Posted on 12/03/2006 6:43:56 PM PST by Lorianne
Not in Muslim countries. And the reasons lie in fundamental doctrines of Islam.
In the post-9/11 era, the Bush administration's new project of spreading freedom and democracy in the dictators-ruled countries became one of the most discussed and closely followed topics in the media and at levels of the society. As the world gets increasing plagued by violence, unleashed by the Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist groups, a way to turn the tide of violence towards peace was indeed a desirable idea to the peace and freedom-loving people in the world. Although many doubted the means Bush administration undertook to spread democracy around the world, yet there was hardly any disagreement to the fact that freedom, democracy and good governance can usher in peace and prosperity. Believing in this fundamental premise, many in the US and around the world supported the Bush administration's aggressive policy of instituting democracy by overthrowing authoritarian Governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, the adventure of spreading democracy itself did not succeed in those two countries until now. All indications suggest that it is neither going to be successful in the end. And what we witness today is that the Bush administration's policy of spreading democracy in the hope making those countries a more hopeful and peaceful place has failed as things stand now. Not only that, those two countries have, instead, become massive breeding grounds for the terrorists and the world is at its worst, as far as the threats violent groups and activities are concerned.
As it appears now, the skeptics of the Bush administration's policy of exporting democracy, who had argued that democracy cannot be exported or imposed on a people from outside, might have been right. They have argued that freedom and democracy have to evolve from within. So we can safely say that these skeptics were right and the Bush administration war architects were wrong. Upfront, I want to assert that both the skeptics of Bush formula as well as its supporters are only partially right and partially wrong.
Can democracy be imposed from without? It is a stale analysis to go into given that hundreds of commentaries have been written on this topic in the last few years. I will try to be brief. If we look back into the 1930s and 40s, we see clearly that world's most incorrigible dictators of that ear – the imperialists dictators of Japan, the brutal expansionist Nazis of Germany and the deadly fascists of Italy – have been replaced by the fine democratic governments imposed by the intervention of the allied force in the post-WW II period.
The skeptics might argue that the rule has changed now and it does not work anymore. Afghanistan and Iraq are the most obvious examples. They probably would appear correct. Let us consider the intervention in mainly Christian Bosnia-Herzegovina. After the downfall of dictatorial communism, these regions ran into a disastrous civil war as a result of religio-ethnic fighting between the minority Muslims and the majority Christians. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq , intervention quickly brought the fighting and violence under control. Since then, reconciliation, reconstructions and democratic processes have made steady progress. All indications suggest that secular democracy and peace will be strengthened and lasting. However, there is one concern. Islamic fundamentalism in on the rise and al-Qaeda and other like-minded Islamist terrorist groups are spreading their tentacles there. Hence, the future of a lasting peace and democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina will sonly depend on how the Muslims behave in the coming years and decades?
Similar, the United States' forced ouster of Charles Taylor of Liberia and Aristride of Haiti, both Christian countries have so far held in good stead. More pressing interventions in Muslim countries, namely in Somalia and Afghanistan, have miserably failed. Instead of bringing democracy and peace, interventions in these countries have made the world a much more dangerous place. These interventions are inspiring Muslims at far corners of the world to form new terrorist groups and strengthening the already existing outfits. There are no indications that interventions in Christian countries, namely Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, have inspired any Christian group in Nigeria, Philippines , Australia, USA , Canada or South America to create terrorist groups and unleash violence of any sort.
Those who argue that democracy cannot be imposed from foreign interventions are obviously wrong if considered the interventions in Japan, Italy and Germany in post-WW II era. All indications from the more recent but unfinished interventions in the Balkan and in Liberia and Haiti also prove them wrong. However they are right, while the Bush administration and their cheer leaders are utterly wrong, when considered the interventions in Somalia in 1993 and more recent ones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In order to understand this intriguing disparity in success of outside interventions in Muslims and non-Muslim countries, one must grasp the basic understanding of the fundamental precepts of Islam, the common ideological denominator that bind them together. Islamic scholars over the centuries have divided the world into two domains. The first being the Darul Islam (house of peace), which constitute the domains dominated or ruled by the Muslims according to the Islamic laws. The other is the Darul-Harb (house of war), which is dominated and ruled by the non-Muslims and Muslims must wage incessant war (so 'house of war') against it in order to bring into the domain of Darul-Islam so that it can be put in line with the wishes of the almighty creator.
The towering Islamic thinker, historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), who according to one of Prof. Tariq Ramadan, is one the Islamic contributor to the Greek rationalism, philosophy and science, that were later transmitted to the Europeans [ Roots of Rationality, Guardian
22 Sept, 2006]. In affirming this principle of Islam, Ibn Khaldun wrote of the Christians in his greatest treatise, Muqaddimah:
We do not think that we should blacken the pages of this book with discussion of their [Christian] dogmas of unbelief. In general, they are well known. All of them are unbelief. This is clearly stated in the noble Koran. To discuss or argue those things with them is not up to us. It is for them to choose between conversion to Islam, payment of the poll tax, or death. [For more affirmation, see Koran: 9:29]
In affirmation of Koranic edict of fighting the infidels until religion is Allah's alone (Koran 8:39), He furthered wrote of the Darul-harb in Muqaddimah :
"In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty because of the universalism of the mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense." [Quoted in State and Governance in Medieval Islam, Ann Lambton (1981), Oxford University Press, New York , p201]
In today's violence and terrorism stricken world, those involved in the desperate search for peace, should understand the basic fundamental of Islam. Darul-Islam (Islamic world) is the perfect abode of peace, which is achievable only by the institution of the divine laws of the only true God, Allah. It does not require outside intervention and extra-Islamic doctrines. Islam is the complete and perfect code of life for governing perfectly all aspects of human life: social, spiritual, religious, political, economic and whatsoever. A detailed historical study also tells us that never in the history of pious Islamic rule, the state of affairs have rarely been different and better in Muslim kingdoms than what we see in the Islamic world today.
Islamic countries, holding the most perfect divine codes of Islam to govern all aspects of their life perfectly, obviously do not require importing, nor do they accept freedom, secularism and democracy, which are invented by the humans and particularly by the non-Muslims. On the other hand, Darul-harb, which is ruled by the laws, created by the fault-prone human beings or false Gods, has scope of improvement. So, the imposition for democracy and freedom from outside were quickly accepted by countries like Japan, Germany and Italy amongst others. So, the policy-makers who might be at a fix over their repeated failures to achieve those goals in Muslim countries, which are easily achievable elsewhere, must understand these fundamental distinctions between Islamic and the non-Islamic countries.
Alamgir Hussain (PhD) is an author in " Beyond Jihad – Critical Voices from Inside" (Academica Press).
No, no, no. You have it all wrong. The mission and objective changed once the first phase was complete. Now it is all about purple fingers and doing right by the 24,700,000 that might not want to kill us today. See, we will install a Shiite Hezbullah led government and they will not exterminate every Sunni that they can get their hands on. If they fight amongst themselves, we will simply send in more combat troops with new rules of engagement. Stay the course!
Twelve million purple-fingered Iraqis were not forced to vote. They did, in spite of the threats to their life, because they want democracy. It was not forced on them.
Voting is not all there is to democracy.
Once again, twelve million Iraqis voted, in spite of the threats to their life, because they want democracy. It was not forced on them
So? Wanting and having are two different things. Maybe they do not understand that democracy is more than just a vote.
Not historically accurate, unless you're willing to argue that Japan is not democratic. Of course, MacArthur literally altered the theological landscape of Japanese religion before imposing democracy. To impose democracy in the muslim world, a theological reconstruction may also be a pre-requisite.
My son is recently back from Iraq, and spent a lot of time with Iraqis. He says what these people need most of all is "a different religion." They are slaves to the thugs and gangsters, who thrive in an Islamic environment, easily bending Allah to speak their will.
We should have listened to Ann Coulter when she said what we need to do is go in and convert them all to Christianity.
They understand that Saddam Hussein was a murderous thug, and they are glad to be rid of him. And they understand that it is their duty, in the face of threats, to participate in democracy.
They are not standing by their elected government.
Good Americans don't always stand by their elected government. And good Americans don't undermine their country when it is at war. No matter where an American stood at the beginning of war, once it is started, every good American stands for victory and nothing less. Any one who stands otherwise is a contemptible scalawag.
What do you think of this guy's article?
The Iraqis are not passive recipients of this political largesse, they have paid dearly for it. It is an incredibly difficult challenge given the autocratic antecedents of the country, the tribal grass-roots organization, and the broad and vicious historical oppression of Kurd and Shi'a by Sunni. It's impossible, absurd - I can certainly understand why so many very knowledgable people find it unlikely.
But it hasn't failed yet. And if it doesn't it won't be because the U.S. gave anything to anybody, it will be because the Iraqis earned it. There is no other route to freedom, there is no other route to democracy. IMHO.
The article is crap.
Well said. I hope you are right.
Why, exactly?
Kinda like WWII. Japan and Germany.
Interventions? I do believe those countries either attacked us first (Japan) or declared war on us first (Germany and Italy). Those were not interventions.
Germany and Italy were western countries with some fairly recent experience with representative government. Japan had no such experience at all, and they revered their previous head of state as a God, something even the Muslims do not do, they don't even consider their religious leaders to be Gods.
If it can work in Japan, it can work in a Muslim country.
Of course we might have to pound then all into rubble first, as we had to with Germany and Japan, (The Italians were not really fighters, just lovers, and took the hint as early as they could)
Our founding fathers knew enough to want to stay as far from "democracy" as they could. They ham stringed the government, and only with the increasing "democratization" of that government, has our freedom been compromised significantly.
This article asserts that the war in Iraq cannot be won due to the Islamic rejection of democracy. Screw the Islamic extremists. They are our enemy, and they are the enemy of Iraq, and they are going to lose.
Millions of Iraqis who participated in democracy are muslim. The same occurs in Turkey. This idiotic notion that muslims are incapable of living in democracy is crap.
Turkey has been doing it since Mustafa Kamal. The only people that think Iraq cannot have democracy are those who believe the only Islam is extremist Islam. Islamic radicals are the enemy of the United States, and they are the enemy of Iraq.
Such are the terrorists who plant IEDs and car bombs. The good people who live in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, will eventually reject the terrorists. That is, unless we abandon them, which we must not do.
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