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Scholars Meet In Virginia To Discuss Islam, Democracy, Political Violence
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Dr. Ali Mazrui, Chair of the Center for Studies in Islam and Democracy. |
by Ayesha Ahmad, IOL Washington Correspondent
ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 (IslamOnline) – Scholars of Islam and social and political sciences from around the world met this weekend for the third annual conference of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) to discuss the situation of the Muslim world with regards to politics, religion, violence and the relationship with the West.
The Washington-based CSID, a non-profit (501-c-3) research organization with membership among Muslims and non-Muslims interested in the relationship between Islam and democracy, was established in 1999; this conference, bearing the theme, “Democratization and Political Violence in Muslims Societies,” took a new look at relevant issues in the post-September 11 context.
“We are… inviting the best minds of the Muslim world,” said CSID executive director Radwan Masmoudi, while introducing the lunch banquet’s keynote speaker, Dr. Tariq Ramadan, a well-known scholar based in Geneva.
Speakers represented about 10 different countries, he said, including Canada, Nigeria, Turkey, Germany, France and the U.K, as well as several universities and cities around the country.
The central thrust of many of the lectures seemed to focus on what the Muslim world needed to do; both to develop its own societies and to reduce the political violence that has so damaged its reputation.
Two lecturers in the first panel on Saturday, for instance, used the example of the four caliphs who succeeded the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in leadership of the Muslims at the inception of Islam to prove that democratic methods of succession and governance were necessary for the Muslim world and in line with Islamic teachings.
“Muslims should indeed make a habit of studying their history” to reenact the principles of Islamic governance, said Asma Afsaruddin from the University of Notre Dame, explaining that the four “Rightly-Guided Caliphs” sought to win the people by the example of moral excellence and did not impose their wills upon their followers.
“The historical record clearly belies the assertions” of those who say Islam and democracy are incompatible, she said.
Another speaker, Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad – director of the Minaret of Freedom Institute and a professor at the University of Maryland – described how an “anti-correlation” between democratic governance and political violence at the time of the same four Caliphs suggested the necessity of democratic methods in Islamic governance.
Some panelists dealt with the problems of the imposition of Western secular democracy on the Muslim world.
Dr. Savas Barkcin, from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, described to listeners the divergence between what Western governments proclaim as liberal democracy and what they actually support in Muslim countries which have only a semblance of democracy – “they usually escape with a face-lift,” he said.
Western governments support what he called a “messianic liberalism… the primacy of power politics rather than democratic ideals at work.”
Mohamed Mestiri, from the Center for Civilization Studies in Paris, suggested that the Muslim world needed to adapt a form of democracy to its own nature and become a democratic world partner without needing to be exactly the same as Western societies.
“The universal value of democracy belongs to the whole of humanity, but we are speaking of different… expressions,” he said, explaining that Western democracy was conceived on the basis of absolute individual freedom and secularism.
But “the way of imposing the unique liberal model of democracy is the main [cause] of political violence,” he said, which rejects a system “that couldn’t be exactly adapted to an Islamic world.”
“We need to think deeply about… how we can base unity on diversity,” he said, rejecting the priority of economic power in the current mode of globalization in favor of democracies based on human rights.
Fred Dallmayr, also from Notre Dame, talked about how the Islamic world could become “a politically responsible member of the world community” in light of lessons learned after September 11.
“Certainly there are ways of reconciling the Islamic religion with democracy… it’s a matter of developing them on the ground,” he said.
Dallmayr suggested that the Muslims world would have to look at its own version of secularism, explaining after audience members questioned this that he did not mean total separation of the state from religion, but simply a country where “the clergy is not in control of political power.”
Saturday’s luncheon speaker, Dr. Tariq Ramadan, spoke about the need for Muslims to separate themselves from the definitions imposed on them by others, while at the same time being more honest and frank with each other and with their neighbors – erasing the “double language” that divides how they speak among themselves from how they speak to non-Muslims.
“We have to promote a critical discourse about violence,” Ramadan said, explaining that Muslims needed to think critically themselves about the words being used in association with Islam, such as violence and terrorism, which are imposed by the dominant civilization, of which Muslims are also a part.
The keynote speakers at the dinner banquet on Saturday night included CSID chairman Professor Ali Mazrui of Binghamton University, Laith Kubba of the National Endowment for Democracy, and Professor Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn Khaldun Chair and Professor at American University in Washington.
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