ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY: THE IMPOSSIBLE UNION

Thursday, January 20, 2005

ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY: THE IMPOSSIBLE UNION



by Amir Taheri

The Sunday TimesMay 23, 2004

Iranian Muslim Amir Taheri says his faith cannot embrace western liberalism because our notions of equality are antithetical to the basis of Islam.

The idea of equality is unacceptable to Islam. For the non-believer cannot be the equal of the believer. Even among the believers only those who subscribe to the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism,Christianity and Islam, known as the "people of the book" (Ahl el-Kitab), are regarded as fully human.

Democracy means the rule of the demos, the common people, or what is now known as popular or national sovereignty. In Islam, however, power belongs only to God: al-hukm l'illah. The man who exercises that power on Earth is known as Khalifat al-Allah, the regent of God. Even then the Khalifah, or Caliph, cannot act as legislator. The law has alreadybeen spelt out and fixed forever by God.

To say that Islam is incompatible with democracy should not be seen as a disparagement of Islam. On the contrary, many Muslims would see it as acompliment because they believe that their idea of rule by God is superior to that of rule by men, which is democracy.

The great Persian poet Rumi pleads thus:

Oh, God, do not leave our affairs to us For, if You do, woe is us.

Last year Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of the leading theoreticians of today's Islamist movement, published a book in which he warned that the real danger to Islam did not come from American tanks and helicopter gunships in Iraq but from the idea of democracy and the government of the people.

Read the whole thing here:
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/4585