I’ll put an asterisk on it the next time I’m being sarcastic, sorry.
In your very OP you draw the distinction between a state with a religious identity and a theocracy. The West has lived just fine in its relations with states with established religions – many Western countries having been that within living memory – or even founded upon a specific religious basis.
The other issue that is getting bandied about in the thread, however, is how you define “democratic” – and universal suffrage alone does not a democracy make. As it stands, a few Islamic countries, earlier mentioned, do have a certain degree of constitutionalism at work, that is, they’re not governed at the mere whim of the royal house/ruling party/religious council. But they are nowhere near being the type of “liberal democracies” that are the standard in Western Europe and North America.
OTOH, if the bar is going to be held at the level of, say, Iceland or New Zealand in BOTH political mechanics AND social policy simultaneously to define “democratic”, then never mind the Islamic world, precious few places qualify.
In any case, to the OP: from the point of view of the political leadership of most of the West, how Islamic- or Christian-fundamentalist a state proclaims itself would be irrelevant as long as it did not attempt to attack its neighbors or finance insurgencies or shelter terrorists and played by international-law rules. Now, from the POV of public-opinion-makers (e.g. think-tankers, activists of left and right, journalists, academics, etc.) they would probably be all beside themselves about how horrible it is that country X or Y has adopted Shari’a or has outlawed the teaching of evolution or have forbidden absolutely the practice of any other religion in their land – because they consider certain things (such as Women’s Rights, or free exercise of religion, or curricular autonomy for schools) to be universal fundamental rights.
Experience tells us that the West seems perfectly able to either continue to do business or at least look the other way as long as they’re not shooting at us. We tolerate or give at best a slap in the wrist to regimes that do anything from destroy irreplaceable art because it’s a graven image to sentence women to death by stoning, just as long as they keep it within its borders. A Shari’a state that otherwise allows free and fair elections, does not threaten others or aid terrorists, and plays by the rules when it comes to trade, would not raise an eyebrow among any Western foreign-service officials.
That was a very nice post, JRDelirious, thanks. I don’t have anything to reply to it with, but it was interesting. The thread has been interesting.
Who would kill them. They are the leaders of the gov’t and often hold several other offices as well. If anything, they’d be the ones to do the oppressing. I doubt there is a case where a member of this council was punished for his vote in any matter.
This is good point, one quite relavent to the OP. In an Islamic republic, presumably those posts that decide if a law or matter of politics is consistant with Islam would be limited to those with a certain amount of religious training. Would this mean that they can’t be democratic. What if we presume religious training is open to anyone (I have no idea if this is the case in Iran). Is this any different from limiting US political offices to landowning whites or men over a certain age. One can become a cleric much easier then one can become a WASP.
Iran is a far from perfect example of a democracy. I still think it is the result of an effort to build such a thing and as such is the best example we have of how one might work, what problems there might be, etc.
How can you say Iran is democratic when the Iranian government disqualified thousands of popularly supported reform politicians? That is the antithesis of a democracy, where the people want one thing and the unelected leaders want something else and the leaders get their way.
This is true. Khamenei’s power in Iran is really absolute. He controls the military and the judiciary of Iran. The Council of Guardians holds veto power over any law passed by the Iranian parliament. The media is under the constant watch of the hard liners and any perceived transgression results in the closure of the paper. The Iranian presidency has become a figurehead position. Khamenei has control over the candidates for the presidency. It is widely expected that Rowhani will be elected president next year with no real opposition. Rowhani is the main figure behind Iran’s nuclear program. If memory serves me right, more than two hundred people who applied to run for president were rejected by the Council of Guardians in the last election. More than a thousand were disqualified from the last parliamentarian election. Democracy in Iran is merely a facade.
Again, they were disqualified by elected leaders (see my post #14). As Nader was in Pennsylvania. Thats why its a democracy, everybodies was elected at one point or another in someway or another.
Bush controls the military of the US and appoints the judicary. The Supreme Court holds veto power over any law passed by the congress.
As long as the ones closing the paper are controled by elected officials, it remains a democracy. One does not need to adhere to the US Bill of Rights to be a democracy.
err…Post #16. For Christmas, remind me to ask the moderators for the ability to see post numbers in preview.
No they weren’t - see my post #20 :). It’s really stretching things to refer to either the Guardian Council or the Assembly of Experts as democratic bodies - they are only in theory.
In practice they serve at the pleasure of the Supreme Leader ( an essentially all-powerful executive ), who, again in practice, is hand-chosen by his predecessor and rules for life. The principle guiding the current Iranian constitution is the theological concept of velayet e-faqih, which means, roughly, “rule by the jurists”. Jurists is this case refers to religious jurists - i.e. the Iranian “clergy”. Iran is an explicitly theocratic state.
Iran is still more democratic than many of its neighbors, but in absolute terms it is not a functional democracy.
- Tamerlane
Here, this might be enlightening. A decent little essay on the constitutional evolution in Iran:
http://www.gongfa.com/yilangxianfa.htm
- Tamerlane
Sorry Tamerlaine, I missed your post #20 the first time around. I didn’t realize that the parliament was only allowed to select members from a hand picked group to go to the Council.
Still the Assembly has the option, once a year, to recall the Supreme Leader if they wish. As the assembly is elected for an eight year term, the population basically has the option to depose of the Supreme Leader once every 8 years.
Or at least they could, if folks ran for the Assembly on a platform of deposing the Supreme Leader (which is a pretty sweet title for the head of gov’t). Given that they are all clerics though, this seems somewhat unlikely, so I concede that Iran is not primarily a democracy.
Interestingly it appears that after the revolution, the Assembly was not limited to clerics and that allowing the Council to disqualify large numbers of candidates is a fairly recent development. This has led to larger and larger numbers of Iranians witholding thier votes, effectivly withdrawing the gov’ts mandate.
So I guess the answer to whether or not an Islamic democracy can succede will be decided in Iran over the next decade, depending on whether the gov’t attempts to reenfranchise the populace by changing the system to make their votes count again, or they effectivly abandon democracy and allow it to devolve into a complete sham.
Any system of government dedicated to goals that can’t be objectively measured is a recipe for trouble. In the western democracies, vague notions of “freedom” and “equality” can be measured in some fashion; with indicators of “freedom” being diversity in the arts, high rates of literacy, and a rise in individual wealth and “equality” being represented by parity in earning power and judicial treatment between the two genders and various races. Further, these nations recognize that no perfect formula will ever be reached and the compromises slowly move to the left or right depending on the political will of a particular generation.
By contrast, a theocracy has no objective measurable results of its success and it claims a perfect state can be acheived. This is a major inconsistancy, since by what measures can it be judged that the nation is getting closer to a perfect biblical/Koranic state? More “holiness” among the people? A better standing with Allah? More of your citizens in heaven? More heretics burned?
Without an objective standard of success, the system ends up selecting for leaders who are not the most imaginative or efficient or even inspiring, but the most ruthless; the ones who can force their personalities on others through fear or murder. After all, two rivals for a govermental position can both claim to be holy men (and who could prove otherwise?) but the one that ultimately wins out could easily be the one who acts first to have his opponent assassinated or his supporters intimidated. It doesn’t even matter if assassination/intimdation is against the formal religious beliefs of the theocracy, since it is ridiculously easy to rationalize such acts for such undefined motives as seeking the greater good for the soul of the people. And if ruthlessness and violence doesn’t acheive a perfect theocratic state, the response will be to clamp down harder, to burn more heretics, to purge government workers who aren’t holy enough, all in an effort to force the population to comply with an ideal that isn’t and can never be objectively defined.