Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought and the relationship between religion and the state. The face of the Muslim world would have been changed if after 1948 Saudi Arabia, one of the original signatories of the United Nations Charter, had mobilized its huge education and propaganda establishment and its banking network to explain to the people that the secular state provided for in Article 18 is not so much one staffed by mulhid (atheistic) officials as one that prohibits its agents from squandering public funds to push their interpretation of religion.
    The states that were signatories of the charter and the international conventions had a choice between two possible approaches: they could seize the opportunity of the adoption of these new universal laws to open up a full public debate on the nature of power and explain to the people the mechanisms of participatory democracy; or they could hide these laws away, sequestering them like clandestine courtesans who are an embarrassment when one wants to play the role of imam and demand ta c a. It was the second option that was chosen. Hiding these laws, putting them behind a hijab, became the strategy and the objective. Mobilizing the media and millions of teachers to explain Article 18 would have meant explaining the philosophical basis of the secular state. It would have required banning the use of the government apparatus to publicize ta c a blind obedience to the president of the republic.
    If the Arab states had chosen the way of representative democracy, we would not have witnessed one of the miracles of the century—"reigns” of presidents of Arab republics as long as those of kings. The Arab world is probably one of the rare regions of the world where a presidency can last a lifetime. Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, for example, agreed to step down only under pressure. As for Hafaz al-Assad of Syria, he has just announced his fourth term. The long reign of President Bourguiba, like the four terms of President Assad, is not subject to the routine procedures of representative democracy, which would reflect the whims of very changeable public opinion. The long tenure in office of Arab presidents can be explained in only two ways: it is the result of either supernatural forces (divine grace or magic) or much more mundane acts, like rigging the vote. President Bourguiba, whom we all admire for his past as a nationalist leader, would certainly have had a shorter presidency if he had not put government funds into publicity for himself as the mujahid akhbar (Great Warrior). If I mention President Bourguiba, it is because Tunisia is one of the rare Arab states that have declared themselves modern—by contrast with Morocco, where tradition is unequivocably embraced.
    If we are to sharpen our understanding of the intimate link between authoritarianism and the state’s refusal to engage the masses in the great debate that modern life demands of us—that is, the question of the secular state—we have to understand how the system operates. The regime of President Bourguiba monopolized the mass media and the schools to tell citizens that they must modernize and renounce tradition while refusing to grant them the essence of modernity: freedom of thought and participation in decision making. The government lauded democracy while robbing the Tunisian citizens of the right to have a say in how their tax money was spent. The result was that Arab countries like Tunisia which call themselves liberal, or those like Algeria which call themselves socialist, created the most confusion among their peoples and thus brought on the fundamentalist opposition that now threatens them.
    The fundamentalists’ argument is that if Islam is separated from the state, no one will any longer believe in Allah and the memory of the Prophet will dim. Since we are constantly bombarded via satellite by advertisements for all sorts of products, from soap to films, the state must defend Islam. Such reasoning is in fact an insult to Islam, with