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A R T I C L E - 9
ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY?
WHAT
A STRANGE QUESTION!
By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry
Is there a relationship between Islam
and democracy?
If you ask me, this is a very strange question, yet one that has been debated
long and vigorously by Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, activists and
politicians.
Why is it so strange? -- because it has not been posed today in the context of
any other mainstream religion. And it gets even stranger; for if democracy is
proven to be politically and socially better for the common good than other
systems of governance, then like any other religion Islam not only accepts, but
encourages, its practice and sustenance.
But I suspect that life is not that simple; or at least, there are people who do
not wish to make it so.
Two high-profile groups these days maintain that Islam and democracy are
incompatible.
One is represented by western-hemisphere writers like Bernard Lewis and Daniel
Pipes. In their view, since Islam is considered anti- democratic and since
western-based experience correlates democracy with world peace, the only
conclusion to be drawn is that most of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are
therefore a liability, an impediment to peace.
If the Lewis and Pipes group were to ask me -- an unlikely scenario -- I would
have to respond that theirs is a racist and dangerous ideology, based on twisted
dogma and chopped logic.
Another group whose ideology is equally off the mark emerges from within Islam
itself.
Certain Muslim politicians and self-styled spiritual leaders try to appeal to
the masses with slogans such as "al-islam-howa-al-hal," which roughly
translated means, "Islam is the solution for everything."
This group believes, on similarly thin evidence, that Islam is far superior to
democracy. Its leaders trash all that is western and blame democracy for every
ill that has befallen humanity for the past century and more.
If the supporters of this group were to ask me -- another unlikely scenario -- I
would say that theirs is another dangerous dogma that exploits and distorts the
love of Muslims for their faith.
Both groups are guilty of politicizing the question around Islam's supposed
non-relationship with democracy in order to advance their particular warped
agendas. Ironically, the first group (Lewis, Pipes, et al) likes to use the
arguments offered by the second, saying in effect, "Look! We told you so.
Islam is not compatible with democracy. Even Muslim leaders are saying so."
Interesting, eh? So where does the real truth lie?
The Qur'an does not offer a specific prescription or recipe for an ideal
political system. But it does recommend and praise the value of collective
decision-making for the common good (42:38). And elsewhere, it elevates
collective decision-making from the category of recommended processes to that of
obligatory ones (3:159).
Thus if modern democracy offers a practical methodology for achieving collective
decision-making for the common good, it is not only compatible with Islam, but
is virtually an Islamic political system with a Greek name.
Good Muslim politicians who apply sound Qur'anic teaching to their theories
should therefore call themselves Muslim democrats.
In fact, this was the primary thesis of Muslim reformers during the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, the most important of whom were Jamal al-Din
al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdu, and Rashid Rida (an Afghani, an Egyptian, and a
Syrian, respectively).
Each asserted that the values of freedom and democracy in the west are exactly
what traditional Islamic teaching defines as justice (adl), right (haqq),
collective decision-making (shura) and equality (musawat).
These Islamic values relate to the rule of freedom and democracy, which consists
of imparting justice and rights to the people, and affirming the nation's
participation in determining its own destiny.
Basically, they reframed and reformulated western democratic principles using
Islamic terms, harmonizing Islamic teachings with western political, social and
economic concepts.
Other Muslim intellectuals, however, rejected the three western concepts of
democracy, secularization, and the nation-state, saying they represented three
direct contradictions of Islamic religious and political thought, and relying
"for their authority on human rather than divine legislation ... formulated
through secular rather than God-given laws."
This group believed that no one can reconcile the conflicting ideologies of
global Islam and western democracy without accepting the latter system's
perceived drawbacks of intellectual dishonesty, spiritual blasphemy, and moral
cowardice.
This separations point of view can be seen in the writings of Sayyid Qutb, a
major figure of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed by Egyptian authorities
in 1966.
Other Muslims thinkers agree with Sayyid Qutb. Among them is Abu'ala al-Mawdudi,
a prominent Pakistani scholar. Both Qutb and al-Mawdudi reject the idealization
of the three western values of democracy, secularization, and the nation-state,
finding them corrupting to the human soul and to society.
But if you ask me -- and I hope you will -- I am proud to be a Muslim democrat.
And that is that.
(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a professor of computer engineering at the University of
Waterloo, is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He can be
reached at np@canadianislamiccongress.com)
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