Daily Times

As secularists and democrats, we do not want religion applied to politics, as we believe that religion is too divisive. We believe that democratic freedoms are strengthened by the separation of religion from politics. We are sceptical of religion playing a constructive role as an agent of stability and predictability. This does not mean, however, that we should support demands to ban political parties having a religious platform, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Jamaat in Bangladesh.

In this age of gross intolerance, we see that Islamists are interested in enforcing religious uniformity on their societies, claiming exclusive knowledge of God’s will on earth and warning of the dangers of social disorder if religious tolerance were allowed to flourish. Islamists believe in the uniformity of religious practice in the public sphere and the need for an established state religion widely believed to be a prerequisite for peace, order and prosperity. Despite this challenge, we must resist the siren call to abandon the promotion of democracy and return to the so-called realist policies of the past, in which we supported tyrants in the hope they would keep a lid on political Islam.

We can learn a lesson from the bitter experience of those countries of the Islamic world where an autocratic modernising state like the Shah’s Iran and Mubarak’s Egypt, often with critical external support, suffocated civil society, thus forcing opposition voices into the mosque, inadvertently contributing to the rise of political Islam. A set of top-down forced modernisation, secularisation and westernisation policies by the state, within a short span of time, generated widespread social and psychological alienation and dislocation. Rapid urbanisation, changing cultural and socioeconomic relationships coupled with increasing corruption, economic mismanagement, rising poverty and income inequality undermined the legitimacy of the state. These developments reflected negatively on secularism and democracy because the ruling ideologies of many post-colonial regimes in the Muslim world were openly secular and nationalist. It is a mistake to attribute the problems of the Muslim world, both past and present, exclusively to political Islam, a marginal political current until the late 20th century while the colossal failures of the secular postcolonial state are not scrutinised.

One reason why democracy has made significant gains in Turkey and Indonesia is precisely because these countries have allowed the participation of Islamist groups in the public sphere. Turkey and Indonesia, being creative, developed an indigenous reconciliation between Islamic thought and democracy (particularly secularism) that has allowed Muslim parties and civil society groups to make important contributions to democracy in their respective countries. This is a story that has yet to be properly told. It serves as a potential model for other Muslim societies to study and to emulate. Pakistan could have chosen this successful path but chose instead to strengthen the role of religion in the public sphere, primarily due to the complicity and cowardice of the ruling elite.

Democracies tolerate various behaviours and opinions they do not necessarily approve of. Letting everyone speak and organise, including Islamists, strengthens democracy by giving everyone a voice and a stake in the system. It guards against complacency and tyranny of the majority and keeps the possibility open that an even better system can emerge. The only demand that we must make of everyone, political Islamists and secular democrats alike, is that they play by the democratic rules, which means realising their political ambitions exclusively through non-violent means. It will be correct to emphasise the importance of holding free and fair elections in all Muslim majority countries. Tyrants of all hues fear free and fair elections, a fact illustrated by the efforts in many Muslim majority countries to fix the outcome of various elections by pre-selecting the candidates. Far from rejecting democracy because it is supposed to be alien or using it as a means for creating totalitarian Islamist systems, a majority of Muslims have repeatedly shown that they like elections, and would love to join the global mainstream of democratisation. Support for democratic movements in the Muslim world remains the only credible strategy for winning the war against terror.

There are analysts who argue that Muslims are not ready for democracy and that elections would only translate into victory for hardline Islamists. The facts tell a different story. So far, only a few Islamist parties have managed to win a majority of the popular vote in any of the Muslim countries where reasonably clean elections have been held. In Islamic societies and states, where the culture of democracy has struck the deepest roots and where the holding of free and fair elections has become part of the national culture, a series of elections in the past 50 years has shown low support for Islamists as a percentage of the popular vote. It would seem that some secular tyrannies and the religious despotisms that we see in that region are blocking the natural, historical interaction between religion and politics that has occurred in more mature democracies of the world.

The writer can be reached at shgcci@gmail.com