Title: Can Fundamentalist
Islam and Democracy Coexist in a Country?
Author: Ausaf Ali
Publication: Los Angeles
Times
Date: March 20, 2000
No: Nothing could have
been more irrelevant to Muhammad than consent of the governed.
It has been well said
that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. I
offer Pakistan as a case in point. In its 52 years of history, Pakistan--created
on Aug. 14, 1947, out of British India, which became independent a day
later--has been placed under military rule after the overthrow of the civilian
government by the Pakistani army in 1958, 1977 and 1999. Even during civilian
rule, the army has called the shots from behind the elected leaders of
Pakistan. While India is the most populous democracy in the world, Pakistan
has miserably failed at any kind of democracy, including Islamic. It is
clear that along with democracy, all the Islamization programs have failed.
Islam and the Sharia, or Islamic law, simply do not have the conceptual
resources, flexibility and dynamism to suffice for the governance of a
modern state and operation of a rational economy and an expanding civil
society.
By now, Pakistanis have
developed a sad conviction that democracy as we know it is just not a workable
form of government for their country, because Pakistanis do not have the
social psychology, the political culture, the social ethics or the common
decency for making democracy work.
The difference in the
fortunes of democracy in India and Pakistan is that the world view of Indians
is derived from Hinduism and that of Pakistanis from Islam. Ideologically,
Hinduism is quite compatible with secularism, democracy and democratic
values. Islam is hostile toward all three. As the founder and chief executive
of the first Islamic polity at Medina in what is today Saudi Arabia, Muhammad
ruled in accordance with the will of Allah as revealed to him and translated
into his own will. Nothing could have been more irrelevant to his rule
than the consent of the governed. There was no room for "we the people"
or for legislation by elected representatives of the people because the
whole body of laws as laid down in the Sharia was valid and binding for
all times. That is the reason why parliaments in Muslim countries even
today are rubber-stamp bodies. Neither citizens' right to criticize nor
to dissent from their rulers are recognized. Islam admonishes Muslims to
obey Allah, his prophet and those in power, as it admonishes women to obey
men, because "men are a degree above them."
Islam puts women, minorities
and nonconformists at a disadvantage. Muslims do not recognize the idea
of diversity in their own countries, though they take the fullest advantage
of it in the West. To be sure, a woman rose to the position of the prime
minister in Pakistan, but this was resented by fundamentalist Muslim men,
because Muhammad prophesied that any nation or organization with a woman
as its leader is headed for disaster. Non-Muslims, heretics, apostates
and homosexuals are regarded as fit for persecution.
Given the attitudes Islam
imparts to Muslims, it is apparent why democracy failed in Pakistan: because
fundamentalist Islam and democracy are not compatible. Once this is realized,
an honest search for a suitable form of political system, even if less
satisfactory than democracy, can begin. As a Pakistani, I find it sad that
a people who can master the rules of cricket should have failed so miserably
at learning the rules of democracy, which are far simpler. So long as Pakistanis
insist on applying the uncompromising demands of fundamentalist Islam,
democracy has no chance in Pakistan. Sadly, democracy seems to be doomed
in the foreseeable future in the whole world of Islam.
Ausaf Ali, a Former Professor
at the Graduate School of Business Administration of the University of
Karachi, Is the Author of "Broader Dimensions of the Ideology of Pakistan"
(Royal Book Co., Karachi, 1988)