Islam and Democracy…not again
Yet another discussion of whether Democracy and Islam are compatible (these folks say yes). The discussion just won’t die. I’ll keep this brief.
The countries with the largest Muslim population (Indonesia) and the third largest Muslim population (India) are democracies. Close to one in four Muslims live in these two countries. If something is true nearly 25% of the time, I’d say it is far more than a theoretical possibility.
The rejoinder to this argument is typically “well, what I really meant was Arabs.” This is true: there are no Arab democracies. Yet since Arabs account for only 20% of all Muslims, using “Muslim” as a synonym for “Arab” doesn’t work very well. Moreover, Arab is an ethnic group, not a religion, so using Islam (i.e., a religion) as an argument for why Arabs (i.e., an ethnic group) can’t be democrats doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.
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Many of us have tendency to judge “an adherent of the religion of Islam” with biased perspective, even though we don’t know basic terms about them. (like the difference between ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’) Isn’t it because of the ‘so-called’ western hegemony-cetnered media and arrogance of US government? Media has created bad images on muslims(Many people think Al jazeera is provocative so stimulates young generation of muslims to join terrorists, but that’s not true, it’s very well organized broadcasting company.) and US government has forced to follow the particular type of democracy. The attempt to fix one term with only one definition is dangerous. Personally, I think God (various types of God, actually) never tells us there’s an absolute truth or order. The term, “democracy” is the same.
Absolutely. Sensationalist media is a big part of the problem. How else would 20% of Americans spontaneously conclude that President Obama is a Muslim? Why else would there be so much mass hysteria over a Mosque near the World Trade Center?