Democracy in name only

Editorial

Four top scholars on Middle East affairs shared the stage at Temple Sholom Sunday night in what was an enormously encouraging sign of decorum and dignified debate on the long relationship between Muslims and Jews.
All roads lead to the current crisis, of course, and most of what was said, even during discussion of ancient history, was filtered through the glass of the recent Iraq war and other recent regional history.

It was notable that even the more controversial of the proposals put forward by some of the speakers were met with respect, rather than with knee-jerk dismissal. The audience's apparent willingness to consider unconventional ideas was encouraging, since Vancouver has been the site of some meetings in which audiences were far less respectful.

One statement that perhaps should have ruffled some feathers, however, met instead with sustained applause. It was an idea, put forward by Prof. Reuven Firestone of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. Firestone said the issue of women in Islamic countries is complex and the place of women in eventually democratic societies in the Muslim world is not an issue on which we should attempt to impose our western ideas of gender equality.

Firestone argued that North American or Western European people tend to view the only valid democracy as one that looks like ours. But the only hope for democratic values to successfully take hold in places where it has not taken root before, he argued, will be the development of democratic movements that reflect local norms and needs.

Which should force us to back up a step and ask what the term democracy means.

At times, European and North American democracy has permitted slavery, internment of citizens of Japanese descent and the systematic oppression of women. Our democracies have evolved over time and we must expect nascent democracies to evolve similarly. But, by entering into military conflict to overthrow the regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq, western countries have essentially kick-started the democratic development. Democracy, if it takes root in those lands, will not be permitted the same centuries of evolution seen in France, Britain, the United States and Canada. These emerging democracies will be expected to join us in a democratic venture already in progress.

It is certainly true that the new democracies may look very different from our own, but what minimal criteria exist to merit the term "democratic"?

In most nations that have seen prolonged military conflict, women make up a clear majority of the population. A "democracy" that excludes a majority of the population because they are female is quite simply no democracy at all.

Imagine the ridicule if anyone had dared to suggest that an Iraqi democracy could be built without the Shiites or the Kurds. Or if an Afghani democracy could exclude the Pashtans. Or if Canadian democracy could exclude minority First Nations or majority anglophones. The American government that implemented the overthrow of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's regime did so on the basis of several philosophical precepts, among them the destruction of weapons of mass destruction. But the moral underpinnings of these acts – the reason many Americans (and even Canadians) supported these efforts – included the creation of responsible democracies in these two countries.

The United States and its allies demand that Kurds, Shiites and other groups be included in the future decision-making in Iraq. This is based on the assumption that centuries of ethnic and religious rivalries can be overcome, albeit with difficulties, in a new democratic society. Ancient hatreds can be overcome and democratic rights extended to all minority groups, it seems. But the idea that Iraqi men would grant their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters the same rights that they grant their traditional "enemies" is apparently too much to expect.

While Firestone's remarks may ring of political correctness – suggesting that the West keep a fair distance and let new democracies develop on their own, they leave the door open for misogynistic attitudes to thrive.

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