Can Democracy Thrive in Muslim Countries

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SAISPHERE 2009 | Islam’s Freedom Deﬁcit

By Joshua Muravchik

Can Democracy Thrive in Muslim Countries?

Since Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1904, social scientists have studied the connection between religion as a shaper of values and economics. Less has been written about the relation of religion to political systems. In the 1920s and 1930s, the historian Arnold Toynbee, having observed democracy give way to fascism and military rule across the predominantly Catholic countries of Southern and Eastern Europe, speculated that democracy could take root only in the soil of Protestantism.

Today, we can see that Toynbee was wrong since upward of 90 percent of Catholic countries now practice democracy. In any event, analyses that focused on ethnicity went out of favor after World War II, replaced by a new emphasis on socioeconomic factors. Spurred by the work of Seymour Martin Lipset, researchers sought and found objective “variables” that correlated closely with democracy.

This focus on socioeconomic rather than ethnic or creedal determinants has drawn attention away from one of the most remarkable facts about freedom in the world over recent decades—namely, the apparent immunity of Muslim-majority countries to the tide of freedom that has flowed over the rest of the world, despite wide variations in social or economic characteristics. (In this article, I slide freely between speaking of “freedom” and “democracy.” Although the two are not identical, for the question of correlation or noncorrelation with Islam, data sets for “free” and “democratic” countries show virtually identical results.)

The most reliable, exhaustive and comparative data on freedom are the surveys issued by Freedom House annually since 1972. Countries are grouped into three broad categories: “free,” “partly free” and “not free.” Over 37 years, the survey shows that freedom has spread dramatically. In 1972, only 29 percent of the countries of the world ranked “free,” while 46 percent were “not free.” In 2008, the proportions were reversed: 46 percent were “free” while the proportion that were “not free” had dropped to 22 percent. If anything, these numbers understate the growth of freedom because the total number of independent countries has grown. In 1972, there were 151; today, there are 193. A large number of these new countries were republics of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Others were colonies that are now independent. In other words, the people who lived in virtually all of these areas were “not free” in 1972, but many are “free” today.

However, this dramatic shift toward freedom has not touched the Muslim world. Of the 47 countries with a Muslim majority, only Indonesia and Mali are “free.” In other words, 4 percent of the total are “free,” and 51 percent are “not free.” In the rest of the world, by contrast, 61 percent are “free” and only 12 percent are “not free.” In the nearly four decades in which Freedom House has gathered data, every other corner of the world has exhibited increases in freedom, while the Muslim countries have made little, if any, progress in this regard. How can this be explained?

Social scientists seeking to identify causes of the freedom deficit in Islamic countries look first to the fact that they are mostly poor or less developed. Of the socioeconomic variables known to correlate with democracy, national income correlates most strongly. Almost all countries above a certain average annual income are free. But this cannot explain the situation in Muslim countries—at least not fully. Another group of countries—those of sub-Saharan Africa—is on average far poorer than the Islamic group and nonetheless exhibits much greater incidence of freedom. And within the Muslim world, high-income countries are not freer than low-income countries.

Looking Beyond Socioeconomic Variables

Other socioeconomic variables that correlate closely with freedom and democracy elsewhere exhibit no such correlation in the Muslim world. For example, countries with higher literacy rates tend to have more freedom than those with low rates for reasons that are intuitively obvious. But among the Muslim-majority countries, this connection does not exist.

Neither can the Muslim world’s extraordinary deficit of freedom be explained by other factors that researchers have found to correlate with freedom and democracy in the world as a whole, for example colonial heritage. Countries that were once colonies of England are more likely to be free than countries that were colonized by other European powers. In all likelihood the reason for this is that British imperial rulers took more pains to train local officials and perhaps to convey some idea of rights. Whatever the reason, this correlation, although strong elsewhere, does not apply in the Islamic world, where, if anything, it is reversed (albeit not to a degree of statistical significance). Also, colonial experience in and of itself can leave scars on a nation that might harm its political development. Globally, countries that were never colonized by foreigners are freer than those that were, regardless of the identity of the occupying power. Discourse in the Muslim world is rich in grievance over the humiliations of foreign conquests. But the four Muslim states that were never colonies are only slightly freer than the countries that were once colonized, and that statistic derives from the fact that two of the four, Turkey and Albania, are European. The other two never-colonized Muslim countries—Saudi Arabia and Iran—have very little freedom. Indeed, both are known for certain sharp restrictions on freedom.

Is it possible that all of these data show less about the Muslim world than meets the eye? One possible source of distortion is that most non-Muslim countries have Christian majorities. In comparing Muslim countries with all non-Muslim countries, maybe we are revealing more about the Christian world than the Muslim. That is, we might be stumbling upon a Christian affinity for freedom rather than a Muslim deficit. To check this, I have divided the non-Muslim countries into Christian and “other,” that is, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, animist and so forth. The Christian-majority countries as a whole are indeed freer than this agglomeration of “others,” but the latter group in turn are considerably freer than the Muslim-majority countries. In addition, and maybe more -important, socioeconomic factors that fail to correlate with freedom in the Muslim world correlate with freedom in the “other” group just as strongly as in the Christian countries.

Thus, it seems clear that the freedom deficit in the Muslim countries is not readily attributable to external or extraneous sources, and therefore we need to look elsewhere than to familiar “independent variables” for explanations. The most likely places to look for the sources of the deficit are in the history, theology and culture of Islam. The following are key areas for exploration.

Theological Incompatibility?

Aspects of Islam mesh poorly with freedom and democracy. The Prophet was both a spiritual guide and a political/military leader. Hence Islam, in contrast to Christianity, recognizes no separation of church (or mosque) and government. (Judaism also recognizes no such separation, but modernity’s only Jewish state was founded by individuals who were intensely secular. Although the Zionists were deeply Jewish in their national identity, they were mostly socialists who had already substituted ideology for theology and who looked upon the religious side of Judaism with indifference, if not outright scorn.) The conflation of religion and state implies divine sovereignty rather than popular sovereignty, offering a shaky foundation for democracy and individual autonomy.

Some scholars have argued that nothing in Islam is incompatible with the participation by the ruled in the selection of their ruler. The Prophet’s successor, Abu Bakr, they point out, was chosen by vote. But whatever the method of forming a government, the people can have no voice in the laws because all legitimate law must come from God.

Western observers have commented that Islam has yet to experience a “reformation” analogous to that of the Christian world, but in fact, various reform movements have arisen in the history of Islam. Generally, however, they have aimed to purge the faith of alien accretions and restore it to its original purity. Perhaps the most influential reform movement within Islam in the modern era was Wahhabism, the extremely strict interpretation of the faith that is dominant in Saudi Arabia. Freedom is far from being among its values.

In contrast to Judaism and Christianity, which are both messianic and look forward to some more perfect future here on earth, the future to which Islam looks is in the afterworld. Apart from that, it looks backward to an ideal past. This is because of the status of the Prophet in Islam. -Muhammad is not divine. Rather, he is the “Perfect Man,” as Karen Armstrong, who writes on comparative religion, puts it. Thus, the highest aspiration of believers is to live like Muhammad and his closest associates. The relationship of Muhammad to those around him was warm and voluntary, but it was not democratic: They did not elect him.

The greatest goal that Islam envisions on earth is explicitly political, that is, the establishment of a polity supportive of the faith. This polity, however, would not be a state. The body politic of reference for Muslims is not the nation but the umma, the universe of all believers. It is difficult to picture even how the mechanics of democracy might work, not to mention its spirit, in the absence of more discrete political units.

The problem, however, is more than mechanical. Historically, the rise of democracy was entwined with the advent of nationalism. At the heart of democratization lay the transition of the individual from subject to citizen, with the implication that the country belonged to him. From here it was only a small step to the idea that the government also belonged to him. But what political form belongs to the member of the umma? The only historical model is the caliphate, and indeed it is to this that latter-day Islamists look for inspiration. But the caliphs were scarcely democrats; they were military leaders and autocrats. The descriptive term applied to the most ideal or admirable caliphs is that they were “rightly guided,” which says nothing of how they were chosen but rather returns us at once to the idea of divine sovereignty.

As for the spirit of freedom, even more than the Old Testament, the Koran ascribes a markedly subordinate status to women that is incompatible with democracy as the world has understood it since early in the 20th century. And in many other ways Islamic scripture enjoins obedience and discourages individualism.

Looking to History

The highest principle of Islam, arguably, is unity: the oneness of God and man and of the human race. This is why Islam regards itself as the only true monotheism (in contrast to Christianity’s veneration of the Trinity and Judaism’s concept of a “chosen people”). Bringing this theological principle down to earth, and giving it political expression, is the principle of the unity of the umma. Violations of, or threats to, this unity remain traumatic in collective memory. They began with the death of the Prophet which led to the split, neuralgic to this day, of Sunni and Shi’ite. Three of the four original successors to the Prophet, the “rightly guided caliphs,” died by assassination, two at the hands of fellow believers. The last of these, Ali, was the sole caliph recognized by both Sunnis and Shi’a. But his reign witnessed another division of far-reaching repercussions, the rebellion of the Kharajites. From this comes the enduring fear of fitna, meaning violent disorder. This is captured by the saying of the philosopher Ghazali around the 10th century: “The tyranny of a sultan for one hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exerted by the subjects.”

The pervasive sense that the faith is threatened by division provides a poor environment for the furtherance of freedom and democracy, which presume and welcome differences. Of course, the Christians who founded the United States also coined the slogan e pluribus unum. But in this formula the acceptance of diversity (pluribus) was as important as the goal of oneness. In the 19th and 20th centuries, while this duality expressed itself in the flourishing of democracy in the United States and other countries that took inspiration from it, the Muslim world felt itself besieged—and often found itself conquered or defeated—by infidels, giving a contemporary urgency and intensity to the value of unity.

Islam’s Traditions

From this theology and history have arisen traditions that shape Islam today, many of which are not conducive to freedom and democracy. These include a rigid, authoritarian hierarchy within the family and a system of education that emphasizes rote learning and discourages free thought. In contrast to Judaism, where pedagogy revolves around debate to probe the meanings of holy texts, the cardinal goal of Islamic education is memorization of the Koran. This applies even to believers who do not speak Arabic and cannot know the meanings of the words they are pronouncing. Moreover, writes journalist Max Rodenbeck, “The accepted Sunni canon [consists of] a narrow range of sources and interpretations. As an Arabic phrase puts it, they have ‘closed the door of ijtihad,’ or speculative reasoning, enabling traditionalist scholars to posit a utopian vision of Islam as a closed system that only awaits firm application by a just ruler.”

In the political realm, wrote historian Elie Kedourie, “There is nothing in the political traditions of the Arab world—which are the political traditions of Islam—which might make familiar, or indeed intelligible, the organizing ideas of constitutional and representative government.”

Fixating on Israel

There is reason to believe that freedom in the Arab world has been held back by its 60-year obsession with Israel. Sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim points out that, of several causes of the “early demise” of the “Arab liberal age” of the early 20th century, “the most immediate [was] the 1948 Arab defeat in Palestine.” This sparked military coups that overthrew relatively liberal regimes in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria. A subsequent defeat at the hands of Israel, in 1967, discredited Nasserism, just as the 1948 loss had discredited the liberals. However, the radical dictators proved more adept at hanging onto power than had the liberals, in large part by exploiting the Israel bogeyman. In response to popular protests, then-Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser promised in 1968 to restore democracy as soon as “the traces of aggression are removed.”

To this day, the most autocratic regimes in the Arab world commonly justify their repressive measures as necessary in the face of the Israeli enemy while dissenters, like the Muslim Brotherhood and even Egypt’s secular opposition movement, Kefaya, make Israel (rather than the lack of freedom and democracy) the target of their populist appeals. The young Egyptian intellectuals Amr Bargisi and Samuel Tadros point out that even the leading organs of liberalism in Egypt are tainted by a hatred of Israel so virulent that it spills over into anti-Semitism, making a mockery of the principles for which these groups stand.

Much experience shows that democracy suffers in war. Even in the United States, the cradle of modern democracy, habeas corpus was suspended during the Civil War, dissenters were jailed during World War I, Japanese citizens were interned during World War II, and so on. Elsewhere, wartime has proved to be the least auspicious occasion for creating democracy. Thus it is easy to see why the psychological, and sometimes also juridical, state of war with Israel in which most Arab states have wallowed for all these decades has served to retard the rise of democracy.

Prospects for Democracy

To say that the marked deficit of freedom and democracy in the Islamic world is rooted in historical and theological causes as well as socioeconomic ones is not to attribute to them any special fixity. Religious interpretations evolve as do historic ones, and historic experience accrues. Everywhere outside the Muslim world where democracy has grown, it is a relatively recent phenomenon. In gaining traction, democratic ideas necessarily displaced nondemocratic traditions.

Moreover, the fact that the lands of Islam have proved less fertile soil for democracy than other parts of the world does not mean that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Only two of the 47 Muslim-majority countries are “free” by the reckoning of Freedom House, but eight or nine are considered by that organization to be “electoral democracies.” (The difference is that some newly democratic countries do not yet have all the attributes required for Freedom House to call them “free”; instead they are ranked “partly free.”) While this number is low compared to other groups or regions, still it is high enough to dispel any inference that Islam and democracy cannot go together. It tells us simply that the Muslim world’s democrats have their work cut out for them. This makes them all the more deserving of our support.

Joshua Muravchik is a SAIS Foreign Policy Institute Fellow. His most recent book is The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East.

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