[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]
Let’s start out by agreeing that, whatever its faults, the liberal democracy that exists here in the United States ranks among the best forms of government that ever have been invented by mankind. In a nutshell, it goes to the yearnings that almost all people have for control over their lives and destinies.
Those yearnings are not the sole province of Americans. They are shared by most others around the world, ranging broadly from Western Europe where liberal democracies are in place, through the rigid, repressive regimes of the Middle East and North Africa, and on to Iran, China and North Korea. It also includes countries that lie somewhere in between those extremes, like Russia, Venezuela and Cuba, where one or more of the necessary pillars of democracy — a constitution, free elections, freedom of the press and the rule of law — are missing.
With totalitarianism under the gun in North Africa and the Middle East, American and Western politicians and pundits are calling for “democracy” for all those people. And wouldn’t it be nice if we could simply wave our magic wand and install our liberal democracy in those countries? Perhaps not.
The problem is that most of the citizens of those Islamic countries don’t have the foggiest idea what “democracy” really is, and there’s a good possibility that if they did, they might not be so keen on importing it into the Islamic world.
All they really know is that they don’t like what they have — Mubarak in Egypt, Gadhafi in Libya — and that they like the idea of being able to get more freedom, more control over their lives.
But there are a lot of conflicts involved in importing “democracy” into Islam. The Quran is a complete blueprint for life. It tells the believer everything he or she needs to know to lead an appropriate life. Much of that instruction, however, is essentially incompatible with the ideals of liberal democracy.
The root of the problem lies in the fact that in Islam, God determines the laws through the Quran, shariya and hadith. Under strict interpretation, man has only limited license to interpret those laws. Under shariya law, all aspects of life — religious, political, economic, social and private — are predetermined. There is little room for man to intervene.
Then there are practical matters like the extremes of stoning people, cutting off hands as punishment and the overall treatment of women. The extent of adherence to Islamic law depends on the time and place. Some modern Islamic democracies like Turkey and Indonesia have opted not to enforce all those laws. Other Islamic countries, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, have stuck to the traditional interpretation of Islam, which can hardly be called democratic.
What this means today is that we may not do anyone any service by calling for the “democratization” of Islamic countries. In the long run, the inhabitants of those countries may decide that democracy is incompatible with their Islamic ideals. All we know for sure about the stirrings of discontent in the Arab world is that the people in those countries know what they don’t want. They don’t want Arab dictatorships and the concomitant suppression of their own needs and desires. From that we can infer that what they do want is control over their lives and destinies.
When we preach about the virtues and advantages of our democracy, all we are saying is that it works for us. We seldom stop to think that it works for us largely because we have been at it for almost 250 years. We are comfortable with it.
The democracy that many Muslims seek is essentially unknown to them. They have never lived it or worked at it, as we have. It is simply an idealized goal for them. Given that reality, perhaps we should consider what we really want for these peoples.
That seems pretty straightforward. What we want for them is the right for them to choose whatever system of government they wish through the democratic process of free elections. That process is called self-determination, which is a word that does not prejudice the outcome of the process. All it says is that any people would be allowed to determine the kind of government under which to live.
In Islam that may very well turn out not to be democracy as we know it in America, but if those peoples and the region are to find any sort of stability, self-determination is the only practical way they have to reach it.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.
