Well, for instance, there was that period from the early 50s to the late 70s when a foreign power had a puppet in charge of Iran. That was pretty undemocratic…
Oh, sorry, you were not asking me… 
So you consider the UK and the Scandis undemocratic?
No. Since you seem to imply that I should, please specify why.
You said that your definition of “democratic” requires “banning the establishment of a state religion”, something those countries have. Either it is not acceptable for them, or it is acceptable in general terms.
This statement could (note, I do not necessarily believe it ought) be interpreted to mean that the presence of a state religion is inherently undemocratic. The UK and the Scandinavian countries all have law-enshrined state religions. I presume this is why Nava believes you ought to consider them undemocratic.
Perhaps the real issue here is that no clear distinction has been made between “non-secular democracy” in the vein of the UK and Scandinavia - i.e countries which are decidedly, by word of law, not secular, but are definitely modern, western democracies, and outright religious democracies.
Ok - I see your point now. I should have been more clear on what a “state religion” is (in my definition). I suppose you refer to the Church of England as a state religion since it is institutionally linked to the Crown. To me that is not what a state religion is. The parliament of the UK has full power to pass laws regulating the Church of England. Its lawmaking power is not in any way or form derived from religious authority nor does it have to answer to such authority or is under any obligation to demonstrate that the laws it wishes to pass are in line with the Christian faith. Being Christian is not a precondition for holding political office - neither in theory nor in practice.
Based on these facts I would call the UK a fully secular democracy, not a religious one.
I think dictatorships are under-rated. 
Singapore and South Korea come to mind as countries which prospered contentedly under dictatorship.
I was intrigued to note that Dopers largely supported the military coup against Turkey’s democratically-elected government. I wonder why the same open-mindedness doesn’t present when discussing Thailand, where military governments have been universally less corrupt than the elected governments. I guess Islamism is now a recognized evil, while lying politicians motivated only by personal greed is as American as apple pie.
As someone living in Thailand I have choose my words carefully. However there are certainly plenty of western ex-pats living here who are generally in favour of the current government, or at least neutral towards them. There is of course the expectation that in due course elections will be held, which has so far happened every time in the past that the Military took over Thailand.
As a minor point, I wanted to mention that there are 26 Lords Spiritual, bishops and archbishops who sit in - and are full voting members of - the House of Lords. They have no party affiliation.
So while I don’t disagree that the UK is in practice a secular democracy, the CofE does in fact have a small but definite amount of direct political power in the UK government.
It’s a secular democracy in practice, but not on paper.
Iran is somewhat opposite - a democracy on paper but not in practice.
I can’t believe the moral depravity someone must exhibit to wish a coup on the Turkish people. To wish that, you must completely view the people living in Turkey as some other form of life, and not deserving of the same rights we value for ourselves. I suspect this is the case because of their predominant religious identity.
Turkey’s democracy was under threat by Erdogan, but he hadn’t achieved his dream of a strongman Presidency with the Judiciary and Legislative branches submitting his authority. The coup attempt has strengthened Erdogan while regional instability, his rhetoric and involvement in this unstable region, the economy and his insistence on the Presidency he dreams of were weakening his support. You’ll notice that along with the roughly 3000 soldiers that have been detained, close to 3000 judges have been detained. Such a wonderful thing is the “secular dictatorship” that it promotes this Hell on the people of Turkey who are opposed to the current government.
Instead of looking at the achievement the people of Turkey made in resisting a coup, we get people openly wondering if a secular dictatorship is a good thing. What is it about Turks that makes you think they are better off in a dictatorship? Turks don’t believe that. They vote for a wide variety of viewpoints in their government. Over the weekend we learned relatively few Turks support a military dictatorship. Good.
Democracy is stronger in Turkey than it was in the 1990s or 1980s or 1970s or at any time earlier than in history. This is as wonderful as when the worthless shithole known as Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans.
Turks faced a conflict between two types of strongmen this weekend. It threatened the end of their democracy and democracy won. You should be celebrating. You should be replacing your Facebook self-portraits with an image of the Turkish flag to show you are mourning for all those who died in this stupid coup attempt. You should be feeling some sorrow for the stupid kid soldiers that got drawn into this plot by some egomaniac military leader.
Secular dictatorship. It would take a seriously brutal maniac (on the scale of Stalin or Kim) to actually make me consider any Islamic country as a preferable alternative.
So no predominantly Muslim country should have democracy?
I suppose you are not big on personal freedom then, are you? Somewhere above someone mentioned South Korea as a positive example for dictatorship. I guess you could even call it that - it was economically successful and the growing wealth of the population provided it with popular support. But even in that “successful” dictatorship there was no freedom of speech or of the press. The national security service KCIA frequently detained and tortured members of the opposition. That’s what dictatorship is like, even without a “seriously brutal maniac” at the helm.
So far, I agree with this answer the most.
“Democracy” vs. “Dictatorship” are very loose terms - they simply refer to the presence or absence of voting for leadership.
What counts is what they imply - that the voting keeps the government honest, that between the votes the government respects the rule of law, and that certain rights are protected, even from majority rule.
Democracies typically are better at all of these things than dictatorships, so in general are to be preferred. If all of these elements are in place, it ought not to matter in the slightest if the country is “Islamic” or any other religion or lack of religion.
The concern of course is that fundamentalist Islam (like, really, all fundamentalist forms of religion) are basically incompatible with these things. A government cannot be both fundamentalist Islamic and allow for constitutionally protected rights such as freedoms of conscience, the press, and religion - but then, neither could a fundamentalist Christian government.
Lots of less extreme forms of religion, however, are fully compatible with democracy of the ‘with rule of law and constitutional rights’ variety.
I’m not convinced a theocratic democracy would be all that democratic, and as an agnostic, any society where religious rules are built into the system is likely to unpleasant for me at best. However, dictatorships of any kind, even if they start well, tend to end badly. So while on an abstract level I’ll take the democracy over the dictatorship, in practice there are a lot of variables to consider with regard to where I’d prefer to live.
:rolleyes:
The Iranian Rahbar, is not a hereditary monarch like the Queen. He is elected to his post, by the Assembly of Experts; who themselves are directly elected every 8 years. He is much more similar to the French President, a powerful head of state who is not the Chief Executive*.
Yes, you can argue that the fact that the post is for life is undemocratic, but then there are influential posts in the US (many Senators), which are essentially for life, as they have no real chance of losing elections. But, he is elected, to a constitutionally created position, he does have real *de jure *and *de facto * checks on his enumerated powers, including by elected officials, indeed the last three Presidents have been men who were politically opposed to Khamenei (and that includes Ahmadineajad, who lets rememeber in domestic polictics was of a much different stripe to the clerical establishment).
Certainly, arguements can be made that there is a democratic deficit. A major one even. But to present the as simply an autocratic theorcracy is missing the mark. The Iranian constitution is quite deliberatley set up to restrict the powers of various pillars of state.
*Indeed, infact the position of Rehbar could also easily be translated as President, the position of رئيس جمهور ایران, which is translated as "president"is not really a perfect translation, it means more like Presiding officer or chef official
So pretty much every society on Earth then? You think that American laws and cultural norms are not based upon Christian and especially Protestant notions? Or the U.K and indeed all of W Europe, bar France? Religion is as much a part of a nations culture as anything else (indeed the argument could be made that it is the most important part alongside language). Just because a nation state eschews formalised piety does not mean that it is not heavily influenced by religious edicts, even if they are no longer expressly presented as such.
You also seem to have a curious and inaccurate impression that religious doctrine remains ossified (one admittedly many adherents also like to put forward) and does not change with the times, when in fact it changes faster than most, religions are amazingly adaptable. Nor do you give much to the fact that religious edicts themselves are subject to changing interpretations.
That’s kind of the problem - religions are arbitrary constructs that hold the supernatural as authority. Secular laws are at least ideally reality-based.
I hope you weren’t addressing me; I’m completely ignorant of Turkish politics but clicked on a SDMB thread where Dopers were dismayed that the coup did not succeed. Clearly a failed coup was much much worse than no coup attempt at all. A temporarily successful coup without public support might also have been bad, but your own post suggests that there were legitimate motives for the coup attempt.
I contrasted that situation with Thailand’s recent coup, which had widespread support outside the incumbent kleptocrats.