It’s a week or two old now, but the warning that runs through this article from the London Spectator is still worth pondering:
Here’s an extract:
As a hint of what might be in store for Egypt, consider the city of Alexandria. Once it was a cosmopolitan summer resort famous for its secular, carefree atmosphere. Now it is about the least fun place to live in North Africa. All Muslim women in the city are veiled, among the young often for fear of otherwise being labelled a whore; and violence between local Christians and Muslims is commonplace (23 Christians were killed by a bomb planted in a Coptic Orthodox church on New Year’s day). Most bars have stopped serving alcohol. The only women to be found on the beaches, even in the height of summer, are those taking care of their kids — and they are invariably covered from head-to-toe in black.
Just another reminder of the mistake that Mubarak (alas no Ataturk) made in ceding so much of the religious and cultural arena to the clerics…
And then there’s this:
It is a great mistake to assume that democracy is an enemy of Islamism. When the gift of democracy is unwrapped in the Arab world, Islamists frequently spring out of the box. The jihadis may be despised by most Muslims, but often in Arab countries only about 20 to 40 per cent of the population vote. It is by no means impossible for the Islamists to secure a majority from the minority, because their supporters are the most fanatical. Whatever the theory of democratisation in the Arab world, the history is clear. Where democracy, however tentatively, has already been introduced, it is the Islamists who have come to power.
Food for thought.
So, do we believe in democracy or not? Why do we even care who they vote for? If they want to have a democracy that incorporates religious law, why can't they?
It is an ideological error of a huge degree that the left thinks that if you have a democracy and certain rights. you also have to have abortion and feminism. They act like any democracy that starts now, must invariable start on version 7.0 like we have.
And don't we have the same problem on the right, with that kind of thinking?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...violence between local Christians and Muslims is commonplace..."
I must have missed the stories about all the mosques that were bombed by Christians and all the Muslims who were murdered in their homes by Christian hordes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHmm. Democracy in the Middle East. Wasn't that W's legacy? Gee, thanks George.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo? What's the big deal? We got Barack Obama! Free healthcare is on the way. The economy is roaring.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLet your little hearts be not troubled!
You already stole my comment lol.
Regardless let them have it, another miserable country due to fanatic Muslims. Eventually the masses in these countries will realize they have to turn on the fanatics first.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAh, 'when the gift of democracy is unwrapped'...I am so grateful that the Founders of the United States did not choose democracy for our form of federal gov't, recognizing as they did that it is nothing but the dictatorship of the majority. Instead they formed a Republic, with a Constitution based on Christian principles, and knew that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (and back then, by 'religious', they meant conservative Protestant Christian).
Of course the way we blatantly disregard our Constitution, we're well on our way to a dictatorship of the majority as well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe future of states with large/majority moslem populations is sharia.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"It is a great mistake to assume that democracy is an enemy of Islamism."
Yes, indeed. Fanatics who are not relentlessly opposed always have an advantage. I think the threshold for success may be as low as 25% of the vote.
For example, as late as 1930, the Nazis only got 18% of the vote. In 1932, Hitler got only 30% of the Presidential vote but forced von Hindenberg into a runoff (and a deal). By 1934, the Nazis were in power. They never won an honest election. They never needed to. Nor were their own people ever able to throw them out. It took a world war, once they were embedded.
The precedents and the tactical similarities are frightening. Thank God we are a Republic. It may, in the end, save our bacon.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree that a pluralism of fanatics is all that is needed to grab power but re: 1933 Germany, do remember that Germans watched as millions of theirs were starved along with 9 million others in Ukraine while the west covered it up and feted Duranty with a Pulitzer. Hitler capitalized on this threat of starvation.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo Beck wasn't so crazy to say that the protests in Egypt were not necessarily a good thing?
I've been saying it from the beginning as well - the people in these countries are looking more for freedom FROM the West, than freedom LIKE the West.
Every time people rise up doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIslam will be a problem as long as we pretend it's not, or as long as we qualify our statements on this abhorrent religion in ways like, "I know MOST people are okay". The religion creates more fanatics than the greatest cults in the world. It's evil in the same ways that the Nazi party was evil.
We will either wise up to this, or we will fight world war III over it. My bet is that we will have to fight WWIII to settle this. This is an unconditional surrender type deal. I don't think anything else will solve the menace of Islam. I say this as a person who has Westernized Muslim family members. It's deep in the core of the religion, and the differences with everyone else in the world, and Islam, are not even remotely reconcilable.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Whatever the theory of democratisation in the Arab world, the history is clear. Where democracy, however tentatively, has already been introduced, it is the Islamists who have come to power."
And that would be... Palestine or...? How are we counting Iraq?
Also note how we got from "Islam" to "Arab". Indonesia is the largest Moslem state and the Islamists did not come to pwer there.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBK in Tx - Indeed.
"The jihadis may be despised by most Muslims..." Uh huh. I think that is one piece of conventional wisdom that needs to be seriously reexamined right along with the idea of "moderate muslims" and an "Arab street yearning for freedom". It seems to me that actual experience suggests widespread support for Jihad by the majority of muslims from the middle east to south asia to the west, and that the majority of the Arab "street" yearns for Sharia.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd the solution is... what? Despotism ad infinitum? As you can plainly see from events in the last few months, eventually people don't stand for it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAlternate title for this post:
Political Islam for Dummies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAlternate title for this post:
Political Islam for Dummies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseApologies for the double post. My bad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnfortunately there seems to be no way to stop the current wave of Islamic fundamentalism that is engulfing the Middle East..... and even if there was, the US is a rudderless ship right now. We could not have picked a worse time to have elected such an unqualified neophyte to the most powerful position on the world.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNobody seems to know how to respond to a world where the countries with mostly Muslim populations have Islamic governments and sharia law. Has there even been a novel that discusses this world? Even the guys (like Steyn and McCarthy) who sound the alarm about Islam don't say how we should respond.
Maybe the first step is for somebody like Bill Clinton to discuss the conflict between democracy and Islam. A vote once kind of democracy is not democracy at all. The focus has to be on preparing these people for actual democracy.
I'm not optimistic. What will probably happen is that the Dems will brand anyone prominent who tries to discuss this openly, honestly, and rationally as a racist bigot who is also against democracy. This broad brush attack will probably be extended to Republicans in general. The Republican response will probably be to focus on more immediate issues that contribute more importantly to winning elections.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe question is how to reform (or radically weaken) Islam. It is very fragmented so it would be possible to focus on a specific locality and see how that works.
What is encouraging is that they had this problem solved in Turkey for several decades. Maybe a first step is to study how Atatürk accomplished this and also study how his work was finally undone.
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