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Originally Posted by
Leet Eriksson
Oh it sure did, let me re-quote in case you forgot, you did not make an observation, but a claim
Now you're arguing its an observation yet, get this, tell me to read books about Arabic Culture, somehow these books contain evidence that rings your observation "true", since this is an internet debate, and you have already read these books, why don't you post evidence with references from both books about how arabs aren't capable of establishing a civil modern society...
Ok, I can do that. I understand what you are looking for now.
Please add the fascinating new book The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East by Timur Kuran (Professor of Economics and Political Science & Gorter Family Professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University) to your Amazon wishlist.
He concludes his work with a stark observation.
“If the region's autocratic regimes were magically to fall, the development of strong private sectors and civil societies could take decades. With few exceptions, their civil societies are too poorly organized, and too beaten down, to provide the political checks and balances essential to sustained democratic rule.”
Here are a few more articles that add some detail to my assertion:
Freedom House:
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In a major study released today, Freedom House concludes that there is a dramatic, expanding gap in the levels of freedom and democracy between Islamic countries and the rest of the world. The study, Freedom in the World 2001-2002, finds that a non-Islamic country is more than three times likely to be democratic than an Islamic state.
"This freedom and democracy divide exists not only between Islamic countries and the prosperous West," said Adrian Karatnycky, Freedom House president and coordinator of the survey. "There is a growing chasm between the Islamic community and the rest of world. While most Western and non-western countries are moving towards greater levels of freedom, the Islamic world is lagging behind.".
The Middle East Quarterly:
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Seventeen Countries
The best way to find out is by testing this idea against empirical data in those seventeen states.6 The inhabitants of these countries share a number of important qualities. They speak Arabic. Their historical references include the Muslim Arab conquests, the Ottoman empire, and European colonialism. Islam, the faith of 92 percent of the people in these countries, is arguably their most important common cultural characteristic. (Table 3) It is the state religion in all Arabic-speaking countries except Lebanon, designated as such in their constitutions or through the stipulation that the head of state must be Muslim. All incorporate, wholly or partially, Islamic law into their legal systems. Some Arab leaders not only make certain that Islam is implemented on the national level but also use it in varying degrees to justify their legitimacy and their policies. This applies especially to traditional monarchial regimes, such as Saudi Arabia.
Religious freedom in the Arab world is usually restricted, for reasons ranging from state policy to vigilantism by extremists. Thus, at one end, the Saudi authority prohibits the practice of religions other than Islam, to the point that conversions out by Muslims is punishable by death.7 In Algeria, by contrast, the constitution declares Islam the state religion while prohibiting religious discrimination, which was of little use when Islamist terrorists in Algeria deliberately targeted and killed Christians during the recent civil strife in that country. The Libyan government bans Islamic groups at variance with the state-approved teaching of Islam. In Bahrain, the government controls and monitors both Sunnis and Shi'is. In Egypt, Copts face discrimination, while the law limits their rights as citizens; apostasy is not prosecuted by the authorities but has led to murder of real or designated apostates by extremists. In Iraq, the Shi'a and their religious leaders are repressed, while Assyrian Christians in th
at country are in a permanently precarious situation. The Kuwaiti government forbids the founding of non-Islamic publishing companies or training institutions for clergy. In Oman, the mosques and religious services are monitored to ensure that the preachers stay clear of politics and within the sanctioned orthodoxy of Islam.
Human rights has seen some improvements in recent years, such as the release of political prisoners or prisoners of conscience in Kuwait, Morocco, Tunisia, and Syria, but the region's record on this score remains dismal. Human Rights Watch states that in the Middle East and North Africa in 1997, "the overwhelming majority of people lived in countries where basic rights were routinely violated with impunity and where open criticism of the authorities knew sharp limits."8 Also, as reported by Amnesty International, the death penalty continued to be widely used. Other abuses included ill-treatment of prisoners and torture as in Egypt, "disappearances" in Syria, and killings of civilians in Algeria.9
Women, notwithstanding constitutional guarantees in several countries, have little political power. With only a few exceptions, Arab women do not occupy leading executive, legislative, or judicial positions. Six of the seventeen Arab countries have not yet endorsed women's right to vote and have not yet given women the right to stand for election. (Table 4) Most Arab states have legislation that in many respects relegates women to an inferior status, and only Tunisia has legislated formal equality and monogamy. A study sponsored by the United Nations finds that the "majority of Arab women are either ignorant of their rights or are too impoverished to either claim or defend such rights. High illiteracy levels, economic hardship, unemployment, and poor educational attainment make women's awareness of and claim to their legal and political rights a luxury they cannot afford."10
Indices help specify political and social trends. Gender Empowerment Measure developed by the United Nations Development Program shows the weak role and status of Arab women. Taking into account the percentages of seats in parliament held by women, of female administrators and managers, of female professional and technical workers, and of women's share of earned income it finds Kuwait ranking 72nd (of 174 countries in 1999), Tunisia 75th, Syria 81st, Morocco 84th, Egypt 86th, Algeria 92nd, United Arab Emirates 96th, Sudan 97th, and Jordan 98th.11
Press freedom, as measured by Freedom House, does not exist in most Arab countries. Information control and the muzzling of journalists by governments, as well as self-censorship by journalists for fear of reprisals or being excluded from future access to news, continue. A press study of 186 countries rates the seventeen Arab countries: none have "free" print and broadcast media, 2 (or 12 percent) are "partly free," and 15 (or 88 percent) are "not free." (Table 5)
Prosperity is fairly high across the region, but unevenly distributed. The redistributed oil wealth of some countries is reflected in their gross domestic product (GDP) and in their per capita income. The latter (as expressed in purchasing power parity), ranges from a high of $25,300 in Kuwait to a low of $800 in Yemen, with a weighted mean of $4,100. When the UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI) is used, only four Arab countries have rankings of high development; eleven others have rankings of medium human development; and the remaining two are ranked with low human development. (Table 6) All the countries scoring high on HDI are Persian Gulf oil states with small populations. They have the financial resources to address the important issues of education, health, and social welfare. Thus far, however, prosperity has not led to advances in democratic government.
A different but related measure of economic growth, prosperity, and liberty is the Index of Economic Freedom, co-published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.12 The 2000 edition of the index-which surveys the economies of 161 countries in terms of their foreign investment codes, fiscal burden of government, tariffs, banking, and more - reports a general improvement in the economic freedom of most Arab states during the past year. Bahrain is the most economically free country among the Arab states, due primarily to "a lack of taxation on personal income and business profits," and ranks as the fourth economically most free country in the world.13 Other Arab states fare far less well: Saudi Arabia comes in at 71, Lebanon at 90, Egypt at 110, and Syria at 139. Libya and Iraq bring up the rear, ranking 159 and 160 (out of 161 countries).
As for political power, the Arab states include nine republics, four of them military dictatorships, while monarchs, sultans, and emirs rule eight others. Parliamentary power, where it exists, is weak, with appointed upper houses, and restrictions on opposition parties, where political parties are permitted at all. (Table 1) Suffrage is typically underdeveloped-nonexistent in several countries, restricted by gender or other factors in others, seldom transparent. Elections for the position of ruler are not permitted in at least eight countries, and elections for the legislative branches are not possible in four of them. (Table 2)
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What accounts for this poor political record? A variety of factors - Islam, Arab culture and traditions, the region's political economy - have been blamed for the lack of democracy in the Arab world. Western imperialism and hegemony still serve as useable scapegoats, while Arab leaders and elites are frequently described as anti-democratic, notwithstanding their rhetoric. All these explanations find adherents both within and without the Arab world.
Thus, according to Mehran Tamadonfar, a political scientist who specializes in Islam, a polity is judged to be Muslim to the extent that it observes the basic teachings of Islam, which does not distinguish between the spiritual and the secular. Democracy and popular sovereignty, in the Western sense, are not acceptable, because they challenge the concept of divine sovereignty. The sovereignty of God is not questioned by a human ruler, or a government, that, in effect, enforces God's sovereignty by making the populace adhere to the Shari'a (sacred law of Islam).15
Muhammad Shakir ash-Sharif, a Saudi, writes that
democracy, which is "creeping" [tatasarrub] into the Muslim world, is incompatible with Islam because Islam offers governance by the Creator [al-khaliq], as understood by a properly instructed religious elite, whereas democracy, a non-Arabic term, necessarily implies rule by the created [al-makhluqin], in which unbelievers and the ignorant have an equal say in governance and usurp God's rule.16
By contrast, Michael C. Hudson, an authority on Arab affairs, sees the Arab hostility to democracy as based less in a theological view of politics than in
the insecurity of the ruling elite, based not necessarily on selfishness but on. . . a realistic appraisal of the situation, causes it to act autocratically. In the absence of legitimate structures, they cannot conceive of a loyal opposition-the chances are greater that it is subversive. Opposition leaders are right in labeling the incumbents as despotic. . . placed in the same situation, they invariably do the same thing.17
More cynically, author and journalist Saïd K. Aburish focuses on the reality of tribal power. Arab leaders, he writes "depend on phony claims to legitimacy while representing small interest groups-minorities whose members owe their allegiance to them rather than the state as the representative and guardian of the interests of the people."18 The West, Aburish holds, appreciates this because, "Stability means dictatorship and an ensuing coercion of the people which eliminates the chances of attaining legitimacy and democracy."19 John L. Esposito, a professor of religion and international affairs, agrees: "For leaders in the West, democracy raises the prospect of old and reliable friends or client states being transformed into more independent and less predictable nations which might make Western access to oil less secure." Moreover, observes Esposito, democracy "risks the 'hijacking of democracy' by Islamic activists and further Islamic inroads into centers of power, threatening Western interests and fostering anti-Westernism and increased instability."20
For Ziad K. Abdelnour, an international financier, "the strength of authoritarian governments and the frailty of their democratic opponents" is due to the political economy of the Middle East. Moreover, he links democracy to issues of war and peace. The rulers do not operate only within the parameters of their polities and bureaucracies, but, he says, also make decisions based on
personal political bargaining [dictated] by the rules of the game they play . . . Decisions to wage war and sue for peace are pursued not as reflections of national interests or projections of national power, but rather because they may permit faltering authoritarian regimes renewed access to resources from the international system necessary to shore up their domestic positions.21
Simon Bromley, a specialist in international political economy, focuses on the patterns of social formation. Degrees of liberalization and political participation occur in countries such as Egypt where capitalist development has materialized outside "the direct control of the state apparatus" with its accompanying organization of "a civil society by the bourgeoisie and the working class." In countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, where the state has kept control and prevented the creation of civil society, the prospects for democratic reform are limited. For Bromley, "the relative absence of democracy in the Middle East has little to do with the region's Islamic culture and much to do with its particular pattern of state formation."22
Obviously, no single explanation can account fully for the lack of democracy in the Arab world. Privilege and power have often been used to thwart democratic growth, as have religious extremism and special interests. This pattern debases human governance, twists religious beliefs, and undermines international affairs; worse, it usually leads to aggression and repression. The circling of tradition, the sharpening of religious swords, and the improper depletion of society's wealth provide a recipe for continued violence and unfulfilled expectations. The solution rests with the promotion of democracy.
The Journal of Democracy, which, oddly enough, in an article suggesting hope for civil society in Egypt spends most of its time detailing the lack of civil society in Arab cultures.
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A major reason for the slow and uneven pace of democratization in the region is the relative weakness of civil society. In the Arab world, less-than-vibrant civil societies have often proven incapable of consolidating democratic gains, finding themselves easily outmaneuvered and rendered ineffectual by resurgent despotisms. Algeria and the Sudan offer dramatic illustrations.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
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The United States has for many years provided funding and training to Arab NGOs with the goal of spurring democratization, but such assistance has not achieved much in this regard. For civil society to contribute to democratic political change, a critical mass of civil society organizations must develop three main attributes: autonomy from regimes, a pro-democracy agenda, and the ability to build coalitions. Although NGOs have grown in number in the region in the past decade, these conditions have not yet been met.
And Foreign Affairs:
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What is it about the Middle East that makes political systems there resistant to democratization? By now, a vast literature on this topic has developed, much of it emphasizing the role of Islam as an impediment to political liberalization. Norton, the editor of this volume and the director of a multiyear project on civil society in the Middle East, rejects the culturalist explanation for the scarcity of democracy and concentrates instead on the weakness of civil society where authoritarian regimes have taken root. Until political groupings that transcend family, tribe, or clan are allowed to develop, pluralistic politics of the sort that supports democracy cannot thrive. Whether one accepts this argument in full or not, this volume of excellent essays -- some previously published -- is well worth reading. In addition to several general essays, country studies on Tunisia, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Egypt, and the Palestinians will be found. A second volume will soon be published.
I hope this gives you a good jumping off point for understanding some of the structural problems within Arab culture and civil society that could preclude genuine change. ~:)
