Looking for inquiring minds and key-tapping fingers - your chance to post here!

Islam! Democracy! Liberty! That’s the topic (no, not “Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!”). I am inviting readers to submit their thoughts for publication, under your byline, on this site.

I argued yesterday that democracy was not incompatible with Islam, qua Islam, but that the way Islam is practiced in various places around the world made it incompatible in some places and more compatible in others, though nowhere is a Muslim country’s democracy (where found) anything like that of the United States.

It wasn’t the first time I have written on the topic. In April 2004 I posted the following, taking a more contrary view.

This basic tenet of Islam means that the concept of democracy - the “people ruling” - has no natural place in Islam. Democracy in Muslim countries is literally alien to the religion. Last October, the prime minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, gave the opening address at the 10th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference. In delineating the problems facing Islamic countries today, he said, among others things,

… we also accepted the western democratic system. This also divided us because of the political parties and groups that we form, some of which claim Islam for themselves, reject the Islam of other parties and refuse to accept the results of the practice of democracy if they fail to gain power for themselves. They resort to violence, thus destabilising and weakening Muslim countries.

The rift between the concepts of the ideal society of Western and Islamic thought is enormous. Like an earthquake fault, the pressures and friction were not wholly visible for decades, but they exploded violently. As many others and I have said for a couple of years now, the contest between “the West and the rest,” in Roger Scruton’s term, will endure for a long time to come.

So where are we on this?

One thought that deserves consideration is Bill Quick’s comment that however much Islam might be compatible with some sort of democracy, Islam is not compatible “with individual liberty, the idea that the individual posseses rights that transcend the powers of the government under which he lives.”

What do you think? Please email me your posts (try to keep reasonably brief) and I’ll post as many as I can here. If you can email them in HTML format, with hyperlinks and blockquotes, where applicable, I’d be most grateful.

Please bear in mind I really have no time to edit, so posts using profanity, even in quotations, won’t get published. Just [snip] them out. Be collegial! Discuss the character of ideas, not of persons. Have fun!

Email submissions to gunner20-at-comcast.net, obviously replacing the -at- with @.