I’ve often heard it said that democracy doesn’t work in the Middle East.
For those of you who support this statement, do you believe the factors that support your stance are unchanging over time?
If not, what changes would you want to see to be convinced that democracy could work in this region in the future?
Mainly because the West has a history of overthrowing anyone who is actually democratically elected and not a puppet of theirs. And of convincing the local people that “democracy” is just another word for chaos and mass slaughter; for example, there used to be a pro-democracy movement in Syria, but we put a stop to that.
And so we set up the situation so when there finally was a major uprising against Assad, there was no longer any significant pro-democracy faction left. Just the fanatics.
We’ve spent decades convincing people in the ME and elsewhere that “democracy” is just a euphemism for mass death, chaos and American conquest; and then we seem surprised when they don’t want democracy. When you teach people that democracy is death, they don’t want democracy.
I’m extremely unconvinced that democracy ‘works’ in America. Or Europe.
Something similar is true in a lot of the former Soviet Union, where they associate ‘democracy’ with the monumental economic, social and demographic collapse in the 1990s.
People in the Middle East are very aware of the impact of colonialism and Western intervention in their governments. In fact, with the widespread popularity of conspiracy theories, they even think about it in areas where it is not helpful.
That said, they know what democracy is. They do not think democracy is ‘death,’ polling data actually shows large majorities in many countries thinking it is the best system of government. They are just aware that if someone says “democracy” it doesn’t mean that they are any good. Much of the disillusionment with democracy you find there is because many people do not see it as a useful way to overcome autocrats and oppressors and other enemies (including America) to build a good state. It isn’t because they see America killing people and claiming to be defending democracy and so they decide that that is what democracy really is. The Muslim Brotherhood talked about democracy much more in Egypt than its opponents did - they won, after all.
Your reasoning is more correct for America than democracy. You’ll find a lot more people in the Middle East who think America is death than who think democracy is.
As for the OP - It’s pretty hard to have a democracy when the masses of a country feel exploited and oppressed by a small elite backed by military force and international support, and that elite fears for its privileges.
I think that while it can work, the conditions are not ideal for democracy to take hold. The ME has extremism in more abundance and severity than the West. Combating that extremism requires extremism in response sometimes. If somebody wants to strap bombs to their chest and blow themselves up, its not enough to lock them up in jail for a few years or decades, you’ll have to get rid of them permanently. And like it or not, the iron fist of a king or dictator is the best way to rid society of such scum. However, such laws often create extremists, so its a neverending cycle
Eventually they’ll moderate, but it has to get to the point where people want to respond to extreme political anger with words rather than bombs, and the society has to be strong enough to absorb attacks on it through extremists. While beneficial, the Arab Spring was a spreading mob of resentment originating from violence. It can easily be harnessed for evil. Any society that volatile would have trouble in an open democracy
Why don’t you tell us what YOU think?
The young people want it: the Arab Spring.
The old people are the Koran-clutchers who want Theocracy.
The Middle East will grow increasingly democratic and secular. The stable nations, at least.
The problem is the pace of change; it must be frustrating for the young people to get stomped on after marching in Tehran. Good thing our president was “assessing the situation” instead of going in front of the world and supporting the people who actually want democracy. We missed a golden chance.
They used to say that about Africa.
When countries are constitutionally settled and become economically developed enough to support and educated class, then democracy can take root. Democracy is good for countries where the main political issues are the everyday concerns of civic society - health, education, how often the rubbish bins are emptied, that sort of thing.
Most of western democracies were founded on a sorry mess of other political systems that have been tried and failed. They are imperfect, but they seem to work and political leaders come and go in an orderly fashion. Democracies are an internal political system. Internationally democratic structures are feeble, as indeed is the law and countries act in their own interests.
If the economies of the Middle East diversified away from Oil and a broad educated class emerged, democracy would eventually follow. Same goes for Russia.
Democracy does not, and **will **not, ever work in the Middle East because democracy is not, and again will never be, compatible with Islam. The key difference between basic Islamic values and Judeo-Christian values is that Judeo-Christians say ‘Love thy neighbor’ while muslims say ‘Love thy fellow muslim’. IOW you’re always a muslim first, a human being second. To a muslim a non-muslim is at best to be tolerated, ignored, and/or shunned. And at worst converted, and failing that, executed.
It’s really that simple…
Should we distinguish between the impact of democracy on relatively wealthy Islamic countries like Turkey and Malaysia, and the rest? If so, what creates the division?
The phrase “Judeo-Christian” has an interesting history. Prior to 1950 or so, someone like Hail Ants would have used the phrase “Christian values” when making a post like that one. Around that time Jews were finally being incorporated into White America and treated less and less like an outcast group and organizations battling antisemistism began to use the term “Judeo-Christian” as a way to further that goal. Jews were also becoming a more powerful political coalition in some places, and so politicians began to use the term around the middle of the century.
Some groups have begun to use the phrase “Abrahamic values” in an attempt to include Muslims in the same tent, for much the same reasons that the Judeo- prefix was adopted. I suspect that in a few decades that will be the phrase. Or maybe we’ll abandon the ignorant notion that things like being kind to your neighbor regardless of creed are unique to particular faith traditions. Either way.
But it’s always amusing to see people asserting that America was founded on Judeo-Christian values, as if Jews had a lot of say in the founding, or that any of America’s founding values had much to do with either faith tradition.
Have you ever actually met a Muslim? Or are you taking all you know about Islam from Fox News?
If Islam is not the one true religion protected by God from corruption (as I presume you agree), what is preventing any part of it from changing? What is preventing Muslims from sincerely interpreting it to allow for regular, meaningful, and transparent elections, if their religion is man-made?
This is The Straight Dope, not “Your Paranoid Fantasies.”
Muslims are participants in many democracies and are even the dominant religion in several democratic nations. In France, for example, the number of Muslims who participated in elections was only slightly lower than the percentage of the total population and a poll found that the percentage of Muslims who favored democracy was actually higher than the percentage of non-Muslim French.
Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, and several other countries may have teir problems, but they qualify as majority Muslim functioning democracies.