The world’s third-largest democracy (Indonesia) is mostly Muslim. Turkey is also mostly Muslim, and is probably in the top-ten democracies by population size. Look - I’m an atheist, and I’ve no love for any religion, let alone Islam. But the idea that Islam has this extraordinary anti-democratic effect is just plain nonsense. The thing that makes it hard to build democratic institutions isn’t religion, it’s the lack of a large and stable middle class. (Pakistan does have a middle class - but not in the Northwest).
Islam has always had a definite democratic element, a presumption of equality among all the Muslims of the umma. It’s just that elections are something they never invented. Also, that we Westerners think of separation of church and state as an essential element of democracy, but Muslims never from the start believed there could be any separation. Christianity started out as an illegal sect and, even after coming to political power, never shook off the formative effects of that experience; but Islam made the state – there was none in Arabia before Mohammed; Mecca had not even a mayor or town council, only tribal elders.
I take it having being born in the NorthWest Frontier Provinces, raised there, traveled extensively in that region of the world, Urdu as a first language, and following the area for over half a century, along with current contacts there leaves me without the faintest idea…?
As with China, no one is an “expert” on Pakistan. But for what it’s worth, I speak from first-hand experience, and as a native son.
Good on you for picking a couple of the most moderate Islamic states.
Still, perhaps a brief list of the new Christian church buildings and new Jewish synagogues in Turkey will reassure us about their democratic ideas? Or would you prefer to film a lovely young lady trucking around one of the more conservative Islamic areas in either country dressed as a modern young woman to help you understand the differences between democracy and an Islamic state? Or how about just trying out a brand new unregistered religion in Indonesia–which public venue do you propose to rent out, and how, if it’s not registered with the government and the government won’t register any more?
I understand it’s not politically correct to blame Islam for Pakistan’s troubles. That doesn’t mean Islam is not to blame. They are extraordinarily anti-democratic in the ordinary sense of the word, and only a Muslim has full and unrestricted privileges (and then within the remarkably constrictive restraints of Islam) in an Islamic country. The Islamic ideal of democracy is to let people exercise their rights within the Islamic straitjacket of principles. And it’s a pretty tight straitjacket. A democracy that does not protect the privilege of the other guy to live his own life where possible is not, in my opinion, much of a democracy.
But getting back to Pakistan: just saying the wrong thing (and in particular, any anti-Islamic thing) will get you happily killed in Pakhtunkwa, much less dressing like a heathen woman. There is, for example, an automatic and widely-accepted understanding that converts from Islam to other religions should be killed without furthur ado, and moreover that there is a very strong responsibility to kill them. In such a climate, democratic civil government as we know it in the West is not possible.
Then you misunderstand the word. Democracy and liberty are not the same thing and often in opposition. The point of democracy is the make the state do whatever the majority of the people want it to do, regardless of the rights or interests of numerical minorities-of-opinion or -of-interest or -of-anything-else. The point of constitutional government and the rule of law is, among many other things, to protect minority rights from majority will. The two can be made to work together – we’ve managed that pretty well in America, at least recently – but neither is essential to the other.
Why “new” Christian church buildings? Turkey is 0.6% Christian, and has even fewer Jews. Who is supposed to be building these churches?
The existing churches in Turkey - of which there are plenty - are no doubt adequate for the needs of the congregations they serve.
Actually, I didn’t just pick two of the more moderate states with Muslim majorities - I picked two of the largest, full stop. Turkey and Indonesia combined have populations of over 300 million. If you want to know what multi-party democracy in majority Muslim societies can look like, it’s entirely reasonable and appropriate to point to these two, precisely because they aren’t exceptional.
As for Turkey, suggesting that the popular ideal is “democracy within the constraints of Islam” is flat wrong. Governments there have traditionally been aggressively secular. The current government is mildly Islamist, by Turkish standards - but not much more so than any number of European Christian Democratic parties are Christian. There’s a religious bent to it, and I doubt that I’d vote the Justice and Development ticket - but they certainly aren’t going to impose sharia. And if they tried, they’d be voted out (assuming the military didn’t remove them first).
I would actually be surprised to see much in the way of serious anti-semitism in Turkey. I know that Turkish-Israeli relations have taken a serious hit over the past couple of years - but that’s a different thing from anti-semitism. And for that matter, Turkey is a very common vacation spot for Israelis - not something you’d expect if the place had a particularly strong tradition of anti-semitism.
As for Indonesia - I agree with you that there are real problems with freedom of religion there. Also freedom of the press, of assembly - the transition to democracy has been bumpy. That being said, they do hold reasonably free and fair elections, and I’d suggest that Muslim Indonesia has better odds of keeping multiparty democracy over the long haul than, say, Christian Ukraine. (If nothing else, having Russia as a neighbor is not healthy for the democratic process. Or democratic activists).
And as for Pakistan - I don’t doubt your description of the state of affairs there at present, and I agree that democracy would have a rough go of it in that climate. But I don’t agree that this is because the country is mostly Muslim - other majority-Muslim countries fare far better. The problem, rather, is a weak middle class, extremely uneven economic development, and lack of access to education in the tribal regions. You’d have more or less the same problems in a heavily Christian state with the same developmental profile.
In fact, you do get bizarre religious fundamentalism in majority-Christian states with wild disparities in development - look at Uganda’s “kill all the gay people” movement.
Technically, it was a “kill some of the gay people and imprison the rest” movement.
You’re right, and I should have avoided that error. Ignorance fought!
ETA: I’ve always thought it’s a shame that we don’t get comic-book noises when ignorance is fought. You know - “BAM!” “BIF!” “POW!” and so on.
Ouch.
Fair enough as your perspective; it would derail the thread to start arguing about what, exactly, democracy is, and I’m obviously giving opinion here. I would not disguise it any other way.
I disagree that democracy and liberty are two entirely different things, but I won’t disagree that parsing them out carefully from one another will get some Islamic countries off the hook. Yes, they can have “democracy” as long as the democracy doesn’t vote for too liberties inconsistent with Islamic principles. By this twist they ensure permanent Islamic majority populations. It makes no sense for a wave of non-Muslim immigrants to go become the persecuted minority of an Islamic “democracy” and for the most part native non-Muslims keep a deliberately low profile regarding public religious policies. Turkey is only relatively “aggressive” in its quest to separate church and state, and to confuse that with being aggressively “secular” is a stretch, in my opinion. But again, that’s a different thread. It’s my opinion that any decent democracy understands that the tyranny of the majority “culture”–aka religion in this case over the minority renders the democracy a farce.
If you want to know what destabilizes Pakistan’s democracy, the answer is the quality and quantity of Islamic “extremism.” It is pervasive, destructive and destabilizing.
My two cents, of course.
No doubt at all. It’s a fine place to raise folks from any faith.
No problem at all building the church of your choice for the faith of your choice.
“In 1974 the High Court of Appeals ruled that minority foundations had no right to acquire properties beyond those listed in their 1936 declarations, and the state seized control of properties acquired after 1936. An amended foundations law governing religious minority property rights, which became effective in February 2008, facilitates the return of minority foundation properties expropriated as a result of the 1974 ruling; however, the law does not account for properties that have been sold to third parties or to those expropriated when the associated foundations have been taken under government control, which, due to the Greek community’s small population, applies to the majority of expropriated Greek Orthodox properties. The law also does not rescind the authority of the GDF to expropriate property. Officials claimed that the amended foundations law should make it easier for non-Muslim communities to manage and establish new foundations. The opposition Republican People’s Party’s March 2008 appeal of nine articles of the law had not been taken up by the Constitutional Court by the end of the reporting period.
The amended law allows the 161 religious minority foundations recognized by the GDF to acquire property, but it does not allow the communities to reclaim the hundreds of properties affiliated with foundations expropriated by the state over the years.”
Knowledge doesn’t wear a cape and cowl though. 
Sure it does. Non-Christian immigrants were persecuted minorities in the US and Europe for a long time, and yet they went anyway. Migration is all about economic opportunity, which is why there IS a huge number of non-Muslim immigrants working in the more prosperous Arab states. But you knew that.
Good point. Knowledge needs these things as well as comic-book noises.
Including, if memory serves, the SDMB’s own Desert Nomad and Paul in Saudi.
“Was”?
Shouldn’t wonder if most of them date back to Byzantine times (or earlier) and have never since been pressed for space.
No capes!!!
Most of the churches which are being used as churches are no older than the 17th century. There are lots of churches from Byzantine times, but some have been converted to mosques and an approximately equal number into secular spaces (museums, mostly, like the Hagia Sophia).
Well hang on a second. Everything you stated in the bolded part accurately describes India, too. In fact, until recently, literacy, education and per capita income was actually better in Pakistan than in India. I don’t subscribe to the theory that there is an inherent contradiction between democracy and Islam, but there is something that has led India to be a much more stable democracy than Pakistan, and the issues you highlighted aren’t it.
And, to show that I’m equal opportunity:
Come on – you can’t judge the character of a state by looking at its most conservative elements. Otherwise, one might be led to conclude that the US isn’t democratic. After all, would you prefer to film, say, two men kissing each other in one of the more conservative parts of the US to help you understand the differences between democracy and whatever the US practices? Or, forty years ago, would you prefer to film a black man and a white woman trucking around in the Deep South?