Civil War in Libya

[Fragony]

You mean there are democracies out there that are democracies? I'm not surprised.

But can you name one islamic state that is a democracy?

AII

Turkey I guess (it's not an islamic state of course, it's a muslim country)

[Adrian II]

Turkey I guess (it's not an islamic state of course, it's a muslim country)

Right, Turkey is not an islamic state. Its state was funded explicitly on secular principles.

Again, can anyone name an islamic state that is a democracy?

AII

[Fragony]

Right, Turkey is not an islamic state. Its state was funded explicitly on secular principles.

Again, can anyone name an islamic state that is a democracy?

AII

It's inherently impossible asking for one is a bit of a trap, islamic means the full deal, a theocracy can never be democratic as it's religious rule. Muslim countries can be democratic of course, big distinction to be made.

[HoreTore]

I'd say that every democratic State is(and has to be) founded on secularism, but the population's religious feelings are not as relevant(see America).

It's a fine line though.

Norway's constitution, for example, defines Norway as a Christian state. In that sense, a country can of course be Islamic and still be a democracy.

[Fragony]

I'd say that every democratic State is(and has to be) founded on secularism, but the population's religious feelings are not as relevant(see America).

It's a fine line though.

Norway's constitution, for example, defines Norway as a Christian state. In that sense, a country can of course be Islamic and still be a democracy.

No it's impossible because islam is also a political system. Making it perfectly possible to claim that no islamic state actually exists by the way alas. But in it's purest form it isn't compatible with democracy.

[Centurion1]

Right obviously any country that is an islamic state cannot be a democracy. its laughable to assume so. When religion permeates government it leads to FAIL. I'm religious and thats fine but when it comes to my government ill take it with a big dollop of secularism. And by that I do not mean anti religion. The perfect democracy is neutral and therefore takes no stance. A government which is pro or anti religion is doomed to failure eventually or they need to change. Even Stalin participated with Orthodox leaders during WW2.

It may be wrong but the best form of government the world knows is democracy and democracy arises from the West. You can say what you want about how democracy doesn't fit every nation and I will call bull. Look beyond the West and every succesful non European nation is a western style democracy.

America, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil,

the only argument against democracy is China....... and eventually as the middle class grows China will implode. And even China isn't a dictatorship..... at least more than one man is in power. And even worse than a dictatorship in my eyes is a theocracy or a dictatorship married with a theocracy.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.


The most stable nation in the middle east barring Israel (israel being a pretty decent example of a hyperreligious state putting secular government practices first) is Turkey. And Turkish generals have a tendency of staging coups when the fundi's get too uppity.

If Libya goes the way it could very well head, into an Islamic state, Libya is screwed. I just wonder how many more years and deaths until Middle Easterners finally realize that when they do these revolutions or try to depose dictators if they don't want to be in similar straits in 20 years they have to distance themselves politically from Islam. The vast majority of the ME is in my eyes a gigantic fail. If it wasn't for oil many of these states SA. Yemen, Iran, Iraq, etc would be horrendous. They hav inflated GDP's and such because of the oil and the worst part is there ar epeople who see those high gdp's and go well it can't be that bad off there..... they don't realize its a few princes or sheiks or what have you inflating up the poor sods who make up the majority.

Kill the power of the religion in politics and then and only then will killing your tin pot dictators be of value. I relish the day of western style democracies deposing Saudi Arabian "princes" i'll drop the JDAMS myself on that day.

[Centurion1]

Depends if we mean theocracy or Islamic laws/majority. As long as we don't equate an Islamic state to be automatically a theocracy then we have a few positive examples.

I can think of three large democratic states who have a lot of Muslims, some of them heavy in Islamic laws yet still democracies... All three in the long term trends are doing well... Not as well as their more secular democratic neighbors but better then the local despots of any faith i.e. Compare Malaysia vs Burma

any democracy which embraces religion and endorses it is always doomed to failure and will remain a joke in my eyes.

indonesia is one, you robably included turkey but you shouldnt because of their history, and im not sure of your third.... pakistan? The country which bows to some pashtun tribes in the mountains and fears its ever growing neighbor? Pakistan was at its most stable with Musharaff now i have nightmares it will collapse and its nukes will disappear to resurface in some american or european city.

[Montmorency]

Two issues: Australia is Western; South Africa is not Middle Eastern.

[Centurion1]

Two problems.

Read the sentence again.

South Africa is depressingly one of the more successful countries in Africa.

Also your little point there holds no merit whatsoever. I didn't say every democracy was successful but that the overwhelming majority of successful nations are democracies.

[Montmorency]

Did you even read my post? It's only one line.

[Centurion1]

Did you even read my post? It's only one line.

Two issues: Australia is Western; South Africa is not Middle Eastern.

Semi colon denotes separate thought. My comments are all valid.

Address them or you were simply trolling..... all your posts tend to be what I imagine are witty one liners while you type them.

[Montmorency]

I am a very patient man, but it still distresses me to see you act in such provocative manner.

[Centurion1]

The backroom is for debate it is not for what you believe are witty one liners. Elaborate and defend your points or don't make them.

[Montmorency]

I was not making a point, I was quibbling.

Look beyond the West and every succesful non European nation is a western style democracy.

When I first read this post, it said, "every successful non-Western nation is a...

You included Australia as an example. Australia is Western. You seem to have later edited in America and Canada, and changed "Western" to "non-European". However, you did not revise "Look beyond the West", so that's still a problem.

The vast majority of the ME is in my eyes a gigantic fail. If it wasn't for oil many of these states SA. Yemen, Iran, Iraq, etc would be horrendous.

South Africa is quite distinct from the Middle Eastern states, in almost every way imagineable (besides oil).

It is quite a petty thing for me raise objections to such minor issues, but your response was irrelevant and unnecessary. Just edit the posts and move on.

[Centurion1]

Okay first point. I edited in america because I was considering including it because of the innate american ability to triumph secularism and demonize it at the same time. I decided to include it. Also because people love to say america isn't successful in some ways and i don't want to go down that road.

I am sure mods can check what is edited out somehow so if you want to debate what I edited just ask a mod to tell you or I will......

Canada and australia were there before and i didn't change the western bit. I just added in America later. It was always non-European because I wanted to distinguish and saying non European gave me a bigger pool to draw from. It is not my fault you didnt read it correctly and you want to use the fact that I edited my post as your defense.....

As for your second point this is why it is very helpful when you elaborate...... SA is an abbreviation of Saudi Arabia. Think before you try to correct.

[Montmorency]

1. But "Look past the West" is still there.
2. Ah, my mistake then. I must have had an earlier comment in mind, one in which you expressed similar feelings towards the South African economy.

[Centurion1]

1. long post i didnt proofread. Sorry. While typing it I thought hey if I say non European I can include a broader array of examples. So hence the shift in language mid way through.

2. yep

See now we have cleared that all up and the internet is happier for it.

[Fragony]

'Right obviously any country that is an islamic state cannot be a democracy. its laughable to assume so'

It would cease being an islamic state, just like a communist state would cease being communist. Islamism is a political movement, and not all muslims are islamist.

[Adrian II]

Look beyond the West and every succesful non European nation is a western style democracy. America, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, Brazil [..]

It is interesting though that islamic countries usually are not doing worse than their non-islamic neighbours. Islam is often blamed for the nefarious effects of cultural traditions older than islam, colonial heritage, rampant tribalism, protracted wars and civil wars, and imperialist meddling.

Anatole Lieven makes the point eloquently in his book Pakistan, A Hard Country. Instead of copying its introduction by hand, let me copy and paste part of a review in The Guardian:

Certainly, an unblinkered vision of South Asia would feature a country whose fanatically ideological government in 1998 conducted nuclear tests, threatened its neighbour with all-out war and, four years later, presided over the massacre of 2,000 members of a religious minority. Long embattled against secessionist insurgencies on its western and eastern borders, the "flailing" state of this country now struggles to contain a militant movement in its heartland. It is also where thousands of women are killed every year for failing to bring sufficient dowry and nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in the previous decade.

Needless to say, the country described above is not Pakistan but India, which, long feared to be near collapse, has revamped its old western image through what the American writer David Rieff calls the most "successful national re-branding" and "cleverest PR campaign" by a political and business establishment since "Cool Britannia" in the 1990s. Pakistan, on the other hand, seems to have lost all control over its international narrative.

AII

[Centurion1]

I do not blame Islam. I blame Islam if it permeates government as I do Christianity, Buddhism, or Animism when it is found within government.

Also yes I blame quite a few issues people associate with Islam in Arab countries with their respective cultural issues. Too often people confuse antiquated cultural practices with Islam itself.

[Adrian II]

I do not blame Islam. I blame Islam if it permeates government as I do Christianity, Buddhism, or Animism when it is found within government.

Also yes I blame quite a few issues people associate with Islam in Arab countries with their respective cultural issues. Too often people confuse antiquated cultural practices with Islam itself.

Good. Now if Islam is apparently able to 'absorb' many different cultural traditions, it could also 'absorb' democratic principles and institutions, right? If only the powers that be would tolerate it. Which they don't, because it is not in their political and material interest.

I think the real problem is not that a petrified Islam perpetuates dictatorships, but that it is the dictatorships that perpetuate a petrified Islam.

So how do we break that cycle?

AII

[Fragony]

Why should we break any cycles, let them figure it out themselves. Maybe, like the Russians, they prefer a strong hand that is more powerful than the individual tribes. We can almost completely leave the islam out of the equation that only matters in Europe. No real islamic state exists although Iran comes close

[Hax]

Well, the very least we can do is to stop pretending that Islam is a monolithic force that has never changed since 622 AD. Reformism in Islam is not a new concept.

[Papewaio]

any democracy which embraces religion and endorses it is always doomed to failure and will remain a joke in my eyes.

indonesia is one, you robably included turkey but you shouldnt because of their history, and im not sure of your third.... pakistan?

The third one is the only one I directly mentioned.

Turkey, Indonesia & Malaysia... of course the last two have to explain the conundrum of Singapore their neighbour.

The other side of the trend is that most of the successful Non-European democracies are ex-British colonies...

BTW
Australia would be considered both Western and Asian depending on how one slices the data. I'd say 2/3rds to 3/4trs Western but the region we are in has a massive impact on uptake of immigrants and food.

[HoreTore]

I believe you just ignored south america, pape....

[Kralizec]

Malaysia may not be an islamic state in the strict sense of the word, but it's not an examplary secular democracy either. It's illegal even for nominal muslims to convert to another religion (this includes cases where a man decides to become a muslim, and the children are classified as muslims by default - regardless of their or their mother's opinion) and government persecution of the Hindu minority is pretty well documented.

[Fragony]

Well, the very least we can do is to stop pretending that Islam is a monolithic force that has never changed since 622 AD. Reformism in Islam is not a new concept.

But that kinda is the idea behind islamism, that it didn't evolve

[Hax]

Quite the contrary, Islamism as a political force was reformist in its own rights. I believe I have referred to Sayyid Qutb more than once, whose writings were a major inspiration to Ayman al-Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki. Additionally, I believe that Osama bin Laden himself used to read Qutb's works as well.

There are a lot of different factors that have contributed to the way the Middle East looks today, but I think that the Turkish secular state was largely based upon French design (as was the Constitutional Revolution in Persia/Iran, that finally resulted in the reign of the Pahlavi shahs). I think that what may have given rise to such a strong sentimental feeling to return to the "roots" of Islam was western imposed influence, through colonisation (this of course lacking in Turkey and Persia, that were never colonised). We all saw what happened in Iran, and even then, it's questionable whether a majority of the people did indeed desire an Islamic state (not for the lack of trying on Mehdi Bazargan's part, either).

I think it's got something to do with a sort of knee-jerk reaction: the more Islamic, the less western (and vice versa), that might be an idea that's been living in the minds of the post-colonialist imams and politicians. And seeing how those dictators were essentially on the payrole of the West, it's not that hard to imagine that in their minds, Islam was the answer to everything. Although now that movement, too, has had its best days. Of course, we shouldn't apply Egyptian standards to Libya or Yemen, but these revolutions were not Islamist in nature.

[Papewaio]

I believe you just ignored south america, pape....

Which of them have large Muslim populations? Nope... not central to the main arguement.

The side bar of worlds most successful democracies... I don't think of any in South America that others model themselves after, quality of life is still not up there...yet. Brazil is up and coming and may prove a few good things to come... but then again the Carribean nations have a lot that are doing much much better... I wonder who is the head of state for a lot of those...

[Fragony]

'Quite the contrary, Islamism as a political force wasreformist in its own rights. I believe I have referred to Sayyid Qutb more than once, whose writings were a major inspiration to Ayman al-Zawahiri and Anwar al-Awlaki. Additionally, I believe that Osama bin Laden himself used to read Qutb's works as well.'

Truth in that, but what he modernised is the islam regarding the concept of a state, you could call it a reformation but I call it a modernisation. I have some stuff from him here (not easy to get) but my knowledge of the islam itself is too poor to get into that. But I do know political theory and islamism is the ultra-orthodox being made future-proof, but ultra-orthodox it is