To begin with, I d like to emphasise that I m bringing up this topic for discussion through the above questions looking for a wider understanding of democracy and its future in our Arab societies. I take this opportunity to invite Arab thinkers and intellectuals to take part in discussing this issue which involves our political life today, and will bring about many transformations in the world which is witnessing the rise of new social forces seeking various political systems based on democracy. In the meantime, however, democracy introduces different models of projects of government putting forward an on-going argument between a religion and tradition oriented state and a modern state adopting the models of Western democracies.

Answers to the above questions require a definition of democracy first: Is it just calling the public to ballot boxes to choose MPs or rulers? Is it essentially more complex and sophisticated than that?

As a matter of fact, voting is just an instrument of democracy rather than all democracy, as voting should take place on the basis of democracy, being voters free choices supported by equality of resources and means. Such resources include the degree of the people s awareness of their rights, which is not the case in our Arab societies due a high rate of illiteracy and people misguidance for tens or hundreds of years by oppressive regimes. The main condition of elections is voters freedom of choice and knowledge and the ability to fulfil their objectives.

Furthermore, are freedom and democracy grasped in the same way in the West and e.g. East Asia? Is democracy in Japan where the people are brought up under a culture of narrow-mindness and imperial dictatorship similar to that of Indonesia s Muslim society, which today is one of the most developed Muslim societies in terms of tolerance and multiplicity? Do all these models of democracy match Arabs concept of democracy in the context of their culture?

Don t cultural traditions differ from society to society? To what extent does a culture influence its democracy? Does the building of democratic systems of government in rural or tribal societies compare with the democracy of industrial and post-industrial societies?

Even in the same society, concepts change and develop occasionally; European Western culture s openness today does not at all compare with the stringency and dictatorships of the Middle Ages and the Victorian Age. Since the West s adoption of democracy as a system of government and life it has been subject to revision from time to time influenced by economic and social developments.

The above discussion explains our belief that there is a big difference between secular states and those where religion plays a key role in culture and the people s mentality. The difference exists in accepting change, openness and flexibility in understanding the principles of co-existence and the true values of democracy based on equality of rights and duties with no discrimination.

Human rights and cultural traditions

Human rights today constitute a basic element of the values of democracy as well as an integral part of the West s culture protecting citizens behaviour and privacy, even homosexuality, unlike Arab and Muslim societies where such rights are not accepted and homosexuality rejected on moral and religious grounds.

Do foreign communities in the West comply with the laws and rules of democracy there? We hear a lot about Turkish immigrants failure of full assimilation in German society, a leading model of Western democracy, for cultural and moral reasons, including gender relations, as many Turkish girls suffer from domestic violence, particularly from their brothers.

Despite the major development of the American democratic model, there are marked differences in some principles of democracy between it and the European, particularly British, model it stems from.

Moreover, Indonesia s model as a secular democracy basing the slogan of its unity and power on multiplicity can t be said to have ignored the people s culture, taking into account that Indonesian society is the world s Muslim largest.

I d like to stress here that this discussion is not meant to defend or promote such forms of false democracy that many dictatorships talk about all the time relying on phoney democratic institutions to embellish their false democracy parliament and political parties using such institutions to tighten their grip on power and justify their repressive practices.

What I m after here is just to call for deep thinking about the democracy issue to avoid distorting the future democratic process. Recent history still shows how the Nazi party in Germany assumed power through the ballot box, but soon after abandoned democracy and adopted repression and drove its country and the whole world to one of the bloodiest wars in modern times with a loss of life of millions. In addition, the Iranian popular revolution, triggered and shared in by all religious, secular and liberal powers has turned into a religious ideological state. Many daily signs of the repressive practices of the governments of this revolution contradict the values and principles of Western democracies, through it claims to adopt democracy and elections.

Democracy of the transitional stage

Raising these queries comes out of the importance of the quest for democracy in the Arab world and Arab citizens freedom of choice albeit in such a way that does not clash with sectors of society or democratic organizations in the world, at least during the initial transitional stage of the democratic process in order to secure the adoption of and commitment to the concepts of freedom by all parties in the future to prevent the rise of anti-democracy forces.

When the Arabs first came into contact with Western culture and its liberal ideas, a movement to reconcile the two cultures was initiated by some reformers termed predecessors by Dr Abid Aljabri in his book Democracy and Human Rights . Those precedessors might have faced many difficulties in their endeavours in the past, but they at least never hesitated to reconcile the concepts of European democracy and Islamic shura (counsel). Since then, religion oriented thinkers concept of democracy is one thing: shura.

It is worth noting that refraining from using foreign names and sticking to Arabic and Muslim ones reflects a common ideological attitude which seeks a rupture with the orientations of the European renaissance. That was the position of the second generation of precedecessors, but pioneers such as Alafghani and Abdou had a strong desire to build bridges between both traditional Arab-Islamic, and European renaissance orientations. It is useful here to recreate the desire of pioneers to build bridges between both approaches in their search for the content(s) of these Islamic concepts which they made parallel to the European ones, thus balancing democracy with shura. They did that not because they thought them to be identical or were ignorant of the differences between them but rather as part of an ideological practice designed to reassure stringent religious scholars and perhaps rulers too that calling for democracy is not a heresy, as well as to raise the ingredients of our heritage and civilization to the standards of the time. In other words, the solution to our problems lies in our religious and intellectual heritage and the manner in which we should understand it.

The endeavour made by predecessors over a century ago confirms our attempt to reconcile Western democracy with the Arab mentality which clings to many religious, traditional and moral beliefs that may contradict some of the West s principles of democracy and human rights.

Democracy is not a heresy, and the values of Islam inactivated

However, having said that, we must strongly stress here that Islam has cherished a number of civilized values which fostered its ability and power to spread widely. These values do not seem today to be held onto in Arab societies. These include the rehabilitation of man who was enslaved and deprived of his rights; prohibiting human rights crimes, such as murder and theft; approval of the principle of equality with no discrimination on grounds of class, gender or colour; the maintenance of justice and ruler accountability. These are just examples found in books on the biography of the Prophet (pbuh) and approved interpretations of the Quran which clearly show how with his spiritual weight and status he set an example as a human being who may be right or wrong, eliciting Muslims opinions on many of his worldly decisions. How far from that Arab societies today are! The above values are not held onto today. This refers not only to society but even to the religious movements themselves which give their leaders an air of almost holiness and do not accept covergent views from their followers, let alone their peers!

The cultural consolidation of human rights in contemporary Arab thought should affirm the globalization of human rights in Western and Arab Muslim cultures, i.e they hinge on the same philosophy. That s what Aljabri referred to in his above-mentioned book, pointing out that differences do not refer to fixed cultural attitudes but rather to differences in the reasons of revelation (of the suras), with purposes being the same. Reference to the reasons of revelation, or in a wider sense the social, economic, political and intellectual circumstances that influence lawmakers attitudes about a certain issue, are a necessary condition for understanding the rationale behind such attitudes. This helps avoid the serious systematic error of judging the past against the standards and issues of the present.

Aljabri stresses that the secularisation of human rights in modern European thought by philosophers did not give up religion per se but only meant liberalization from the authority and rituals of the church. They based the rationalization of human rights on reason only, not against religion but against the views and related rituals imposed by the church. They held onto religion but abandoned the church s traditions and authority, replacing them with the power of reason. Does this position contradict in any way with the position of Islam which bases human rights on reason, natural disposition, pact and shura?

These questions get to the core of our discussion here of democracy, which does not clash with the essential principles of Islam which promote man s freedom, break down class barriers and raise the status of women, in order to establish a society of justice and equality. That s what should be considered by revolutionary parties who seek to form new governments in the Arab region on new bases of equality, social justice and freedom for all sectors of society.

(Translated by Dr Shaaban Afifi)