April 16, 2004
HISTORIC NECESSITIES HAPPEN:
Democracy and the Muslim world (Hilmi Toros, 4/17/04, Asia Times)
A global Congress of democrats from the Islamic World is calling for "regular multi-party elections" in Muslim countries, declaring that Islam and democracy are compatible and can reinforce one another.The declaration Wednesday followed a three-day meeting in Istanbul of "political practitioners" from mostly Muslim countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Delegates included present and former heads of state and government, cabinet ministers, members of parliament and political party leaders.
In a go at authoritarian regimes, the declaration demanded "free, fair and regular multiparty elections that enable a peaceful transfer of power". It called also for freedom of expression, media pluralism, equal rights, the rule of law, abolition of torture, reduction of poverty and "specific advantages" in favor of women and youth.
The declaration noted that Islamic societies need to apply rather than flout Islamic principles of tolerance, justice and participation. "If parts of the Islamic world are not democratic, it cannot be attributed to Islam," Yemen's human rights minister Amat al-Aleem Alsoswa told IPS.
Democracy in the Islamic world is a "historic necessity", she said. "If people want democracy, they can have it. It depends on their willingness to fight for it and the willingness of the political elite for change. Democracy is the proper medicine for relieving the ills of governance and development."
They grasp the key point, that this is not a matter of choice but is going to happen. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 16, 2004 10:47 AM
Old Karl used say that exact same thing!
Plus mutant; plus constant.
Posted by: Derek Copold at April 16, 2004 11:05 AMA completely democratized world is just the latest, and hardly the last, phase of manifest destiny.
Posted by: M. Murcek at April 16, 2004 11:07 AMM:
It actually precedes Marxism, Nazism, Islamicism, etc. and has the great advantage of actually happening before our eyes.
Posted by: oj at April 16, 2004 11:15 AMIf they (and we) can pull it off.
Remember all the Ayatollahs Saddams, and wanna-be Dark Lords running all the other countries in the area, plus our own home-grown Fifth Column?
Posted by: Ken at April 16, 2004 12:25 PMIt precedes Marxism, Nazism and Islamism only in its failure. Jacobinism flopped. There was even an attempt to export it to the Middle East under Napoleon, a far more competent strategist than our current hot shot in the White House, and failed miserably.
If you mean the Greeks, BTW, you'd be wrong. Their "democracy" was more an oligarchy, as only a select group of citizens got the vote, and their democracies were rather short-lived compared to neighboring monarchies and oligarchies; Sparta, for example, maintained the same government for 800 years while Athens oscillated between oligarchies, democracies and tyrannies.
Posted by: Derek Copold at April 16, 2004 3:52 PMJacobinism wasn't about liberty but equality, like the other isms it requires totalitarian rule. All are liberty's opposite.
Posted by: oj at April 16, 2004 3:56 PMJacobinism advanced both equality and liberty. They were seen as being mutually necessary, which is exactly how the high prophets of Fukuyamanism see things as well. They want to destroy traditional, cultural restraints and structures and build anew. Thus Michael Ledeen's tasteless and contradictory phrase, "creative destruction."
Posted by: Derek Copold at April 16, 2004 5:19 PMNo, they're mutually exclusive, which is why the isms all fail. Men are created morally equal, but arrive at different places in life depending on unequal talents and different characters.
Creative destruction is an economic concept from Joseph Schumpeter, referring to the way we have an auto industry at the expense of jobs blacksmithing.
Posted by: oj at April 16, 2004 5:28 PMRe Jacobinism, aka "The Republic of Perfect Virtue":
Some years ago, I was researching the French Revolution for an art piece I was doing, and observed an interesting contrast. The contrast between all the theories of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity in the Intellectual Salons and Jacobin clubs and the total-extermination power struggle in the Assembly and streets.
The Perfect Republic and ever-cycling guillotine.
The Perfect Utopian omelet that always regrettably required smashing more and more eggs.
The Cause so Righteous that it justified any evil whatsoever to bring it about.
And the Perfect Future of the Republic of Perfect Virtue -- including Total Sexual Freedom (TM), with all the resulting children (i.e. only those needed to maintain the Perfect Republic at its Perfect Size) removed at birth to be raised by the Perfect State in Citizens' Creches.
Half of it was like Trekkies gushing over "And Then -- THE FEDERATION!" and the other half the Killing Fields of Cambodia. (Incidentally, there was an actual proposal to reduce the population of The Perfect Republic by about 2/3 from the existing population of France since Plato's Republic set a maximum size for such perfection of society; the plan foundered when the Jacobins could not come up with a way to eliminate the surplus population faster than they could breed -- though one delegate did suggest "mass asphyxiations by means of gas"...)
Posted by: Ken at April 16, 2004 6:27 PM