Pictures from a demonstration against coups in İstanbul on the anniversary of Turkey’s 1997 “postmodern coup.” The signs say, “Never again,” and “Coup leaders should stand trial.”
Latest Updates: democracy RSS
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midwinterspring
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thabet
Well that was quick: Iraqis speed up their progression to an ‘advanced’ democratic society:
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aziz
In Gujarat state, democracy is now compulsory. This is uniquely hypocritical for Gujarat, but that aside, how does this square with the idea of liberty?
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johnpi
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aziz
The Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East: a new book edited by Nathan Brown and Emad Shahin, about “democracy and democratization in the light of regional realities rather than the wishful thinking of outsiders.” Contributors include Amy Hawthorne and Shadi Hamid.
(kind of expensive, even on Kindle)
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aziz
via POMED, Abu Aardvark on moderate Islamists and democracy.
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johnpi
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thabet
Senior American diplomat in Afghanistan ‘fired’ for his views on Afghan election fraud:
He can’t go around questioning the anointment of the new ’son of a bitch’, now can he…
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johnpi
In an interview, Max Blumenthal discusses his new book, “Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party.” He opens with a portrait of R.J. Rushdoony, the father of modern Dominionist thinking:
Rushdoony’s tomes advocating the replacement of America’s constitutional democracy with a theocracy based on Leviticus case law-under which disobedient children, witches, adulterers, abortion doctors, and blasphemers would be executed-provided the antecedents of the Christian right with a blueprint for the government it hoped to establish. Rushdoony’s vision of the church supplanting government functions like healthcare and schooling, a system he called Christian Reconstructionism, also influenced the rise of right-wing libertarianism….
Rushdoony on democracy, from Wikipedia:
He wrote that “the heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state … Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.” He elsewhere said that “Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy,” and characterized democracy as “the great love of the failures and cowards of life.”
Nice to know no one can accuse us of “imitating the Christians” when we participate in democracy.
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thabet
As Hamid Karzai secures the 50% he needs to be declared President of Afghanistan, the EU says 1.5m votes may be ’suspicious’.
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thabet
Richard Holbrooke and Hamid Karzai had an “explosive” meeting* over the country’s fraudulent presidential election:
Richard Holbrooke raised concerns about ballot-stuffing and fraud, by a number of candidates’ teams, sources say.
The US envoy also said a second-round run-off could make the election process more credible, the sources said.
The problem is democracy and occupation tend not to mix very well…
*Not a good choice of word given the very real explosions that occur on a regular basis in the country…
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aziz
’twas the night before Ramadan, and all through Kabul… #afghan09
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thabet
This looks like an interesting read:
Carré’s insight is based not on the discovery of any new historical evidence, but on a novel way of perceiving the dialectics of Islamic existence; that is, not as the dichotomy of text and history, the antinomy of ideals and realities, but as the interplay of ‘governance’ and ‘law’ in the arena of laïcité, in the worldly domain where the political is not under the tutelage of the clergy. Traditional Islam, accordingly, has been ’secular’ without being ’secularist’; it has affirmed the this-worldly logic of politics and history but never accepted the state as sovereign or reduced faith to governance. Carré’s thesis, then, fiercely rejects Orientalist prejudices about Islam’s inherent incapacity to separate governance from sacred law and hence become modern, just as it boldly challenges all other Islamophobic claims that have been advanced in contemporary France in the name of sociology or secularism. Carré’s argument that is based on the lessons of Muslim history and actual praxis, thus, forcefully repudiates all those glib assertions about Islam’s (essential!) incompatibility with individualism, secularism, democracy and the rule of law!
Unfortunately, I can’t find an English translation.
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thabet
The Bosnian mufti is in the news again. This time he is reported as saying sharia should be ‘incorporated into the Bosnian constitution’, although the Adnkronos International (AKI) report doesn’t actually quote his words.
I can’t reconcile the simplistic presentation in the report above with the other public statements of the mufti, such as this 2004 interview with Qantara, a German magazine which focuses on Islam-West relations:
But now these values are no longer tied to western civilization, they are values that others accept and claim for themselves. What is happening now actually represents a crisis of western civilization, which obviously does not want to share these values with others.
In the same interview he criticised tribal tendencies of movements like the Taliban for failing to understand the ‘universiality of Islam’; said Muslims citizens in the West can also be patriotic; and criticised Saudi funding of mosques and Islamic learning in Western Europe.
Given this, I find it difficult to believe the mufti was advocating a constitutional arrangement similar to Saudi or Iran as implied by the AKI report.
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thabet
Anthony Barnett (veteran campaigner for constitutional reform) starts a very good conversation at ourKingdom on how our tinpot democracy can be improved.
I just hope it doesn’t end like this.
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thabet
A Muslim party is campaigning for municipal elections in several Dutch cities:
Party chairman Henny Kreeft says he is also in discussion with party branches in at least a further five municipalities on whether they will field candidates. In June Mr Kreeft said he hoped party representatives would be standing in twenty districts. The NMP will launch its election manifesto after Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, which this year ends on 19 September.
If it is successful, the NMP will not be the first Islamic party to be represented in Dutch local politics. The Islam Democrats have held a seat on the local council in The Hague since 2006.
Interestingly, Henny Kreeft was a member of the party led by Pim Fortuyn.
There are a number of ‘Christian democratic’ parties across Europe (which is to be expected given the history, culture, etc). I don’t see a problem with ‘Muslim democratic’ parties operating in the same way, although I am not sure the new leader of the will help the Netherlands Muslim Party win many seats:
[...]
Ismaili (31) caused a scandal in 2008 as a district councillor for the PvdA (Labor Party). She signed a petition for the Muslim organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, with phrases such as “It’s time to rid ourselves of a culture which damages Islam.” Additionally she wrote hate-email. The PvdA fraction in the Charlois district dropped her and Ismaili continued as a one-man fraction. Ismaili, popular in her neighborhood of Carnisse, refused to apologize.
I don’t know if the aim of Muslims political parties contesting local elections should be to offer a “response” to negative stories about Islam, although that may a positive consequence.
There used to be a Muslim political party in Britain, but it is now defunct (according to the Wikipedia entry).
(Via Islam in Europe.)
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thabet
Protesters detained in the Pakistani portion of Kashmir:
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thabet
Commenting on Johann Hari’s interview with Malalai Joya in The Independent, Houriya Ahmed of the Centre for Social Cohesion says:
This is absurd. Stupid even. Did Ahmed actually read the interview? Did she not see the portion where Joya, a trenchant critic of Western forces inside Afghanistan (she has spoken on the Stop the War platform), calls our troops in her country ‘enemies of Afghan democrats’?
[A]ny Afghan democrat [says Malalai Joya] today is “trapped between two enemies. There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns.” She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between, who are opposed to both. “With the withdrawal of one enemy, the occupation forces, it [will be] easier to fight against these internal fundamentalist enemies.”
We shouldn’t be taking sides in other peoples internal conflicts that we do not only misunderstand, but reduce to simplistic stories (often to make ourselves feel better if not out of complete ignorance of the situation on the ground).
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thabet
Dodgy election results in a Central Asian state.
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thabet
Using Kung Fu Panda to link Italian and Iranian politics, and discuss democracy and capitalism? That could only mean an article by Slavoj Žižek:
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The wager behind Berlusconi’s vulgarities is that the people will identify with him as embodying the mythic image of the average Italian: I am one of you, a little bit corrupt, in trouble with the law, in trouble with my wife because I’m attracted to other women. Even his grandiose enactment of the role of the noble politician, il cavaliere, is more like an operatic poor man’s dream of greatness. Yet we shouldn’t be fooled: behind the clownish mask there is a state power that functions with ruthless efficiency. Perhaps by laughing at Berlusconi we are already playing his game. A technocratic economic administration combined with a clownish façade does not suffice, however: something more is needed. That something is fear, and here Berlusconi’s two-headed dragon enters: immigrants and ‘communists’ (Berlusconi’s generic name for anyone who attacks him, including the Economist).
Kung Fu Panda, the 2008 cartoon hit, provides the basic co-ordinates for understanding the ideological situation I have been describing.
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aziz
I have a lengthy roundup post about the Islamic flavor of the Iranian reform movement. It’s also worth digging out some ancient blogsphere history as regards to Iran – I actually speculated about the potential for reform in Iran years ago, noting that the biggest threat to the present regime was indeed a mass nonviolent protest movement within the framework of Islam – and invoked verse 2:256 from the Qur'an. As far back as 2002, the blogsphere had an Open Letter to Iran which I also posted to my blog in both Farsi and English. The path that Iran is on right now is not conceptually new, just untried. It's about time.
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thabet
Counting is underway in Indonesia’s presidential elections.
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johnpi
In Egypt, police shut down Iran solidarity march.
An attempt by Egyptians to march in solidarity with Iranian protesters and to honor Neda-Agha Soltan — whose death earlier this month made her the icon of Iran’s opposition movement — was halted by security forces in Cairo over the weekend.
The Cairo rally was called by democracy activist and opposition leader Ayman Nour and was scheduled to be held in Talaat Harb square in the Egyptian capital’s downtown. But dozens of security vehicles surrounded Nour and his fellow protesters upon their arrival at the square. Police arrested four protesters belonging to Nour’s party and prevented reporters from covering the event.
“It is very ironic how Egyptian authorities, who earlier expressed their dismay against the Iranian regime’s oppressive means of handling protesters, are now banning us from a march that shares the same perspective,” Nour said at a news conference at his party’s headquarters. “Such acts only prove one thing and it is that the Egyptian and Iranian regimes are quite the same when it comes to their autocratic path and rejection of democracy.”
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thabet
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johnpi
A partial list of your brothers and sisters in blogging/reporting arrested in Iran at this link and this link.
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thabet
More state aggression against people protesting for freedom not on your telly (or subject to comment from the White House or Downing Street):
The clashes broke out after people tried to defy the restrictions imposed by authorities in wake of the separatist march to Baramulla town, 52 km northwest of Srinagar, the region’ s summer capital.
Separatists had given call for “Baramulla Chalo” march to seek release of separatist leaders, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who were arrested for spearheading protests following the alleged rape and murder of two women on May 30 in Shopian town, 50 km south of Srinagar.
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aziz
Anyone have any theories why the world is so invested in Iranian democracy but not Egyptian?
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thabet
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thabet
State violence against protesters not on your telly (or on Twitter).
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thabet
Haroon Moghul writes about the Undemocratic Islamic Republic of Iran.
