Dragon Horse

I say Arab, because there are Muslim democracies...Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia, Nigeria (slightly over half Muslim), Senegal, etc. These states are not perfect but they do hold relatively fair elections regularly.


The only Arab democracy is Lebanon, which is about half Christian Arab.

My theory is that the problem in most Arab nations is not Islam per se, but it is preIslamic. Auturk said when forming Turkey that he did not want Arab lands included because they were too tribal and he wanted a nation-state with a Turkish identity (we know he had troubles with Kurds and Armenians but probably would have had more with Arabs).

I feel that most Arab lands are still quite tribal and clannish (which can be shown by the cousin marriage rate:
THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: TRADITIONS; Iraqi Family Ties Complicate American Efforts for Change - Free Preview - The New York Times


We often here Islam means "peace" but that is, well a lie. Well kind of. Islam means submission and I do believe that to many Arabs that is peace. If you don't have submission there can be no peace.

These societies are largely tribal and have little to no concept of pluralism (the idea that two competition strains of thought can coexist in the same place at the same time without subordination).

Without pluralism, you can not have a democracy...not a real one.

The fact many Muslim states are heavily intolerant of other religions, including other forms of Islam is not shocking...this extends into politics as well.

Europe had this problem as well and it was solved by intractable wars, the biggest, the 30 year war, that wiped out over 30% of Germans in Central Europe. Eventually people get so tired of fighting they learn to accept each others differences and make concessions.

I do not believe Arabs have experienced his and due to oil and strategic location I seriously doubt Western nations will allow that to occur.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

I believe this to be a silly talking point by people who don't know much about Islam. The submission does not mean submission to Islam by non-Muslims, but submission to God by Muslims. That's why they say "Allah wakbar!" (God is the greatest!) That's why they pray 5 times a day to God, because they submit to his greatness.

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Dragon Horse

Don't get to hung up on that...I know what it means, but, my point is that it is part of a much larger cultural concept expressed in various forms.

I have read quite a bit about Islam, and I own a Qur'an...as well as a Bible (King James and Catholic version).

As far as Muslims dealing with nonMuslims, historically if you look at Muslims invading new lands, they were quite tolerant for the most part of nonMuslims (of the Book) but even in India of Hindus. This is a general trends but there are exceptions.

Why? Because it was pragmatic. They still put into place an obvious Jim Crow like society where nonArabs were second class citizen and give them political reasons to want to convert and they did. Over time as the majority of the population did convert and the nonMuslim was a minority then the persecution really set in. There are many books on how nonMuslims are and have historically been treated in Muslim dominated lands.

For the most part it has not (and still is not good). There are constant hate crimes against Christians in Egypt, Nigeria, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, even Turkey.

The countries I find this not to be the case are Malaysia, Albania...some nations in Africa where the people are less adherent and more Sufi.


Actually Allah Akbar means exactly "God is greater". This is important. Look it up yourself. That changes things a bit.

If you read "No God But God" by Reza Aslan you will find out why.

I don't know what your religious beliefs are, but I am agnostic and I personally reject all abrahamic religions.

I believe Islam was a fusion of Arab tribal rules (largely uncodified in written form) and a combination of Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.

Point being that Arab society in the Arabian peninsula developed Islam and it was very tribal. Submission was an important concept in tribal hierarchy if you read about Arabia, pre-Islam. I do not believe for one minute that these tribal Arab culture concepts did not effect the way Islam developed or why it developed the way it did.

In any case I did no want to make this religious per se, I wanted to talk about the development or lack there of, of democracy in the Arab nations.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

Well I am no Islammic expert. I am also agnostic, though I don't reject anything.

I think Islam was a new moral order (in the 7th century) in response to political and cultural decadence on the Arabian peninsula. My impression is that Arabian society back then was very decadent and materialistic, and Islam rectified that. Having studied a lot of Western history I am well aware of Christian missionaries who destroyed Chinese and Native American religious shrines and went about converting everyone they came in contact with. Then of course we could talk about the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades and imperialism which often had spreading the Christian faith attached to it. So there is no moral high ground for Christians to claim that their religion is so great compared to Islam.

The real driving force here is society, economics, politics and technology. That is what has changed Christianity from being an intolerant religion to a tolerant one. The repressive nature of Islam is paralleled and caused by its backward economies and political institutions.

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Dragon Horse

Better article on cousin marriage:

Why cousin marriage matters in Iraq | csmonitor.com
Global prevalence - ConsangWiki - Consang.net

This is important because...if you marry someone not related to you, well you care about your inlaws to, because of your wife or husband.

The more outmarriage that goes on the more links between people and the more you extend your own sphere of "caring".

When you constantly intermarry and you are so tight that everyone around you is a tribal or clan member (even your wife) you have less of a national or regional identity and more of a family identity. This is so important to a cosmopolitan society.

In these type of systems they are very hierarchical and patriarchal. It is not "one man, one vote" more like one tribe one vote, or one clan one vote.

Africa has similar problems, but in Arab nations like Saudi, Iraq (less so in the Levant), in North Africa you have this and it is common. I believe this to be counter to how we imagine a democracy developing.

If you look at other nations that have very stable democracies they have a out marriage pattern more similar to us (Latin America, East and Southeast Asia).

Dragon Horse

I somewhat agree with that and disagree.

It is not economic.

Most radical Muslims are not the poorest Muslims.

In reality very few rebels are every the poorest, they are usually middle class (or at least the leaders are) why? Well poor people are worried about eating.

Middle class people expect things greater and hit that glass ceiling and get frustrated and want revolution.

In the Muslim world, the autocratic dictators shut down most media and political expression but the thing they can not go against is Islam.

So it makes sense Muslims radical gather around the Mosque...you get a smooth talking Imam talking about change, and he is the only alternative and the only place the government will not immediately shut down.

As far as Christianity and what Christians have done.

I think missionaries and all the rest...this is all true, but the what interest me is not "what they did" as why they stopped doing it. The idea of political institutions that allow for expression and representation did not come about until the idea of "pluralism" was accepted.

In Europe there were several wars that led to this.

The French Revolution and the thought that came out of that after the back of the church was broken...the Italian Renaissance, the 30 Year War I think was the big one that came before all this. It established that there would be Protestants and Catholics would tolerate them and they could live together.

Before this pluralism was very limited in Europe...this established a precedent that said "we can think differently even on religion and not have to fight for dominance).

It broke the back of the Catholic church in NW Europe (in the Germanic nations) and really lead to a rise in political thought...about the same time (not coincidence) literacy increased and people started reading the bible for themselves and printing books.

My point is that you can have a great economy (look at China) and still not have political freedom. China also has no pluralism, which is the base for democracy. South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia were wealthy dictatorships for decades before becoming democratic...money helps but it does not automatically make a liberal government.

Dragon Horse

My belief is that we (America) should focus on stability and not democracy.

We need to get an authoritarian illiberal democracy (similar to Singapore) or maybe even as strict as South Korea under Park or Taiwan under Chiang Kai Shek, but someone we have leverage on so we can force them to develop economically (and not just give the money to his tribe or religious group) but spread it directly, increase education, dampen religion...a better version of Saddam.

If we can get that kind of stability and give everyone a stake in it (without one group subordinate to another) and slowly introduce more political freedom I think things would be okay.

That or find a way to divide the oil and diversify the army so no one group has control and devolve Iraq down to the local level like Switzerland so each region is semi-autonomous with a weak central government. Maybe that will avoid partition (something Turkey, Syria, and Jordan would fight).

I'm not sure...but it I know introducing democracy to people who have no history of it and no cultural concept (but for a few Westernized elites) is stupid and will never be stable by itself.

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

I think that we should look at something you did not mention in your comment. You say most Islammic radicals are from the middle class (i.e. Bin Laden and Zwahiri) however, what do most of the middle class believe? Probably not in radical Islam. So doesn't that imply that the middle class favor moderation?

Also, I am not talking about class, so far as I am talking about the entire economic system. The Muslim economic system in the Middle Eastern countries was agrarian while Europe and the US were industrial. All the time that the West was moving towards a massive industrial class, and the politics of capitalists and the bourgeoisie, the Muslim world remained stagnant. It was the constant economic and social flux of the West which moderated Christianity.

Proletariat and capitalist values of economic productivity and the urban centers they created which put the emphasis on materialism and technical education changed societies focus onto materialism and away from religion. Capitalism transformed the West. The Arab states have no successful capitalist economies. They've got oil exporters, but that's not an industrial or service-based capitalist economic system.

You got a good point there with regards to the French Revolution and the Italian Renaissance there. I have to commend you on that. That's definitely a very intellectual argument.

However, I would argue that it is the failure to develop capitalism among Arab socieities (or perhaps to put it conversely, the fact that capitalism was successfully developed only in Western Europe) which caused Islam not to evolve, as Christianity has evolved.

Your comment has got me to thinking about what caused capitalism? I wonder if your social and political arguments can be used to describe what caused Western European countries to develop capitalism, but not non-Western European countries.

China doesn't need any pluralism as China is almost completely Confucianist.

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Dragon Horse

WEB Dubois:

"Proletariat and capitalist values of economic productivity and the urban centers they created which put the emphasis on materialism and technical education changed societies focus onto materialism and away from religion. Capitalism transformed the West. The Arab states have no successful capitalist economies. They've got oil exporters, but that's not an industrial or service-based capitalist economic system."

I think you are on to something there...I pretty much agree with that.

What you said about China might be correct. If you look at overseas Chinese and other confucianist influenced nation they don't have much pluralism but they seem to develop high standards of living anyway.

In Japan the LDP has ruled for all but 2 years or so since WWII.

In Taiwan until about 5 years ago the KMT (guo Ming Dang) ruled and there is only two other major political parties. In Singapore the people's action party has controlled Singapore since independence from Malaysia.

The only one that seems to be different is S.Korea.

I asked my wife once why Japanese keep voting for the LDP. She said..."because it doesn't matter who you vote for the LDP builds consensus so strongly with various factions it will turn out the same..."

Chinese leaders fly to Singapore 2x a year to learn about the government I think they want a "democracy" like Singapore...which is not very liberal at all...

The cause of capitalism is something to think about...could it be something to do with colonialism and the trade back and forth between colonies and the home nation?

Sebelius for VP, not Hillary

I may have to start a thread sometime: what factors created capitalism: social? political? economic? or religious?

China is pretty much one race. Firstly, it's mainly Han. Secondly, the Han culture was so strong all the other non Han ethnicities (i.e. Mongolian and Manchu) assimilated into Chinese culture even though they militarily conquered China.

I've heard about that. I've heard it said that for this reason, Japan is a dysfunctional democracy.

I think that is very true, though I think that if we learned anything from Deng Xiaoping's total overthrow of economic communism and also how he was almost succeeded by the democratic reformer Zhao Zhiyang, anything is possible in China. I think the CCP would prefer a transition to a Singapore style one party dictatorship with democratic clothing.

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