By Aziz Siddiqui: Islam & the democratic deficit
By Aziz Siddiqui
ARE Islam and democracy compatible? asks The Economist, London, among others before it. The
question really is whether the two aren't actually incompatible. The paper goes on to cite examples
some of which, like Pakistan's, suggest that they are: some that perhaps not necessarily so. No
instances of compatibility were apparently at hand. So it isn't ready yet to rejoice at a phenomenon
like the reformists' win in Iran.
That question does keep coming back. Muslim countries somehow appear either to have been wilfully
resistant to popular rule or unable to work it for any length of time. The syllogism that comes out of
this may thus seem compelling. It is nevertheless rather simple-minded.
Failures of elective government, or shifts to one-party rule, have abounded in Africa. But nobody has
argued from there that Africa and democracy were incompatible. The Latin Americans were until
recently notorious for falling a victim to uniformed dictators. Few surmised from it that there was a
fundamental flaw in that continent. Rightly so. Such failures are not a function of geographical factors.
No more do they spring from religion as such. They do that only when politics is made subject to
religious doctrinairism. But that is true not just of Islam. It applies to almost all religions and creeds.
Doctrinairism ordains; it claims immutability and presses immediacy. It rejects gradualism, is averse to
compromises and accommodation. It works more by imposition than persuasion, demands adoption
rather than adaptation. It views things in black and white, actions in term of command and obedience.
Politics, on the other hand, is, as they say, the art of the possible. It cannot operate except by
recognition of and offering a response to existing conditions, to the mix of circumstances and attitudes.
It succeeds in the measure that it can judge what will work in the given situation, in the given milieu of
both the practitioners of politics and the object of all politics: the people.
It is doctrinairism and politics that do not mix whether the first flows from religion or a non-divine
ideology. It did not mix when the church rivalled the kings in mediaeval Christendom. It did not when,
later, Wyeliffe and Huss and Luther were setting up their revolt against the church, or Calvin in
Geneva was laying down the puritanical law. And it didn't mix when dictators took on the messiahship
either, from Oliver Cromwell with his 21 prohibitions onwards.
So, if the question is modified, one answer is: yes, fundamentalism (in the verbal sense), whether
'Islamic' or other, does go ill with democracy. Reason demonstrates that historical experience
endorses it.
Where, on the other hand, religion has been observed in spirit rather than being reduced to dogmas
(rare and limited as such instances alas are), it has had few problems blessing and nursing democratic
institutions. Islam in fact would seem particularly well-equipped in theory to do that. It envisages the
state as a republic, not a monarchy. It offers no concept of divine right or succession by inheritance:
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf sheikhdoms thus really fall out of the pale on basic point. Nor does it really
have room for dictators. It gives to the people the right to question their leaders, and even to bring
them down. And it emphazises rule by consultation and consensus.
The emphasis on shura occurs twice in the Quran, once urging the concept on the Prophet himself
even though on that occasion, in the wake of the Battle of Uhad, the consultation had taken the
Prophet in a direction opposed to his own better judgment.
A number of Islamic thinkers working on those bases went on to derive principles of governance that
would cause little discomfort to any ardent protagonist of democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood, for
instance, which is claimed to have worked out all the details of Islamic statecraft, believes that the
umma is the sole source of authority and bowing to it is a religious obligation. No government
established by force is acceptable.
The ruler, it says, has to come in by the direct or indirect vote of the people. All decisions have to be
taken by debate and consultation. The executive power has to be the ruler's, but the legislative
function shared between the ruler and the directly elected parliament. Judges have to be completely
independent. Finances are to be managed by the appointees of the executive, but those appointees
have to be responsible to the people. And all control and reform must be in the hands of the
community acting through its elected representatives.
An Islamic order also, say the Muslim Brothers, guarantees to every citizen freedoms of thought,
worship, expression and education. There have been variations on these outlines of an Islamic polity
by other like-minded scholars of standing, such as Mohammad Natsir of Indonesia, Sadiq al Mahdi of
Sudan. Allal al Fassi of Morocco. These were not only men of learning, they had also mostly been
involved in the business of governance. If this was how Islamic statecraft could be shaped, it wasn't
surely greatly incompatible with the essentials of democracy.
The fact however remains that in practice Muslim countries have been among the most undemocratic.
The states with majority Muslim populations today constitute 90 per cent of those which, by objective
standards, have to be defined as not free; they also happen to make up the bulk of the comity of
nations which by all accounts have to be rated as the world's most oppressive. To judge Islam by the
example of these regimes is of course ridiculous. But the fact remains that Muslim populations in
particular have bred - and then sustained - such orders. What explains that?
While any inherent incompatibility of Islam with democracy is open to question, what is not in doubt is
the apparent proneness during recent democratic waves of Muslim populations to produce strong
pockets of religious revivalism. It is possible to argue that it has been not Islam but the fear of these
Islamic revivalists, fear both within the countries themselves and among the big powers outside, that
have enabled the repressive and undemocratic regimes in Muslim societies to muscle in, gain
acceptability and thrive. There might even have been endorsement for such fears in the order that
followed the Iranian revolution and, later, in the one that came with the advent of the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
President Saddam Hussein in Iraq executed the Shia leader, Ayatullah Baqir al-Sadr, and thenproceeded throughout the '80s to suppress all religious opposition. President Hafiz al-Asad in Syria killed thousands in Hama in 1982 to quash an uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the 1990s, theAlgerian army scrapped an election in which the Islamic Salvation Front was winning and triggered a prolonged civil war. Others too, like Egypt and Indonesia, have used force to silence the revivalists. And the Turkish army is averse to anything in power that smacks of non-secularism, even if it comes in by constitutional means.
The fear has also no doubt been fuelled by the stands these religious bodies take and the kind of
future they often seem to represent. But while, on the one hand, it is erroneous to assess Islam's
compatibility with democracy by the repressive acts of those fearful of the revivalist forces, it may be
equally incorrect to judge it by the posturings of the doctrinaire sections themselves who have been
made desperate by their no-win situation.
The latter's self-righteousness hasn't often faced a test. Democracy would surely have had better
evidence for its verdict if it had allowed them their democratic opportunities whenever these came; if it
had risked giving them their chance even in situations like Algeria's or Turkey's.
The reformist landslide in Iran last week was not really a surprising phenomenon, nor was President
Khatami's victory and popularity before that. When and if, next, the Afghans are able to vote in a
secret ballot, it is unlikely that the Taliban will have much to rejoice. In Malaysia, the religious party
that has exercised power in Kelantan and obtained successes in one or two other states did mostly
play by the democratic book: it were the others who often behaved differently with their control over
the media and even by buying over the Islamic party PAS's assembly members. In Jordan and
Lebanon, too, the religious groups, instead of being any menace to the democratic forms, adjusted
themselves reasonably well to them - and actually lost ground in elections.
The fact is, the common people, Muslim or other, all equally like the taste of freedom, and they all
wish to be left to have their own relationship with their God. Whenever the doctrinaire parties have
had the occasion to face this reality, they have tended to come out chastened; they have felt obliged to
modify the rigidity of their outlook on society and politics. The Roman Catholic Church's change of
attitude since the 1960s, as Samuel Huttington noted, was critical in the success of democratization in
Catholic countries. The wave of liberalism that came in with the Vatican II Council and the Medellin
conference was crucial to the reinforcement of democracy in Spain and Portugal, the Philippines and
the countries of Latin America.
In Pakistan, there have been this additional factor: some of the secular category of leaders have
exploited religion about as much as the religious kind could have done had they had the opportunity in
power. The system of separate electorates, anti-Ahmadi and blasphemy laws, Hudood ordinances,
Shariah courts, revision of family laws, religious terrorism, moves for the 15th Amendment, etc - all
came under Zia and Nawaz Sharif. What more would the others have done? They might well have
been warier in a democratic set-up, with an eye on the next election.
The evidence on that compatibility question is still therefore insufficient in crucial parts. The verdict on
present showing can only be superficial.
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