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ON DEMOCRACY PART – 2

Democracy and Islam

Why Compatibility of Democracy and Islam is Difficult?

ABSTRACT: There are many views for and against the compatibility of democracy and Islam. The first four caliphs who succeeded the Prophet of Islam during the seventh century, were though elected through consensus of the elite of Medina, but were not directly voted by the people. Later traditions reveal that the caliphate became a monarchic type of hereditary authoritarian ruler-ship. In spite of some thinkers pointing to the fact that a disposition to democracy is present in the spirit of Islam, it is still a big question, why it is difficult for the followers of Islamic faith to accept democracy? . . . So far there are no signs that the future of democracy in the Muslim world is bright. The only success of Arab Spring is that it has helped the Arabs to understand their position between a fading authoritarian order and the need for a democratic order. In spite of an apparent result of the Arab Spring in smashing the myth of the political passivity of the Arabs, there still exists in all Muslim societies an Islamist-utopia—a religious idealism—which stands as impediment to political modernity as well as to democracy. Another significant reason is that Islam presents itself as a public religion—revealed in the Qur’an as a way of life not a religion—that gets easily involved in the legitimization of political power by religious rules. In Islam, both, the public aspect of religion and its utopia of religious idealism, aim at retaining its society’s communal structure. Democracy is a political system that demands the singularity of a political organization implying a human to human horizontal relationship among the individuals in a society. On the other hand religion is primarily a vertical relationship between an individual and his God, where Divine sovereignty is imposed from top-down. Emergence of liberal democracy is possible when the political system is not imposed top-down. It succeeds when the system based on democratic consensus emerges bottom-up. Within such a frame of thought, Islam’s vertical belief of Divine sovereignty clashing with the democracy’s horizontal concept of people’s sovereignty, poses a key question: Is Islam, particularly in the Arab world, compatible with democracy? — MIRZA ASHRAF

To read complete article please visit: https://independent.academia.edu/MirzaAshraf

News of the last few weeks has many scratching their heads to understand what drives some of the Western Muslim youths towards dark ideology of ISIS. These youths come from all backgrounds and they are estranged both from western society as well as Muslim communities, as Mr. Kenan Malik points out in his remarkable worth reading article. Some excerpts are below (F. Sheikh)  

First it was Shamima Begum, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, three schoolgirls from Tower Hamlets who smuggled themselves to Syria during their half-term holiday. Then it was “Jihadi John”, the Islamic State executioner who was unmasked by the Washington Post last week as the Kuwaiti-born Londoner Mohammed Emwazi.

The stories of the three schoolgirls and of Emwazi are very different. But the same questions are being asked of them. How did they get radicalised? And how can we stop it from happening again? These are questions being increasingly asked across Europe. A recent report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation suggests that there are now 4,000 European fighters with Isis, a figure that has doubled over the past year.

What is it that draws thousands of young Europeans to a brutal, sadistic organisation such as Isis? “Radicalisation” is usually seen as a process through which extremist groups or “hate preachers” groom vulnerable Muslims for jihadism by indoctrinating them with extremist ideas. Some commentators blame western authorities for pushing young Muslims into the arms of the groomers. The advocacy group Cage UK claimed last week that Mohammed Emwazi had been driven to Syria by MI5 “harassment”. Others stress the “pull” factor in radicalisation. The problem, they claim, lies with Islam itself, a faith that, in their eyes, legitimises violence, terror and inhumanity.

Neither claim is credible. Whatever the facts of his relationship with MI5, Emwazi himself was responsible for joining Isis. No amount of “harassment” provides an explanation for chopping off people’s heads.

Nor is Islam an adequate explanation. Muslims have been in Europe in large numbers since the 1950s. It is only in the last 20 years that radical Islam has gained a foothold. Blaming it all on Islam does nothing to explain the changing character of Muslim communities and their beliefs.

The problem with both approaches is in the idea of “radicalisation”. Marc Sageman, a former CIA operations officer who worked with the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, is now a distinguished academic and a counter-terrorism consultant to the US and other governments.

He said: “The notion that there is any serious process called ‘radicalisation’ is a mistake. What you have is some young people acquiring some extreme ideas – but it’s a similar process to acquiring any type of ideas. It often begins with discussions with a friend.”

European recruits to Isis are certainly hostile to western foreign policy and devoted to their vision of Islam. Religion and politics form indispensable threads to their stories. And yet the “radicalisation” argument looks at the jihadis’ journey back to front.

It begins with the jihadis as they are at the end of their journey – enraged about the west, and with a black-and-white view of Islam – and assumes that these are the reasons they have come to be as they are. But for most jihadis, the first steps on their journeys to Syria were rarely taken for political or religious reasons.

What is striking about the stories of wannabe jihadis is their diversity. There is no “typical” recruit, no single path to jihadism.

Sahra Ali Mehenni is a schoolgirl from a middle-class family in the south of France. Her father, an industrial chemist, is a non-practising Muslim, her mother an atheist. “I never heard her talk about Syria, jihad,” said her mother. One day last March, to the shock of her family, she took not her usual train to school but a flight from Marseilles to Istanbul to join Isis. When she finally phoned home it was to say: “I’ve married Farid, a fighter from Tunisia.”

Kreshnik Berisha, a German born of Kosovan parents, played as a teenager for Makkabi Frankfurt, a Jewish football club and one of Germany’s top amateur teams. He went on to study engineering and in July 2013, boarded a bus to Istanbul and then to Syria. “I didn’t believe it,” said Alon Meyer, Makkabi Frankfurt’s coach. “This was a guy who used to play with Jewish players every week. He was comfortable there and he seemed happy.” Berisha later returned home to become the first German homegrown jihadi to face trial. For full article click link below;

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/01/what-draws-jihadis-to-isis-identity-alienation