Daily Times

In this age of instant scholarship through the internet, there are few people more dangerous to informed debate than Canadian clinical psychologist-turned-“public thinker” Jordan Peterson.

He self-admittedly holds no allegiance to any religion or political system, yet freely passes judgment on all of them. And to evade genuine academic scrutiny, he routinely caveats his comments by saying he “doesn’t know enough.” Peterson’s unlikely recentrise to media prominence is the product of a narrative shift in Western societies where the saturation of political correctness in politics and media has created a vocal and potent counter-culture.

Here’s Exhibit A: in an early June interview with Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet, Peterson claimed he had yet to witness a “positive example of a successful, independent Muslim democracy, “based plausibly on stellar human rights and governance records. Why? Because there was no separation between “Church and state.”

These presumptions are problematic for many reasons. First, Peterson’s definition of democracy is self-serving and clearly borrowed from the equally self-serving expansion peddled by Western media to add shock value to news stories.

Two, he subscribes to the neo-orientalist notion that Western democracy is the ideal form of government all nations of the world should aspire to. Three, he assigns to Muslim countries a reality that is infact common to wider Asia.

It took 30 years of war and over eight million dead in the 17th century for Europeans to realize the Vatican was an insidious influence on continental politics

And lastly, his statement echoes the insane orientalist belief that humanity as a monolithic block must stay in lockstep with the pace of Western social evolution, or as the buzzword goes, “secularization.”

First, let us review a more authoritative definition of democracy by influential political theorist David Held: “Democracy entails a political community in which there is some form of political equality among the people.”

Held used the qualifier “some” to acknowledge that cultural variations inevitably influenced the rate at which direct representation became a practical policy. Peterson regrettably falls into the same trap as many of his contemporaries by equating democracy with liberalism and/or secularism. Democracy is a political system, while the other two are philosophical constructs made concrete (imperfectly) by political will. Next, the idea that Western democracy is the apex of human intellectual achievement is laughable. Where do we start? From America abruptly ditching the Paris Agreement on climate change to shove us into an era of global food insecurity? Or that a sitting US president possibly colluded with a foreign power to steal the last election?

Or perhaps Peterson’s own country Canada which perpetrates “race-based genocide” against indigenous women according to a recent government report? Or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose squeaky clean, compassionate democrat image was shattered earlier this year by a corruption scandal involving government contracts?

The bottom-line is systemic discrimination and corruption do not adhere to any caste, creed, race or religion. They are the dark side of human nature.

Ask urbanAfrican-Americans who face near daily racial profiling and lethal violence at the hands of local police. Ask the Jews targeted by rising hate crimes in Europe as neo-Nazism resurfaces without restraint. And ask the Muslims in French “banlieue” ghettos who can’t find adequate housing or jobs.

The examples of marginalized minorities in the We stare as many as the deepening stains on its democracy. Third, the idea that Muslim countries are somehow allergic to “real” democracy is facetious. The reality is the majority of Asia does not align with the higher ideals of Western democracy due of cultural differences.

For instance, the Asian states that drove the regional economic boom of the 1980s and 90sprospered under one-party or “strongman” rule: Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China, Indonesia etc. Even India’s return from the economic dead in the early 2000s can be traced to dynastic rulers.

Had Peterson bothered to research a scholarly definition of democracy, he would have realized many Islamic countries barring the Arab kingdoms are thriving democracies. Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey and Indonesia for examples. Are they perfect? Of course not. Turmoil is as much part of the exercise of free will as the spectacle of parliament.

Likewise, it is unfortunate that Peterson views the Islamic world as a scatter plot of theocracies like Saudi Arabia, Iran and more recently, Brunei. They are the exception, not the rule. Many Muslim countries retain Islam as the state religion but are run on secular lines. Moreover, it is disingenuous to reduce human rights to social media hashtags when hundreds of millions across the world-including over one million in the US-have no access to running water or adequate sanitation. But while we’re on the topic, consider this: Latin America, India and the Caribbean far and away lead the world in femicide, not any Muslim country.

Lastly, I find absurd the orientalist notion that Eastern and particularly Muslim societies must measure themselves against the Western benchmark of social evolution. It took 30 years of war and over eight million dead in the 17th century for Europeans to realize the Vatican was an insidious influence on continental politics. Muslim societies have no such internal contradiction, barring the individual lust for power that wields religion to divide, for Islam has always been far more than just a holy book. It was and is a social order with the Quran as its beating heart. Finally, good on the West to finally awaken to LGBTI and female reproductive rights,but again, gluing them to thedefinition of democracyis asinine.Three decades ago,these very societies were demonizing homosexuals and trans-people for spreading HIV, and abortion was considered a cardinal sin.

And even today in that lodestar of Western democracy,the US,the growing influence of Christian conservatives in politics has outlawed abortion by choice in over a dozen states and trans-genders are banned from the military. Wither thou, equality?

The bottom-line isit is very easy to stereotype, as I’ve demonstrated above, yet robust debate must be moored to facts that logically follow from premise to conclusion. Otherwise, we may as well be monkeys slinging mud at each other.

The writer is an Ipoh-based independent journalist