The Experiment of Democratic Islamists and Its Hope

Europe in the Middle Ages was still lying in darkness and its priests, armed with their papal and clerical authority, involved in the sale of indulgences claiming the remission of punishment for sins. But a 16th-century church reformer, who was a professor of biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg (Germany) named Martin Luther (1483-1546), attacked trade in the phoney indulgences and declared that a papal pardon cannot forgive the slightest sin. He conducted a revolution which led to a religious Reformation movement in the following century, and witnessed the Thirty Years War between the Pope’s and Luther’s supporters, ended by the Peace Treaty of Westphalia (Western Germany) in 1648 which was signed by representatives of major European governments.

The Treaty established the secularization of the state in the West, which was not designed to abolish the church or undermine the teachings of Christianity, but was rather meant to clear religion of superstitions, prevent trading in it and separate it from state affairs. It marked the transition to the age of scientific and cultural progress and the magic wand which enabled Europe to dominate the entire world later.

The above introduction is meant to serve as a reminder of others’ experiments, as in the Arab world, following the revolutions which moved the Islamist parties from obscurity and suppression to large Arab parliaments through ballot boxes and secular democratic mechanisms it seems we are in a pressing need to remember Martin Luther to prevent trade in new indulgences in the name of Islam, while our True religion has its own democracy which ruled the world with its diverse inclinations, revealed religions and worldly ideologies at the heyday of Islamic civilization before Europe, emerging from darkness, carried the banner of modernity and the torch of enlightenment.

What disturbed observers of the birth of parliaments following the victory of Islamist parties was that members of the same parties started their parliamentary careers as if ignoring the mechanism which made them sit in parliament, namely Western secular democracy.

Those who became MPs under constitutions which allowed them to be elected and to stand for election and gave their supporters the right to vote made attempts to abrogate such constitutions either through deletion or addition at oath taking.

That happened in the National Assembly in Kuwait and the People’s Assembly in Egypt which aroused a lot of argument over the legitimacy of the membership of the MP who contravened the constitutional oath, as if talking in a state without a constitution. Some other MPs tried to turn the hall of dialogue and difference in views into a mosque mihrab for a call to prayer while the parliament is in session. This demonstrates disregard for the place which represents the people who elected a member to express citizens’ concerns and discuss their daily needs. The member knows the places of worship well and prays there daily, and he people did not elect a muezzin to call to prayer while the parliament is in session.

One constitution

This takes place at a time when we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Kuwaiti constitution, which is a disturbing sign if it is designed to adapt constitutions to a period when a group dominates another, which means that each parliamentary term may bring about changes and amendments according to partisan and sectarian interests rather than the rights and duties enshrined in all of the world’s constitutions.

The Arab countries share, e.g., in one constitution: They have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; accordingly, the national constitutions adopted by such modern democracies should not contravene this basic constitution.

The Declaration was signed on 10 December 1948. Its thirty articles secure the rights of all people in recognition of human dignity, and established equal rights as a basis for freedom, justice and peace in the world. Ignoring and disdaining such rights had earlier provoked wars, the latest of which were World Wars I and II, which pricked man’s conscience and destroyed the resources of peoples for hundreds of years. Nothing in the declaration may be construed as authorizing a repressive state or allowing an extremist group or a dictator to perform an act designed to undermine the rights and freedoms enshrined in it.

It was therefore agreed that everyone is born free and equal in dignity and rights and endowed with a mind and conscience and should treat one another with a spirit of fraternity. It was further agreed that everyone enjoys all rights and freedoms without discrimination on grounds of race, wealth, birth or any other status. Everyone and their family have the right to live a safe life, receive education and hold a public office at home and work under favourable conditions which ensure health and well-being for him/her and their family. Everyone has freedom of thought, conscience, worship and peaceful association and may not be humiliated or expelled from their country or deprived of their legal capacity.

Everyone is equal before the law, and the will of the people is the source of the authority of the government. That’s what the Arab countries member states of the world organization have approved. Historically, violations of these human and international freedoms, rights and documents have allowed international intervention to protect them, which does not absolve them of human tragedies, environmental disasters and economic upheavals, which is similar to a severe treatment which has it own side effects.

The war of factions

The series of wars in different places in former Yugoslavia during the years 1991-1995 is still fresh in memory. Since the early 1980s, tension grew in Yugoslavia amid economic hardships and a mounting wave of ethnic and religious fanaticism.

Ethnic conflicts escalated because of ethnic and religious discrimination amongst the peoples of former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbia (and to a lesser degree Montenegro) on the one hand, and Croats and Bosnians, (and to a lesser degree Slovenians), on the other. Another war broke out between Bosnians and Croats in Bosnia–Herzegovina. The wars ended with full international recognition of the new divided states which are sill threatened with enormous economic turmoil. Yugoslavia, formerly a powerful state with highly developed economy and production – even at armaments’ level – has been divided into weak, antagonistic states, awaiting aid from others.

Such bloody conflicts, unknown in Europe since the end of World War II, involved war and ethnic cleansing crimes. That’s why the UN International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia (ICCFY) was set up to judge these crimes. According to the International Centre for Transitional Justice figures, 140,000 people were killed in the Yugoslav wars, in addition to the massive scale of material and psychological damage. Moreover, as revealed later, international intervention inflicted awful disasters on the communities whose armies shared in that absurd war and they are still suffering from.

Parallel to that European ethnic and religious war, a civil war broke out in Africa between the Rwandan army and the Rwandan National Front during the years 1990-1993 which, like all bloody wars, involved flagrant human rights violations and caused millions of deaths from both parties .. It’s a tribal war!

The Hutus, a Rwandan tribe of villagers, and the Tutsi tribe of shepherds, came into conflict because of the latter’s wealth from cow husbandry despite their smaller number. Living in one area and mixed marriages removed disagreements between the two ethnic groups, but, instead of unity, negative attitudes to differences between rulers and people rose and led to conflict, particularly as Belgium, the former colonial power, looked at the two tribes as different and even introduced IDs, which divided the Rwandans along tribal lines!

International intervention was European: Belgium vis à vis France, placing the former amongst Rwanda’s neighbours, especially Uganda and the Central African Republic, causing a new wave of migration, in addition to the 160,000 people who left Rwanda during the acts of violence following the country’s independence. At first, Belgium offered aid to the Rwandan government but that was cut off, as under local Belgian laws, Belgian troops may not be involved in a civil war. France replaced Belgium as the biggest European source of support and sent Rwanda a lot of military and financial aid, and French aircraft revealed rebels’ hiding places which helped the Rwanda army destroy them!

The genocide war came to an end in July 1994 leaving hundreds of thousands of trauma-stricken survivors and a destroyed infrastructure. Over 100,000 criminals were put in prison.

Coexistence with others

The above two examples of crimes were committed because of refusal to coexist with others, putting personal interests high above national aims and the mad pursuit of wealth and power, making a show of strength at the expense of human morals.

In a world whose economy is spoils-oriented weapons will secure their place coming from one source but distributed among the warring factions and armies. Economic institutions take advantage of these disagreements in provoking conflicts which lead to wars consuming further weapons, enriching war profiteers, inflicting such wounds on societies that take long to heal. True, peoples press their governments to avoid, or withdraw from war, as noted in voices within American society which call on decision-makers not to wage a war against Iran. But these rational voices influenced by human rights and freedoms may be amid noisier voices which call for destroying others for the sake of transient interests.

It is truly the West, which some people in the name of Islam falsely call for boycotting and fighting, that we can’t do without night or day: We send our children to study at its universities, professionals go to work there, rich families travel there for recreation and shopping, we use a lot of its products and innovations in our homes, offices and streets and we benefit from its knowledge. Instead of attempting to boycott the West we should challenge and compete with it in the areas of such sciences that enhance human development and ensure man’s security, rights and welfare. It is even democracy which we are attacking the West because of that allowed the Islamist parties to get into parliaments. Let’s ask: If we reject such a form of democracy based on written constitutions and signed documents, what’s the alternative?

Do the parties which have so far won seats in Arab parliaments (Tunisia, Egypt and Kuwait) through constitutions they look at as Christian Western made have what to offer as Islamic democratic thought which does not clash with the complex interests of the Arab and Islamic countries with the world at large – Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists nor with the laws and agreements observed by all countries, large and small like?

If developed, such ideas will bring about this transformation and enable these victorious parties to lead a long, new stage of Arab and Muslim progress which all Arabs and Muslims await and wish.

The Pakistani case

The slogan of Islam is misused from age to age to make political and economic gains, which makes us look at other experiments around us in order not to replicate them because of their failure in spite of using Islamic slogans. In Pakistan, which was founded in the name of Islam and the army is in control of internal and regional security, various Islamic organizations are employed to serve volatile policies, allowing and prohibiting things occasionally.

This situation led to the rise of “Pakistani Taliban” in 2001 and made the army and border guards attack these groups in all places where they rebelled against the government’s acceptable policies then. That also led to foreign intervention on the pretext of fighting terrorism. American drones killed both rebels and innocent civilians. Suicides expanded the scope of their operations in local networks in the north-western border provinces and other more extremes Islamic organizations attacked the cities of Islamabad, Lahore through to Karachi.

The disagreement which created this bloody conflict started among the Muslims in a state born of suffering after its and India’s independence from Britain according to a British plan.

In 1974, Sunni extremism expelled Ahmadi Shiites regarded by the state as non-Muslims, and Christians were expelled as well. In addition, extremists attacked popular Islamic centres of worship for Sufic holy men’s mausoleums in Peshawar and Omar Bab mausoleum in June 2010 as well as Data Ghing Bakhsh’s mausoleum in Lahore (Punjab) in July 2010 where 45 people were killed. Similar attacks continued causing further casualties, including the governor of Punjab Salman Tsi early last year and Shahbaz Bhati, the only Christian minister in the federal government, both charged by the murderers with revising a law which criminalizes blasphemy because it was exploited for something other than religion.

The situation in Pakistan today poses a question – which we address on a larger scale: Does this extremism – in the name of Islamism – with fear and violence curtail the marginal scope of freedom which constitutional democracies secure and international documents confirm? Will Pakistan be partitioned into two states – Sunni and Shiite – in the same way as what happened following independence from India: partition into the two states of Pakistan and Bangladesh?

In this period of massive upheaval in the Arab world we are in a compelling need to carefully consider the experiments of others, at least those of Yugoslavia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. We are also in need of drawing inspiration from Islam’s spirit of tolerance towards non-Muslims which allows them freedom of belief and worship. When Islam entered China it did not abolish Buddhism despite the millions who embraced it peacefully. Similarly, Islam in Andalusia was the paradise of the Jews who were expelled from it after the fall of the last Muslim kingdom in Granada.

It is Islam that allowed its scholars, intellectuals and translators of various ideological and religious affiliations to lead a life of scholarship in Islamic capitals in Asia, Africa and Europe and together created a civilization on which the Renaissance in Europe was based after the end of the Middle Ages. Europe freed itself and embraced Islamic knowledge in Andalusia taking off the mantle of phoney religiousness, abolishing indulgences and securing its citizens’ life under constitutional democracy and secular politics. Nobody has the right to return us back to those ages by inventing new indulgences for forgiving sins or otherwise. Yes for democracy which respects man; no far indulgences which deprive mankind of their historical and civilized achievements.

Democracy has secured man’s life in the West, prevented sectarian strife and opened channels of dialogue among nations. Bloody conflicts have disappeared worldwide except in the Muslim world. May its democratic Islamists end their conflicts and open a peaceful road to development and progress!