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Links 4/28: Al Qaeda, Turkey, Off-Shore Oil Drilling |
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The fight against Al-Qaeda continues: the US captured an important leader earlier this week, while the Algerian army claims it has killed another, though Al-Qaeda spokesmen have disputed the man’s importance. Meanwhile, it has come to light that one suspect was held for months in one of the secret CIA jails that President Bush had formerly announced were vacant.
Complicated events are unfolding in Turkey, where an Islamist candidate, Abdullah Gul (official site, in English) nearly won the presidency in the first round of voting. The Turkish military has threatened to intervene in an attempt to preserve secularism, but the EU has warned them to back off. One hopes that this will not go the way of the ill-fated Algerian elections of 1991.
Another scandal for the Bush administration: Randall Tobias, Deputy Secretary of State and a key aide to Secretary Rice, resigns over allegations that he used a call-girl service.
It seems an expansion of off-shore oil drilling is in the works.
LOCAL NEWS: Controversy over a proposed fare hike for L.A.’s mass transit system, the MTA.
And finally here’s the video of the day for you: Nas, with “Made You Look.”
Why the world gets so up in arms when a Muslim might get elected is beyond me. Granted, I don’t know much about Abdullah Gul’s policies (and is site isn’t very helpful), but there is such thing as a secular Muslim….
“Secular-ity” is precisely the issue here. Gul is usually described as an “Islamist,” which is a problematic term. The best definition for Islamism, or at least the shortest one, is someone who wants to establish an “Islamic state.” What that means is also up for grabs - Sharia law? anti-democracy? Muslim clerics as authoritarian leaders?
Anyways, people are afraid that Gul might change the secular nature of the state itself. That’s what people were afraid of in Algeria in 1991/1992, and that’s why the military stepped in. It leads to a lot of contradictions when you start to think about what democracy means. Do you allow people to participate in a democracy if you’re afraid that beneath the surface they’re anti-democratic, and would act on that if they got power? And on the other hand, if you say certain people can’t participate in your “risk-free” democracy, then how democratic is it? Anyway, in Algeria the military tried to solve these questions with guns, but obviously they’re still a major issue in the Muslim world.
I guess the question is are religious states and democratic states mutually exclusive? And Islmaic state could also be a democratic one, depending on how it is run, right?
That’s the big question. There are some people, of course, who believe that Muslim countries - we’re talking just countries with majority Muslim populations, not necessarily even “Islamic states” - are going to have a lot of difficulty establishing democracy. This is why we hear a lot of people asking whether the Middle East is “ready” for democracy. A lot of people believe that you have to be ready to keep your religious beliefs at home - and out of the public sphere - before you can have a democracy. Personally I think countries like Senegal disprove that; there are big challenges to democracy here but they’re the same ones you find in other, non-Muslim African countries - namely, the regime itself. Senegalese Islam doesn’t seem to have a negative effect on Senegalese democracy.
As for the out-and-out “Islamic state,” that’s another question. I still think it’s possible - I mean, even Iran and northern Nigeria (where they have Sharia law) have democratic structures in place, to an extent. Hell, even the Taliban had some democratic processes. But I think it comes down to the dynamics of the situation (how could a government in Afghanistan or Somalia really be democratic, for example, when these places are so chaotic?), along with how the religious/political authorities are reading their Islamic texts. And there’s plenty of people who say that democracy is a value inherent to Islam and a system that the early Islamic community practiced. It’s all in how you view things.
Of course, I think the discussion should be moved to a broader level - religion and democracy. Islam in my view is a religion like all others. Yeah, there are aspects of Islam that maybe lay out a certain blueprint for society but certain versions of Christianity and Judaism do too. So is a Christian democracy possible? Is a Jewish democracy possible? If so, then I think a Muslim democracy is too.
The ‘DC Madame’ is about to drop some names
Might get ugly pretty quickly…is this the same prostitution ring as that Jeff Gannon guy? Or do we have more sex scandals in Washington?
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