Over at the Wall Street Journal is an interview by Bari Weiss with Bernard Lewis, who at age 95 is still sharp as a tack and the preeminent scholar of the Islamic world.
The article is entitled, ‘The Tyrannies are Doomed,’ which gives you Lewis’ opinions in a nutshell. Read it anyway, there’s a lot of good stuff in it, starting from the obvious truth that while the tyrannies may be doomed, there’s no guarantee that anything better is going to replace them.
Well I say obvious truth, but evidently it isn’t so obvious to a fair number of people.
“And yet Western commentators seem determined to harbor such illusions. Take their treatment of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. The highly popular, charismatic cleric has said that Hitler “managed to put [the Jews] in their place” and that the Holocaust “was divine punishment for them.”
“Yet following a sermon Sheikh Qaradawi delivered to more than a million in Cairo following Mubarak’s ouster, New York Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick wrote that the cleric “struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching.” Mr. Kirkpatrick added: “Scholars who have studied his work say Sheik Qaradawi has long argued that Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy.””
Heavy sigh. The New York Times again…
There is some fascinating stuff on how traditional institutions moderated the power of Islamic rulers throughout history, until seriously weakened by modern technology. Lewis cautions against imposing an Anglo-American model of democracy where it doesn’t fit into the local political culture, and cites post-WWI Germany as an example of a bad fit.
He also has some interesting things to say about Women’s Lib for the Islamic world, which by chance Kathleen Parker also has a few things to say this week. See her endearingly entitled, “‘Women aren’t pet rocks’.
According to Lewis:
“My own feeling is that the greatest defect of Islam and the main reason they fell behind the West is the treatment of women,” he says. He makes the powerful point that repressive homes pave the way for repressive governments. “Think of a child that grows up in a Muslim household where the mother has no rights, where she is downtrodden and subservient. That’s preparation for a life of despotism and subservience. It prepares the way for an authoritarian society,” he says.
Amen. And see the Parker article to read how George and Laura Bush, whatever missteps George’s administration may have made, have always realized this and continue to work for women’s emancipation in the Islamic world to this day. Something that counts for zero among left-wing American feminists, who evidently think a western woman’s right to an abortion trumps an eastern woman’s right not to be genitally mutilated, beaten, or murdered for getting uppity. And by the way, women in Islamic countries can’t get abortions either.
The really important point Lewis makes is that in the transition to a free society, elections should be last in order.
Others have made this point as well. Thomas Sowell has said the rule of law must be established before elections take place. Milton Friedman used to point out that Hong Kong as a Crown Colony was free, but definitely not a democracy.
And any anthropologist should be able to tell you that if you have a state composed of tribal/ethnic groups, the state is going to become the possession of the largest, if it has a majority, or the largest coalition of tribes with a common interest. In this case, if the state is a major distributor of wealth (such as oil revenues,) the permanent minority may see no other alternative than violence to seize the state or secede from it. The rule of law must be established to prevent a newly established government from reverting to feudalism, the default state of civilization, or chaos.
Yet I think there is something beyond the first free and fair elections, a point at which everybody stops holding their breath and dares to hope freedom may have gained a sure foothold in their country. I saw this in Poland in the first years after the fall of communism or it might never have occurred to me.
It’s not the first free and fair election that matters. It’s the first election in which the party in power loses and steps down of their own free will, reasonably confident they will not be prosecuted – or executed.
I think that’s why we in America are so reluctant to begin criminal prosecutions against officials of past administrations, even in the face of some pretty obvious criminality.
Everybody can think of their own examples. I’m among those who would like to see Janet Reno, and very possibly Hillary Clinton, face charges, and I mean capital charges, for the murder of those harmless religious lunatics in Waco, Texas.
But the trouble is, different people have different views about who should be prosecuted for what. For example, soon after Obama took office there was some loose talk about prosecuting certain people for renditions and such – before the usefulness of renditions was discovered by the administration.
Perhaps it’s best not to open that can of worms, even if we have to grit our teeth and let some pretty flagrant injustices pass unavenged.
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