Symposium

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 1, 2003 | by Abdulwahab Alkebsi, | Robert Spencer

Bush, however, has nothing but harsh words for those who claim that Middle Eastern culture is so different as to rule out democracy. "There was a time," he reminded his audience at the American Enterprise Institute on Feb. 26, "when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. The nation of Iraq, with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people, is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom."

The post-World War II parallel is gaining wide currency. Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya recently was surprised to find, according to George Packer in the New York Times Magazine, "the chairman of the Iraqi National Congress reading a thick tome on the reconstruction of postwar Germany."

However, warns Packer, "Anyone seeking historical lessons for a democratic Iraq has to face the fact that Germany before Hitler was liberal compared with Iraq before Saddam." And not only that. After all, in postwar Japan the emperor told his subjects that contrary to what they had been taught all their lives, he was not divine. He formally renounced the religious justifications that had fueled the drive to war. In postwar Iraq, will anyone renounce the radical Islam that Saddam skillfully has purveyed to bolster his regime since the Persian Gulf War?

In light of Islam's unique characteristics as a political and social system, as well as an individual faith, the models of Japan and Germany may be less revelatory about the prospects of democracy in a Muslim nation than that of Iraq's neighbor to the North--Turkey.

Historically, democracy has had a hard time in Muslim countries. Things started off on a bad foot when, in order to establish the first Western-style democracy with a largely Muslim population, Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk virtually declared war on Islam. Ataturk, an open admirer of the West, looked upon his Muslim homeland and saw a benighted nation held back by its religion. He dealt the entire world of Islam a body blow in 1924 when he abolished the caliphate.

The caliph was the successor of the prophet Muhammad as leader of the Muslim community; the great Islamic empires of the Middle Ages were governed by various caliphs whose names still resonate with Muslims today. Although the caliphate had declined significantly in power and influence by the time Ataturk administered the coup de grace, the caliph was still an enormously important element of the Islamic intellectual and theological landscape. For one thing, most Sunni Muslim legal scholars taught that only the caliph could declare a jihad, a struggle to defend the house of Islam from its enemies. Without a caliph, in the eyes of many Muslims, the Islamic world was left defenseless before its foes.

Osama bin Laden and other radical Muslims trace the oppression of the Muslim word by the West and other ills that the umma, the worldwide Muslim community, is suffering today to the abolishment of the caliphate. The radical British-based Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad laments that "the Muslim umma has never before been in a position where we are divided into over 55 nations each with its own oppressive kufr [infidel] regime ruling above us. There is no doubt therefore that the vital issue for the Muslims today is to establish the Khilafah [caliphate]."