Respectfully, no serious person has ever suggested that Iran was a democracy.
Beyond that, only a moron or a bigot would suggest that Muslims were less capable of Democracy than Christians.
Beyond that, by the standards set earlier most countries in the Middle East were “secular”.
Iran and Saudi Arabia are the exception not the rule.
Anyway, if we’re going to allow White Christians to have Christian democracies, I see no reason to say Muslims can’t have Muslim democracies.
For that matter, in the West, nobody thinks it’s controversial to claim Israel is a democracy despite the fact that for the first half of it’s existence it placed all of it’s non-Jewish citizens under military rule and for the second half it denied roughly 40% of the population citizenship.
I can’t remember anyone questioning the idea of Jews being capable of democracy.
For the record, I don’t question either of the other two thirds of the Abrahamic religions.
I just find it interesting that its only the Muslims who seem to have to jump through such hoops.
Turkey and Indonesia are the only large Muslim majority countries that can make any reasonable claim to being a free and fair elections democracy (which rules our pseudo-democracies like Pakistan and Iran).
And the tensions between secularism and even a supposedly ‘moderate’ Islamic govt are showing in Turkey and Aceh is a real blot on Indonesian democracy. Not to mention Indonesian blasphemy laws and general religious persecution of minorities.
Edited to add: Christian democracies? What are those? I cannot think of any. It’s only in the USA that anyone even takes that religion seriously enough for it to be a political problem. That cannot be said about Islam and that’s the difference.
Manufactured democracy? Shadow-democracy? Off topic but it’s an interesting question. At what point, when the ‘cost of entry’ into a political ‘market’ is so high, the force of money so dominant and corrupting and the power of external forces so shaping and constraining do we just admit that the perpetual choice of Tweedledee or Tweedledum is just a pseudo-democratic facade?
Sometimes it really just feels that no matter what the electoral outcome is it makes no real difference. Tide of events, force of circumstance and supra-national forces beyond democratic control constrain the politically possible to such an increasingly narrow spectrum of possibilities that beyond ‘culture wars’ it makes not one damn bit of difference how you cast your vote.
[hijack]I don’t think that’s true. The onyl religion that bars you for life is (Roman) Catholicism (by birth, conversión or marriage). You have to convert before taking the Crown, but not being Anglican - even if you’re an atheist - doens’t bar you from the throne.
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To paraphrase Cypher: "You know, I know this vote doesn’t matter. I know that when I put it in the ballot box, the Media is telling my brain that it is relevant and important. After nine years, you know what I realize? "
I would have thought it was fairly clear what I meant by now. If their system allows for no persecution of any religion then that’s a good thing. A “Muslim” democracy that works in the same way as many “Christian” democracies in Europe is fine with me, if it does work. As far as I’m concerned, the UK is a de facto secular country. If you disagree with me, that’s fine, but since I have elaborated and clarified, there is no need to debate different interpretations of the word.
There is one difficulty I see with this, which is why I’d prefer to see a more officially secular Syria. We, in the UK, don’t feel the need to change the fact that the country is nominally of a certain religion, or that the monarch has far too much power, because we effectively operate 99% of the time as if there is no official religion or monarch. We’ve had hundreds of years to get to this point. Any new government in Syria is going to have to deal with a level of instability we haven’t seen in the UK for centuries. If we had such instability there would be a serious risk of Prince Charles inheriting the throne and exploiting the fact that he would be officially the commander-in-chief of all our armed forces. Therefore, while I don’t see a need for us to change our system as it stands, I would never advocate it when writing a new constitution.
Honestly you’re just arguing for argument’s sake. You really ought to get that chip off your shoulder, it’s making you look silly.
You appear to gravitate towards any thread where you can jump in and tell us foolish, white westerners how little we understand about Islam and Muslim countries, as if we must always defer to you on the matter. You’re not even arguing about the topic of this thread; you’re arguing about another thread. I’d be interested to know what part of my wish (expressed in this thread) that Syria ends up with a democracy, where no one is victimized, is offensive to you, since you seem to feel a need to respond with strong words but little relevant substance.
Personally, I’d say if anything is “moronic” it’s clinging to the wishful belief that, although the situation in Iraq, or Syria, or Pakistan* is extremely complicated, although it’s about people of different religions fighting each other, although their scriptures order death for apostates and glorify in martyrdom, although a truly religious person believes their religion explains the true nature of the universe, religion has absolutely no influence in this matter. These people are blowing themselves up in marketplaces and funerals because they believe in their politics so much that they’ll die for it. Blowing up families is just that politically important that it’s worth giving their lives for. Only doing this will satisfy their political, completely unrelated to religion, vision for their country.
The funny thing is, if you hypothesize religion as a major (I’ve never said only) causal factor, all these inconsistencies suddenly disappear and the actions of these people actually make sense. Maybe they blow themselves up at funerals, along with people of another religion, because (among others reason) they believe God wants apostates dead and martyrs go to paradise. But no, of course not. They must all just be idiots who see suicide bombing of civilians as an effective means to fix their country.
*Here there has been no invasion or overthrow - I’d be interested to see the new logical gymnastic routine you’ll use to excuse religion from this.
Having an “official” state religion is usually just a left-over from the 19th century or so.
Seperation between Church and state means no *direct influence *of the church in the government.
You will still find religious political parties, but today they tend to represent very minor samples of the population. Then there are bigger parties that still carry the name “Christian” in their name, like the German CDU, but that is also a vestige from about half a century ago..
In any case, since the 70’s, Christianity (whether Catholic or protestant) has practically ceased to play a role in daily or political life in most of Europe.
European churches haven’t had a say in policy making since well before that.
Excellent point. The system, as it exists, has a lot of subtle safeguards, things that many people might not even be aware of. The are courts who would stop a runaway monarch, and, ultimately, the military would probably just (politely) refuse to follow his orders.
In Cairo, meanwhile, the new President has pretty much unilaterally removed huge swaths of supposed constitutional protections and rights. And a lot of people will surely remember the old Soviet Union’s constitution, which was a very reasonable document, with many rights and protections built into it – and was as dead as Hesiod.
The U.S. isn’t totally a secular nation; we still have a Congressional Chaplain, and “God” stamped on all our money. But such a very small degree of ceremonial deism isn’t the problem, nor is the problem those jackasses who put up Ten Commandments plaques in courtrooms.
In the U.S., the problem is people like those in Tennessee who tried to block a mosque from being built, right down to the level of committing arson on the structure. Our constitution guarantees freedom of religion…but, at least at times and in small subsets, “We The People” do not.
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In the U.S., the problem is people like those in Tennessee who tried to block a mosque from being built, right down to the level of committing arson on the structure. Our constitution guarantees freedom of religion…but, at least at times and in small subsets, “We The People” do not.
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Ultimately, were they able to block it? I have no idea, but I’m guessing not…and I’m guessing that if they were caught they went to prison. So, even in the small subset, we do, ultimately…and certainly at the macro level we do, as much that might be got away with in the very small subset wouldn’t be acceptable at the that level…and they probably won’t even get away with it long at the smallest subset level either, in the long run.
True, but it doesn’t always have a happy ending. Protests by bigots have, in the past, succeeded in driving others out of town, preventing churches or mosques from being built, and, in a few cases, ended in people’s deaths.
