Muslims intellectuals must take on the universal myths of democracy

"Sooner or later Muslim intellectuals, particularly those operating within Islamic movements, must take on the task of challenging the universal myth of democracy instead of pandering to it, and dare to define their ideas and the aspirations of the Ummah in purely Islamic terms. Until that happens Muslims will never achieve the conceptual clarity that will enable them to articulate their political ideas in terms that will offer a genuine and credible alternative to the seductive but oh-so-dangerous myths of democracy."

(Perspectives, Crescent International, April 2010.)

Democracy is undoubtedly the most commonplace and widely accepted political concept in the modern world. It is barely an exaggeration to say that it has achieved the status of a universal myth; very few people in the world dare challenge the principles associated with it, and most accept it – explicitly or implicitly – as representing the standards by which any political system is judged. Thus it is that on the one hand even the most authoritarian regimes in the world claim to be democratic or to have democratic elements; and on the other, states that are recognised as democratic can get away with the most blatant breaches of the standards they claim to uphold, as well as ruthless, even murderous, behaviour in their own policies, without their legitimacy being questioned.

How has this remarkable state of affairs come about? For two reasons, principally. First, democracy is associated with and claimed by the most powerful political forces in the world today, and political success is always its own justification. It is a feature of history that peoples subjected to the domination of other powers seek to adopt the ideologies and methods of those powers in order to fight back. The modern west, represented first by European colonialism, and then by post-colonial neo-imperialism of the US and the US-dominated international order, achieved global hegemony largely on the basis of its economic exploitation of resources and the military power that this economic success made possible; but even as it did so, democracy emerged as the dominant political system within the west, and western powers used the language of democracy to explain and justify their hegemony. And so it has been that – having passed through phases of nationalism and socialism, much as the west passed through similar phases – the victims of western power largely adopted the ideas and language to democracy to try to define their own aspirations to resist western dominance.

The second is that democracy is so vague and ill-defined a concept that not only does it mean different things to different people, but very often different things to the same people at different times and contexts. Most people have a particular understanding of it, and assume that it means the same, more or less, to others too. In much of the west, for example, it is associated with liberalism, secularism and the universality of western values, as well of course as electoral political institutions and systems. For many Muslims on the other hand, and others whose main experience is of authoritarianism and foreign domination, democracy is associated principally with self-determination and freedom from repression.

The contradiction here is obvious: when people in western countries hear Muslims talking of democracy, they think: “they want to be like us, they want what we have got, they aspire to the modernity and universal values we obviously do represent” – and, therefore, although it is never understood in these terms, or put so bluntly, “our global hegemony is legitimate and welcome to them”. Whereas what Muslims actually mean when they talk of democracy is more like: “we want political systems and governments that represent our values rather than those of others, we want independence from the hegemony of the west, and we want governments that are serve our interests rather than those of others.”

This difference in the way democracy is understood and used among different people clearly leads to misunderstanding in itself. But to make matters worse, those who do understand the vagueness and flexibility of democracy as a concept can exploit the differences of peoples’ perceptions by using the same terminology to mean different things in different contexts, according to their audiences and purposes. Thus they can represent themselves to gullible Muslim people, particular those who are western educated, as representing and championing democracy against the authoritarian regimes of Muslim countries, even though they themselves are the biggest sponsors and supporters of those regimes against genuinely popular political movements in the Muslim world, which are mainly Islamic movements because the indigenous values that the Muslims hope to realise through democratic systems are those of Islam.

Which brings us to the Islamic movements that are the main vehicles for popular political action in the Muslim world. These are many and varied, some focusing on jihad, others on community organization, and others on oppositional politics; the range and varieties of Islamic activism is too complex to be discussed here. But all too many, particularly those whose emphasis is political action – such as the Ikhwan in Egypt, similar groups in other Arab countries, the Jama’at-e Islami in Pakistan, etc. – themselves fall into the trap of defining themselves in democratic terms as well as Islamic ones, usually by arguing that democracy and Islam are ‘compatible’ and that Islam is ‘democratic’. Islam then becomes just another component of the complex debate about the definition of democracy, instead of being understood in its own terms; while debates about the nature of Islamic polities and states become distorted by the conceptual confusion and baggage that comes with democracy.

Sooner or later Muslim intellectuals, particularly those operating within Islamic movements, must challenge the universal myth of democracy instead of pandering to it, and define their ideas and the aspirations of the Ummah in purely Islamic terms. Until that happens – and not just by the facile argument that democracy is un-Islamic because in Islam sovereignty lies with Allah swt., not ‘the people’ – Muslims will never achieve the conceptual clarity that will enable them to articulate their political ideas in terms that will offer a genuine and credible alternative to the seductive but oh-so-dangerous myths of democracy.

Comments

[Mhausam]

I definitely appreciate what you have to say here. I am a Christian in the Reformed tradition, an elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (and an adjunct instructor in Philosophy) and am a follower of the theology of theonomy, which holds that God's law revealed in the Bible should be the foundation for law and policy in human societies. Modern western culture claims to have universal standards of social morality that all people ought to adopt, but their standards are really based on an agnostic naturalistic point of view. Western culture tends only to assert that it is right, but its proponents never face the underlying question of what is really true and actually argue for their positions against other worldviews, like historic Islam or Christianity. All of us who have alternatives to the western system need to have the courage and integrity to stand up and non-violently confront western culture and challenge its claimed universality and superiority. We need to promote serious dialogue and debate on the underlying questions of truth. I very much appreciate what I've seen of your blog and your attempt to do that, even though we are of two different religions.

I feel like there needs to be more dialogue between Muslims and Reformed Christians and others who find ourselves at odds with the modern western ideological empire. I would very much enjoy dialoguing with you further, if you wish to contact me for further discussion. Sorry about the personal-email feel of this comment, but I could not find any other way to reach you besides commenting in the blog.

[Mr. Bey]

One of the problems with taking on the "myths" is that their is no comprehensive point of view or modern paradigm for students or laypersons to turn to. For example what does a current book list of required reading for aspiring Muslim intellectuals look like? And why is it always that we fight amongst ourselves about our political history and political paths? Its no secret for example the political concessions were made by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Turkey to the National Socialists of Germany. As well as the many other covert blunders of modern Muslim history not covered by our so-called leaders. The general Muslim population is reactionary across the board when issues of destiny and Islamic government are debated. Just a thought.