Whatever the drawbacks of Western-style democracy, it does have this going for it: Democracy is the art of living in peace with those one despises. It is a hard-won ability, a gift torn from oppression, from years of religious persecution, muzzled speech, the inability to pick your own leaders. And it co-exists always with the sanguine notion that however sure you might be of the supremacy of your own views, at the end of the day you must leave open the possibility that you might be wrong and they, the ones you despise, might be right. In other words, democracy encompasses a truckload of doubt. And I do not know of a more valuable national asset.
And it is for this reason that I believe that Islam might not be able to coexist with democracy, that what we call the Arab Spring will turn, sooner or later, into an icy and cruel winter. In fact, the process has already begun.
On Friday in Cairo, for instance, a mob of thousands, equipped with hammers and gasoline bombs, tore down a protective wall outside the Israeli Embassy and tossed files of documents into the streets—an act reminiscent of a (more successful) Iranian attack on the American Embassy more than three decades ago. Very well, you might say, these things happen, especially after the toppling of a longtime dictator. But what was striking about this incident was a brief passage buried in most news accounts. It wasn’t until Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak phoned US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that anyone in Egypt gave a thought to stopping those attacks. That’s because Panetta, in turn, called the Egyptian military, and—lo and behold—the billions the US gives Cairo every year helped propel sleepy military and security police into belated action.
But it isn’t only mob action and police inaction that makes one doubt the prospects of democracy in Egypt. On this very site two weeks ago, the brilliant Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany executed an astonishing about-turn. In a lengthy and amazingly paranoid diatribe, he advocated (a) the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador to Cairo—a provocation that turned out, because of more recent events, to be completely unnecessary, since the ambassador had to flee not only the Egyptian mob action of last weekend but any possible recurrences; (b) the repeal or review of all Egyptian/Israeli accords; and (c) “the support of the armed forces in their confrontation with Israel.”
In other words, the first fruit of the as-yet-unfulfilled Egyptian revolution, according to the writer? More bloodshed, and plenty of it. The death of any suggestion of harmonious coexistence. The reversion to the classic whine: screw up your own country, and blame it on Israel.
But why stop with Egypt? Recently, an Indonesian court sentenced a dozen religious fanatics who had murdered three unarmed members of another Muslim sect, kicking and slashing them to death, to a few months in jail. One had smashed a victim’s skull with a stone: he received three months’ time. Another, Idris bin Mahdani, who led more than 1,000 Muslims in the attack, got five months of jail time for illegal possession of a machete. None of the accused was charged with murder, and news reports on the case indicate why. The slaughtered were all members of the Ahmadis, a group from Java who don’t believe that Muhammed was the last prophet: they are considered heretics and blasphemers, and not only in Indonesia, but in Pakistan.
If by democracy, we mean that choosing one’s religion is an innate right, then no Muslim nation can claim that distinction. In March of this year Shahbas Bhatti, Pakistan’s minister for minorities, was shot dead in his own car. His crime: he was Christian. In Saudi Arabia, conversion from Islam to another religion carries the death penalty, and the public practice of non-Muslim religions is forbidden.
And what of Libya? The rebels, the chosen ones? In May, Reuters gave us a hint of what was to come in the post-Qaddafi paradise of Western design: “In signs of greater Muslim piety, some rebels have grown longer beards, public prayer has become ostentatious, religious books are selling well and plans are afoot for more centers for the study of sharia, or Islamic law.”
No comments:
Post a Comment