ORGANIC ARAB LIBERALISM:

Syria: The Long Road to Democracy?: Syria has come under great external pressure following the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister. But pressure to reform is growing inside Syria as well. A group of Syrian opposition parties has released “The Damascus Declaration for Democratic National Change.” In this Globalist Document, we excerpt their recommendations for democracy and freedom in Syria. (The Globalist, November 15, 2005)

The recommendations

• Establishment of a democratic national regime is the basic approach to the plan for change and political reform. It must be peaceful, gradual, founded on accord and based on dialogue and recognition of the other.

• Shunning totalitarian thought and severing all plans for exclusion and custodianship under any pretext, be it historical or realistic. Shunning violence in exercising political action and seeking to prevent and avoid violence in any form and by any side.

• Islam — which is the religion and ideology of the majority, with its lofty intentions, higher values and tolerant canon law — is the more prominent cultural component in the life of the nation and the people.

Our Arab civilization has been formed within the framework of its ideas, values and ethics and in interaction with the other national historic cultures in our society, through moderation, tolerance and mutual interaction, free of fanaticism, violence and exclusion, while having great concern for the respect of the beliefs, culture and special characteristics of others, whatever their religious, confessional and intellectual affiliations, and openness to new and contemporary cultures.

• Adoption of democracy as a modern system that has universal values and basis, based on the principles of liberty, sovereignty of the people, a state of institutions and the transfer of power through free and periodic elections that enable the people to hold those in power accountable and change them.

• Guarantee the freedom of individuals, groups and national minorities to express themselves, and safeguard their role and cultural and linguistic rights, with the state respecting and caring for those rights, within the framework of the Constitution and under the law. ...

The End comes for all men.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 18, 2005 12:13 PM