and political ally of French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In 2000, Bardot was again convicted — this time for comments in her book Pluto’s Square, whose chapter “Open Letter to My Lost France” grieved for “…my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims.” And in 2004, another Bardot book, A Cry In the Silence, again took up the question of immigration and Islam — ultimately running afoul of anti-racism laws by generally associating Islam with the 9/11 terror attacks, and denouncing the “Islamization of France” by people she described as “invaders”.

The prosecution has called for the harshest possible punishment in the hope of getting through to Bardot the seriousness of her transgressions of French law. MRAP implored the judge to “take note of this refusal by (Bardot) to learn the lessons of previous convictions and cease using racist language”. The court will make its decision by June, although the repeat convictions on similar charges suggest that Bardot has not exactly been chastened by previous court rulings.

Is Brigitte Bardot Bashing Islam? - TIME

Muslim reformer’s ‘heresy’: The Islamic state is a dead end

By Jane Lampman - TCSM
Friday, 04.11.2008, 06:13pm

Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim has seen what can happen to an Islamic reformer: His mentor was executed in 1985 in Sudan; he himself had to flee the country. Still, the self-described “Muslim heretic” has no trouble traveling the Islamic world spreading his controversial message:

There is no such thing as an Islamic state.

A secular state and human rights are essential for all societies so that Muslims and others can practice their faith freely, he tells his co-religionists.

“My motivation is in fact about being an honest, true-to-myself Muslim, rather than someone complying with state dictates,” says Mr. Naim, a professor of law at Emory University in Atlanta since 1999. “I need the state to be neutral about religious doctrine so that I can be the Muslim I choose to be.”

So committed is this scholar to opening the door to free debate within his faith that he helped organize the first “Muslim Heretics Conference” in Atlanta over the weekend. Some 75 Muslims, engaged in various reform projects, gathered to discuss issues related to sharia (Islamic law), democracy, and women’s rights – and how to cope with dissent and its consequences.

“We celebrate heresy simply to promote innovative thinking,” he says. “Every orthodoxy was at one time a heresy.”

Naim’s personal project involves what he calls “negotiating the future of sharia.” As Islamic societies struggle to define themselves in a globalized world and some talk of creating Islamic states to codify sharia, he says the state and religion must be kept separate. But religion should still have its place in political life, allowing Muslims to express principles of sharia as they see fit. He believes this is truly Islamic, and that articulating the reasons why will help ordinary Muslims not be taken in by political slogans.

“I know for a fact that Abdullahi has a following among young Muslims in places like Malaysia and Indonesia,” says John Esposito, head of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “These people are often marginalized in their societies, but over time, these positions can become mainstream.”

Naim’s view is not just a theory picked up in the United States, but the result of painful personal experience. “As a Muslim from Sudan whose people have suffered tremendously from confusion over this issue, my mission is to clarify it so other Muslim societies don’t go down the same road to come to the same dead end,” he says in a phone interview. He has watched Sudan’s institutions virtually collapse under fundamentalist Islamic rule and seen the disillusionment firsthand.

While a law student at the University of Khartoum in 1967, Naim heard a talk by a Sufi Muslim thinker, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. “That lecture turned my life around,” he says, and he joined Taha’s Islamic reform movement.

But when Sudanese strongman Jaafar al-Nimeiri was about to introduce sharia by decree in 1983, he jailed Taha, Naim, and others for 18 months. Taha was put on trial and executed.

The essence of the Sufi’s message had been that certain verses in the Qur’an represented the universal, eternal message of Islam, while others were relevant to a particular historical context and no longer viable. “Specifically [he argued] for equality for women, freedom of religion, and equality for non-Muslims,” Naim says. After fleeing the country, he translated Taha’s work, “The Second Message of Islam,” into English.

Naim later became director of Africa Watch, monitoring human rights on the continent, and in 1995 began teaching at Emory. He’s written books on human rights and sponsored social-change projects promoting human rights in local communities in Yemen, Tanzania, and Southeast Asia.

A new book just released in English, “Islam and the Secular State,” represents the culmination of his life’s work, he says.

Islam teaches that every Muslim stands before God and is responsible for making his own moral choices in observing sharia. The Qur’an does not prescribe a form of government, but speaks only of the community of Muslims. The book argues that there has never been an Islamic state.

“You will not find any reference to an Islamic state or to state enforcement of sharia before the mid-20th century – it’s a post-colonial discourse based on a European-style state,” he explains.

While Iran, for instance, claims to be a republic, implying popular sovereignty, a council of clerics is supposed to ensure that it is Islamic. But that council is made up of fallible humans as political as everyone else, he argues. “How is it that 30 years after the revolution they cannot trust the Muslim citizens to make the choice as to who is likely to be faithful to Islamic values and to represent them?”

Further, Iran and Saudi Arabia both claim to be Islamic states, but to each other they are heresies, he adds. So what does Islamic mean? To call a state Islamic is to attempt to silence political or theological dissent, he says.

“Most Muslims have an intuitive feeling about this but can’t articulate it, so when confronted by Islamists who say this is the will of God, they are defenseless,” Naim says. “My hope is that with this book, we give people confidence to respond that “this is not Islam, it is your view of Islam.”

For some time, Naim has been visiting countries across the Muslim world from Nigeria to Indonesia, testing his ideas in public gatherings, which may range from 25 to 800 people. Before he set out, early manuscripts of his book were translated into Indonesian, Bengali, French, Persian, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu and uploaded onto a website.

Only once has he felt physically threatened — after a talk in northern Nigeria — although people have tried to shout him down. “I try to persuade gently, to give examples from Muslim history that people understand, and that helps,” he says.

One huge challenge is the negative connotation in the Muslim world of “secularism,” often seen as being antireligion.

Yet Radwan Masmoudi, director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, believes Naim’s goal of separating political and religious institutions is what a majority of Muslims want. Gallup’s recent global poll showed “that 80 to 90 percent of Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia want democracy,” he says, but similar majorities also want sharia to be a source, or the only source, of law in their countries.

“This is the struggle of our time, coming up with a modern interpretation of sharia that is true to Islamic principles but also to democratic values,” he adds.

The Arab American News - Muslim reformer’s ‘heresy’: The Islamic state is a dead end

So is Islam Hadari to be enforced by whipping now?

Thursday, 03 April 2008

Some participants at a seminar organised by an insitution created under the auspices of the Umno-led government want non-Muslims found committing khalwat (close proximity) with Muslims to also be held liable. They also want heftier penalties for Muslims caught for khalwat, prostitution, consuming alcohol and involvement in gambling activities.

An angry Farish Noor says this is further proof that the so-called ‘moderate and progressive’ brand of Islam that was sold to us as ‘Islam Hadari’ was little more than another Umno propaganda device; serving to placate the concerns of the international community while in fact serving only to extend the power and hegemony of the state at home. 

I am having a tough time writing this particular article as I am absolutely consumed by anger at the moment. In fact, I am livid as I have never been for such a long time.

The reason for this sudden rise in my blood pressure level is that after a two-day seminar organised by the Institute for Islamic Understanding (Ikim) and the Shariah Judiciary Department of Malaysia, it was suggested by some of those who took part that “non-Muslims found committing khalwat (close proximity) with Muslims (will) also be held liable” and that they too will be under threat of punishment (The Star, ‘Proposal to Persecute Non-Muslims for Khalwat’, 3 April 2008) According to the report, “Syariah Court of Appeal Judge Datuk Mohd Asri Abdullah said the seminar had proposed that non-Muslims committing khalwat with Muslims should also be sentenced accordingly, but in the civil courts.”

Furthermore the participants of the seminar also proposed “to impose heftier penalties – of up to four times the current penalties – on Muslims caught for khalwat, prostitution, consuming alcohol and involvement in gambling activities”.

Furthermore the participants of the seminar also proposed “to impose heftier penalties – of up to four times the current penalties – on  for Islamic Understanding (Ikim) and the Shariah Judiciary Department of Malaysia, it was suggested by some of those who took part that “non-Muslims found committing khalwat (close proximity) with Muslims (will) also be held liable” and that they too will be under threat of punishment (The Star, ‘Proposal to Persecute Non-Muslims for Khalwat’, 3 April 2008)”.

And what might these heftier penalties be? According to the same report, “Ikim and the department were proposing that the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (Amendment) 1984 be amended to impose stiffer penalties of RM1,000 fine or five years’ jail or 12 strokes of the rotan for Syariah Lower Courts and RM20,000 fine or 10years’ jail or 24 strokes of rotan for Syariah High Courts.” It then added that “there was also a proposal for Syariah judges to enforce whipping for these offences” and that “another proposal calls for the establishment of a rehabilitation centre for those convicted of offences related to morals and faith such as prostitution and effeminate men, and enforcement of Section 54 of the Syariah Criminal Offences Act (Act 559) to set up such centres”.

So this, apparently, is what the great minds of Ikim and the religious departments have been cooking up and intending to serve to us, the Malaysian public, all along. While Muslims are angry about the portrayal of Islam and Muslims in the film ‘Fitna’ by the right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders, one is left with the question: As long as Muslim leaders and intellectuals remain stuck in their morass of outdated conservative thinking, would it not remain the case that Islam is seen as a religious of violence? How, pray tell, can scholars like me defend the image of Islam and Muslims when Muslim governments like ours allows such outlandish and dangerous ideas to spread, and harbour such proponents of conservative-fundamentalist Islam in the very same institutions that were meant to open up the minds of Muslims and lead us – and Malaysian society – to a more modern, progressive and liberated understanding of Islam and religion in general?

The fact that such proposals could have been made at all speaks volumes about the state of Muslim thinking in Malaysia today. Worse still is the total disconnect between reality and ideals, and the fact that some of these Muslim thinkers fail to see just how unjust, inhuman and dehumanising these proposed punishments are in the eyes of millions of other Malaysians and foreigners alike. Whipping? In this day and age? And what would happen to the image of Malaysia as the so-called bastion of moderate Islam when the international media gets a glimpse of this non-so-moderate Islam at work? Is Islam Hadari to be enforced by the whip today?

The results of the recent general elections have shown that the Malaysian public has reached a level of political awareness and maturity that is unprecedented in our history. It also points to an increasingly urbanised, well-connected, better-informed and more politically-conscious electorate that will not be satisfied with empty slogans of a more ‘moderate’ Islam and theme parks with crystal mosques. Why, even in the ranks of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (Pas), there are more and more progressive voices who are calling for real economic and structural reform, and contemplating the possibility of creating a new social contract based on a welfare state model for all Malaysians.

But it is in the ranks of Umno and the Umno-led institutions of the state that we see the mental quagmire of the elite at its worst. Ikim and the Shariah Judiciary Department are both institutions that were created under the auspices of the Umno-led government. Yet the so-called reforms we have been presented are not intended to open up the minds of Muslims, but rather to add yet another layer of moral policing on Muslim society today.

More worrying is the fact that now the scope of Umno’s Islamisation policy has extended to cover non-Muslims as well, and this can only be read as yet another attempt to impose Islamic legal and political hegemony on the non-Muslims of Malaysia . How and why should a non-Muslim be taken to court for simply being in love with a Muslim? And why, for that matter, should a Muslim be punished for simply loving a non-Muslim? Furthermore the non-Muslim partner in such a relationship may not even regard it as wrong to simply be in love with another. Yet the advocates of this reform are suggesting that he or she has committed a sin even if he or she has not done anything wrong according to his or her belief system.

This in turn points to the slow erosion of respect for diversity and pluralism in Malaysia , where a group of Muslim communitarians do not seem realise the fact that Islam is simply one of many belief-systems in Malaysia and that the values of Islam may not be relevant to those who are not part of that faith community. Yet by calling for these legal reforms, these sectarian leaders seem to be implying that what constitutes an offence for Muslims must also constitute an offence for others too. How does this communitarian slant fit with the universalist and pluralist claims of Islam Hadari then?

That such a conference could have been held so close after Umno’s disastrous showing at the recent elections would indicate that this Umno-led government is totally bankrupt of ideas and can only shore up what little support it has left by playing the Islamic card and pandering to the gallery yet again. Moral policing of any kind is just one further layer of policing on society, and this is fundamentally part and parcel of the state’s attempt to remain in power at all costs. The net result would be the further control of Malaysian society as a whole and the costs will be borne by those Malaysians who are Malaysian-minded enough to see beyond race and religion, and to cross these cultural-religious frontiers by falling in love with others. Instead it is those very Malaysian-minded Malaysians who are under threat now, by laws and regulations that make it virtually impossible for us to love one another and live with one another.

Finally, this is further proof that the so-called ‘moderate and progressive’ brand of Islam that was sold to us as ‘Islam Hadari’ was little more than another Umno propaganda device; serving to placate the concerns of the international community while in fact serving only to extend the power and hegemony of the state at home. Should these reform measures come to pass, it is our duty to remind ourselves, our fellow Malaysians and the international community that what passes under the label of Islam Hadari is really a conservative brand of statist Islam that promotes imprisonment, detention, moral policing and whipping. Let the cameras of the international media come to Malaysia to film the spectacle of Malaysians being arrested, detained in rehabilitation centres, whipped and injured for life by the morality police and religious authorities. Let the whole world know that ‘Islam Hadari’ has never opened up the minds of Muslims. Let us expose this lie once and for all, and the liars behind the lie as well.

Dr. Farish A. Noor is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore; and one of the founders of the www.othermalaysia.org research site.

Aliran - So is Islam Hadari to be enforced by whipping now?