JOHN PAUL SISTANI:

An Islamic Democracy for Iraq? (IAN BURUMA , 12/05/04, NY Times Magazine)

Is ''Islamic democracy'' really possible? Or is it something meaningless, like ''Jewish science,'' say, or contradictory, like ''people's democracy'' under Communism? This is the question that will determine the future of Iraq, since the man with the greatest credibility in that broken country is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite cleric, who refuses to run for office himself but says that he supports the idea of Islamic democracy.

The ayatollah insists that an Iraqi constituent assembly must be chosen through direct elections and that ''any basic law written by this assembly must be approved by a national referendum.'' He makes only cursory reference to Koranic law as the basis for that legal code. Any attempts to postpone general elections because of security concerns, especially in the Sunni areas, have also been fiercely resisted. In mid-October, he issued a fatwa requiring all men and women to vote, equating voting with such basic religious duties as fasting during Ramadan. It is the duty of the Shiites, according to the ayatollah, to protect Sunni and Christian interests as well. And although he opposed a plan to allow Kurds, who make up 15 to 20 percent of the Iraqi population, veto power over the constitution, he has not squelched Kurdish hopes of preserving some degree of autonomy under a new government. All these are fine words, of course, yet to be tested in reality. But they are remarkable words for a Shiite cleric born in Iran and should be taken seriously.

Despite the recent surge of conservative Christian activism in the United States, the received opinion in the Western world is that in democracies, church and state do not mix. Islam, we are often told, is particularly unsuited to democracy because in Muslim countries the state was never untangled from the clergy. But Iraq was supposed to be a special case, because it was largely secular. In fact, both these assertions were too sweeping. Muslims have rarely been ruled by clerics. Worldly and spiritual authority have usually been kept separate in the Middle East. And until not so long ago, religious minorities, like Jews, were treated with more tolerance in the Muslim world than in Christendom. When worldly authority becomes intolerably oppressive, however, religion is often the only base of resistance. Such was the case in Poland under Communist rule, when the Catholic Church provided a source of dissent. Under Saddam Hussein, the mosque had begun to play a similar role. Political Islam was a way to fight back against secular Baathism, and Ali al-Sistani was its main Shiite spokesman. The pope played a somewhat comparable role under Communism. [...]

Ayatollah Khomeini was not acting as a traditional Shiite cleric but as a modern revolutionary who took power as a political strongman. And in the eyes of many believers, his worldly dictatorship in Iran undermined his stature as a religious figure, since mullahs are not supposed to act like politicians. Osama bin Laden is an amateur priest with more knowledge of Swiss bank transfers and media manipulation than of the intricacies of Islam. It would be hard to find a serious Muslim cleric or scholar who respects him.

It may be useful to reflect for a moment on how the West itself has coped with religion. The separation of church and state was indeed a necessary condition for democratic development in Europe and the United States, but the separation has never been absolute. Britain's constitutional arrangements include organized religion: the monarch is the protector of the Anglican faith. This may now be nothing more than a formality, but in continental European politics Christian democratic parties are still the mainstream. The first such party, the Anti-Revolutionary Party, was founded in 1879 by a Calvinist ex-pastor in the Netherlands named Abraham Kuyper. His aim was to restore God (not the church) as the absolute sovereign over human affairs. Only if secular government was firmly embedded in the Christian faith could its democratic institutions survive. That is what he believed and what Christian Democrats still believe.

Indeed, the more pressing question for the West is whether it can sustain itself in the absence of that faith. If you were betting on who'd be in better shape a hundred years fronm now you'd certainly take Shi'astan over France or Germany.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2004 8:30 PM