The AP reported yesterday that Egypt’s new president Mohammed Morsi gave a very strong speech at the UN dedicating himself and his country to the end of the Syrian dictatorship. The first leader elected by the Muslim Brotherhood in an open election called on all nations to join an effort to stop the bloodshed that began about 18 months ago when opposition figures rose up against President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Pres. Morsi is very worth watching! Reza Aslan, in his wonderful book “No God but God” describes the Brotherhood as an attempt by Muslims to invent their own form of democracy. Aslan relates a history of the Brotherhood a trying to replace Nasser, Mubarack, and the other Arab Kings and dictators with a form of Islamic democracy.
The idea of an Islamic form of democracy grows out of of the Koran’s image of the Prophet Mohammed as the judge or leader of the oasis called Yathrib. Prior to the coming of Mohammed, the population of Yathrib included Jewish tribes as well as non-Jewish Arabs. After being driven out of of Mecca, the Prophet fled to Yathrib where both Jews and non-Jews accepted him as their judge because Mohammed had a reputation for being a wise man.
While this potentially idyllic situation broke down when the Jews refused to join Mohammed’s army, the memory of the simple form of government has permeated Islam. Ayatollah Khomeini based his design all the Islamic Republic of Iran on a modernized concept of the Constitution of Medina.
I think a major problem for most of us may be believing that there is an alternative, Islamic form for democracy. I suggest that a place to look for what Islamic democracy might be is at the efforts by european Christians to create “Christian Democratic” parties. By and large such efforts seem to have been subsumed in Europe by a much more secular point of view. The Janata party of India, a Hindu fundamentalist party, also seems to have evolved in a more secular direction.
In a number of other countries, including Israel, fundamentalist Democratic parties exist but only represent a minority of the population. As a Jew, I find it very unpleasant to imagine an Israel governed by one of the current religious parties.
The Romney Ryan Radical Republic party, with its strong support from Christian fundamentalists, may give us some idea of what an Islamic democracy would look like.