Christian Democratic parties in France identified most with the Mouvement Republicain Populaire (MRP). While referring rarely to Christianity by name, the MRP always based their doctrinal arguments on a Christian interpretation of the value of the individual (Irving 74). This was the essence of the MRP’s doctrine. Democracy, the family, the school, the trade union—even the Church—were important only in so far as they made it possible for the individual to develop his capacities to the maximum. In other words, the MRP saw democracy, and ultimately the Christian Democratic parties, more as a means rather than as the goal. The MRP doctrine was therefore very individualistic, not in the nineteenth century liberal sense, but in a Christian sense. By de-emphasizing religious institutions in the political state, the MRP was able to take care of the society as whole.
The aspect of faith in Christian democracy is obviously one of crucial importance. In his Cet Inconnu, Borne describes an act of faith as something that “has no meaning unless it leads to action. Faith must generate thought and political engagement. Because we believe that freedom and justice are ultimately reconcilable, we must try to bring this about. Political engagement entails a passion for freedom and a passion for justice” (qtd. in Irving, 56). The correlation between action and faith, then, is very interesting. A separation of church and state really is only necessary when the Church begins to dictate and influence government unfairly towards those who don’t follow the Church’s doctrine. Yet if the Church influences the state in a way that helps the state to become more moral and just, this can only be seen as beneficial to the society as a whole. Here Borne explains that these actions must fall in line with ideas of freedom and justice, two crucial aspects of democracy. This is another reason why Christian democratic parties were able to exist in European society: their primary agenda was to benefit society with ideas of freedom and justice through acts of faith.
The main question, however, remains about the role that revelation and texts, namely the Gospels and the New Testament, had to play in Christian democratic movements. According to Fogarty, “in the main stream of Christian thought it has always been clear that revelation completes natural knowledge but does not replace it. To have a full picture of the world,, one which will allow Christians to take hold of their surroundings and shape them according to their principles, the broad and long views of revelation must be filled in with the detail of purely human science, experience, and intuition” (402). This is crucial to the Christian democratic argument, for it falls in line with much modern democratic thinking in using reason and intuition in order to make political decisions. It almost seems as though Fogarty interprets the place of revelation as taking a back seat to reason. In essence, many times this is necessary in order to prevent irrational decisions that can be ultimately very costly for those in society who do not adhere to the Christian faith.
In comparison, the Islamic experience and experiments with Democracy have not been so pleasant. This has led many to wonder whether or not fundamentally Islam and democracy as we know it are incompatible. In actuality, however, despite attempts by moderate Muslims in the West to bring Middle Eastern countries and self-proclaimed “Islamic states” towards a democratic ideal, Islamic democracy has yet to exist in the modern world. Even in states such as Algeria that had what Noah Feldman coined a “democratic flirtation,” democracy does not last for long because of Western fear that Islamist control will eventually lead Westerners to believe that elections that were not “fair” would be better than no elections at all (6).
In order to test the Islamic experience with democracy, Samuel P. Huntington conducted a test in which he defined a democracy as two consecutive and peaceful changes in government through free and fair elections. However, upon testing Middle Eastern countries that deem themselves as “Islamic states” or where the official religion of the country is Islam, the only country that passed Huntington’s test of democracy was Turkey. Even within Turkey, as Bernard Lewis points out, though it seems the Middle Eastern country with the most promise for democracy, it cannot truly be proclaimed to have the essence of democracy within itself. Lewis is also quick to point out that all throughout history, from the time of the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 C.E. until modern times, the most predominant form of political systems found within so-called Islamic states is autocracy. Most recently, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has formed its new constitution, though disparagingly democratic, has the essence of Islam contained within it.
Modern attempts at Islamic democratization can be traced back to the 1909 Young Turk Revolution (Lewis). Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V spoke about the commitment of his administration to begin using constitution and consultation as major principles in the reconstruction of government. Thus, the Turkish constitutional monarchy was established. However, the Turkish constitution still contained remnants of Islamic law (Sharia), though it proclaimed to use both reason and tradition to govern. This soon become a trend within many Islamic reformers of the twentieth centuries: the essential Sharia needed to be complemented with reason and tradition.
Three essential modern case examples can be used to examine Islamic experiments with democracy. First, Iran is the only republic state in the Middle East, thus deeming it by many to be the closest in the Middle East (other than the state of Israel) to democracy. Secondly, an analysis of the case of Turkey is important because it is the only country that Samuel Huntington has deemed democratic. Lastly, the newly founded Republic of Afghanistan deserves an examination because it is the latest example of Islamic “flirtation” with democracy. It remains to be seen whether Iraq can be included within this examination.
The Islamic Republic of Iran implied that through a republic, some sort of democracy would co-exist with Islam in this state. Although declared as a republic, Iran intrinsically carries with itself a history that would show that Islamic democracy is perhaps not altogether a real possibility. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini, an Iranian cleric, overthrew the then-leader Mohammed Pahlavi in order to introduce himself as what he called “The Supreme Leader.” For a decade, Khomeini introduced Islamic laws and doctrines into Iranian law, and his main agenda was to rid Iran of the pro-Western orientation that the shahs were heading towards. Upon the Khomeini’s death, the Iranian constitution still has given the Supreme Leader a large amount of power. Thus, because of the heavy political influence that the Supreme Leader has, we see our first example of democracy failing to arise in the Middle East.
Feldman notes that Turkey is “both the home of the most forward-looking group of Islamic democrats in the world, and the country in which Islamic democracy is most widely dismissed as a contradiction” (102). In the early twentieth century, at the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Grand National Turkish Assembly declared Turkey to be a Republic and deeming Mustafa Kemal to be first president of this republic. Thus, we see Turkey making a transition towards democracy (it is the first country in the Middle East to do so). Kemal’s agenda was quite simple: he encouraged the Turkish peoples to use their Turkish descent as their basis for identity, rather than their religion. However, after his reign, the Islamists attempted successfully to bring a vision of Islam back into the state. However, coup after coup forced Islamic political leaders to resign or leave office all throughout the twentieth century. Thus, again, we have a failure for Islam and democracy to co-exist.
Lastly, Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban, has made its own attempt to become more of a democratic state. It follows in the step of Iran by regarding itself as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Upon overthrowing the Taliban, interim President Hamid Karzai is in power until the scheduled elections in 2004. Afghanistan has already presented a draft constitution. However, there are many skeptics about the possibility of democracy rising in Afghanistan. Robert Barro believes that a country that has as low income levels and education levels as Afghanistan does, democracy can almost never be sustained. The draft Constitution also inevitably contains remnants of Islamic doctrine. For example, Islam is decreed as the nation’s official religion. The first part of the preamble also states that the people of Afghanistan all “have firm faith in God Almighty and [believe] in the Sacred Religion of Islam” (Constitution). Thus, we see the implementation of Islam into the “democratic” Constitution.
In comparing the successes of Christian democracy to the failures of Islamic democratization, one can only highlight one more major difference that allowed Christian democracy to survive more easily: moderation. Christian democracy, though relying on what Jacques Maritain termed “evangelical inspiration,” (27) still offered a third path after World War II, as a way of compromising the leftist and rightist views. Muslims in the Middle East have yet to give up what they perceive as their “religious values” in order to pursue something for the greater good. In fact, according to Feldman, these values do not contradict one another; rather, they complement and enhance one another. Thus, we lose any sense of moderation or compromise, which inevitably do not allow for democracy to exist in the Middle East.
This idea of moderation can be seen in several ways while the Christian democratic parties in Europe to modern day struggles for Islam to surrender to modernity. Firstly, the MRP’s interpretation of doctrine is crucial. For Islamists, their primary objective seems to be able to prove Islam as not only a religious and social force, but also a political force as well. Thus, they lose part of the moral doctrine in Islam that entails ideas of compassion, justice and equality. On the other hand, the MRP was able to look at the bigger picture in determining their doctrine. Secondly, the interpretation of an “act of faith” was also important to the Christian democratic doctrine. As explained earlier, the Christian democratic acts of faith were those that were done for the sake of freedom and justice. Lewis points out that acts of faith regarded within Muslim political states now involve suicide bombings and other undemocratic forms of expressing popular protest.
There would seem to be no hope: all the evidence points towards a direction where no hope for democracy (and ultimately peace) can reign in the Middle East. Many doctrines in Islam will undoubtedly complement, and perhaps even promote, the democratization of the Islamic Middle East. If we learn a lesson from history, it would be that However, inherently, with the Islamic tradition there has been nothing that would contradict Islam and democracy without further looking at the historical context within each of those traditions. For example,
Already, trends are quickly forming towards democracy in Muslim states. Although Barro argues that the lack of education and income level will inevitably assist Islamists to gain unfair control over Afghanistan, what is reflected in the Constitution seems to be a genuine and sincere effort towards democracy. For example, the Constitution guarantees the rights of women by ensuring that the upper legislative house will have a population of women of at least 16.5%. (Feldman). Also, the Constitution guarantees non-Muslims to right to worship (within a certain wide realm) other religions besides Islam. Perhaps most importantly is the essential promise in the draft Constitution that indeed, this republic will be “based on the people’s will and democracy.” Whether or not these actions will become reality is something that will be discovered within the next few years, but no one can doubt that this is a great step forward for a nation that up until then had been plagued with injustice.
Many academics and scholars who believe that there is a fundamental “clash of civilizations” between Islamic civilization and democratic, Western civilization, especially after September 11, seemed to be able to foretell the future quite accurately. Namely, Huntington and Lewis have advanced their theories about the predictability of September 11, and future terrorist attacks on America. Part of the reason for the success of these theories is that some Muslims themselves believe that Islamic and Western values such as democracy are essentially at odds. Muslims thus become resistant to Western ideals at any cost, even if they do not contradict Islamic values. Thus, those who believe that Islam and the West are in opposition of one another have the tendency to make decisions for Islamic civilizations, and forget that Muslims can make such decisions on their own (Feldman 29). Imposing Western dominance in these areas would thus lead some to feel threatened of their independence, which is yet another crucial reason why democratization in the Middle East may have always been a very violent process. Instead of focusing on such a pessimistic attitude, therefore, it is perhaps in the best interest for the West to simply be there as a source of support to regain stability in the Middle East, and no more.
Democratization must also be looked at as a gradual process and something that cannot be fully achieved overnight. As we saw with the Christian model, it took from the French Revolution of 1848 until the end of World War II for the Catholic Church and acceptance of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s doctrines that the Church finally grew to acknowledge Christian democracy. While it would seem like the opposite of true, as I have demonstrated, Muslim efforts are constant in democratizing their countries. There still stand a good number of Muslims who are pro-democracy (Feldman).
It must also be considered that the ideas being promoted are essentially those of an Islamic democracy, not Islamist democracy. Intrinsically, by faith, Islam does bring about a moral doctrine which can, if practiced correctly, ultimately be very beneficial to the society. It is easy to confuse this with the doctrine of the Islamists, who can easily more identify with those who don’t even see democracy as a desirable political system. However, it is also the failure to understand that Islamist democracy is still a democracy that may attribute to the inability for these states to remain consistently democratic. Western interference, then, seems like the best solution for ensuring that the states remain peaceful. However, as history has shown with French interference in Algeria during its democratic experiments, ultimately this intervention proves to be more bloody than diplomatic.
The cycle of history has seemingly come full circle. In the early twentieth century, sparked for a desire for change, Muslim reformists in countries such as Iran and Turkey sought for that very crucial change in government. Now, more than ever, Muslims are longing for the democratic promise that will not allow dictatorship regimes to rule supreme. Islam in principle embodies the entire essence of democracy. The Christian model provides lessons that Muslims may learn in order to successfully bring about democracy in the Middle East. It certainly will be a gradual process, much like it was for the Christians throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, undoubtedly, it is one that the Muslims have been waiting far too long to not enjoy when the promise finally arises.
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