Islam vs. democracy: Must one disqualify the other?

Editor's note: Leon D'Souza is a graduate of the Utah State University journalism and communication department. He now serves in the U.S. Army.

By Leon D'Souza

March 19, 2007 | On the thorny question of Arab democracy, John Waterbury is something of a Gloomy Gus.

The Middle East scholar and president of Beirut's American University has been known to undermine the idea as a manifestation of misdirected idealism, divorced from the realities of a deeply politicized Islam.

A seasoned observer who has called Lebanon home since 1984, Waterbury has credited what political scientist Benjamin Barber describes as an "exceptionalist" thesis: "that Islam creates an exceptional set of circumstances that disqualify Islamic countries from becoming democratic and fates them to an eternal struggle against the Enlightenment and its liberal and democratic children."

It's an emphatically dour prognosis. And lamentably, one that's endorsed by many who study the often tumultuous relationship between Islam and democracy -- especially in the Arab Middle East, where some 18 percent of the world's Muslims live.

Hardly good news for White House insiders who wax prolific about a secular democracy in the new Iraq.

If Islamic states are doomed by a confluence of religion and politics to transform, inescapably, into illiberal theocracies, then Iraq, assuredly, is a lost cause.

Or is it?

Indeed, statistics tend to cast an ominous shadow on the future.

As the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations has observed, the Arab world, for the most part, is a "democracy-free zone." Most nations "fall somewhere between autocracy and democracy," and even where democratic institutions exist, "the ruling party, president or king exercises final control." What's more, the last three decades have seen a trend "diametrically opposite to the global trend toward political liberalization."

Which leads one to question, what really ails the pursuit of democracy in the Muslim world?

The problem, some say, has to do with specific interpretations of religious ideals within Islam, particularly the notion of God's complete and universal sovereignty. Put simply, ardent Muslims believe that God is the source of all laws; men have only limited freedom to implement and enforce the divine will. Therefore, popular sovereignty can, under no circumstances, trump God's ultimate decree.

The conflict with Western democratic principles is easily apparent: a government run by divine oversight cannot simultaneously be controlled by lesser mortals. Orthodox Islam must necessarily exclude the whim of the majority. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of man cannot mix.

And yet, there are places where the two mutually exclusive realms have learned to coexist.

In fact, an encouraging 50 percent of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims live under democratically elected governments. In countries such as Indonesia -- an archipelagic state of more than 18,000 islands -- they have prevailed over intractable odds along a meandering road to democracy.

The country's more than 200 million citizens, representing nearly 350 distinct ethnic groups, have survived Dutch colonialism, communism, military dictatorship, violent separatism, and a rash of al-Qaeda style terrorism to establish a thriving republic -- a feat journalist John Hughes, who won the 1967 Pulitzer prize for his coverage of Indonesia, says is "disputing the cynical view that Islam and democracy must forever be in contention."

If Hughes is right, there may be hope yet; however, it rests on the answer to a conundrum that has long befuddled Arab democrats: the onerous issue of Islamic reform.

"Some say you first have to reinterpret Islam, then you can build a democracy," says Marc Plattner of the National Endowment for Democracy. "There are others who say that if you establish a democracy first, that's the best way to get a reformation in Islam. It's kind of a 'chicken and egg' problem."

I'll add this: whatever the solution, the stability and prosperity of the Muslim world may well depend on it.

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