Middle East's Struggle for Democracy: Going Beyond Headlines

Alp Aslandogan

The ongoing struggle in the Middle East is not between the so-called Islamists and secularists. It's not pro-Morsi vs. pro-military in Egypt, or even Assad vs. opposition in Syria. The real struggle is between those committed to the core values of democracy and human rights and those who want to maintain a status quo of authoritarianism and domination.

---

Western observers often place Middle East actors and their motives into well-intentioned but partially inaccurate or sometimes misleading categories. For example, the three major groups in Iraq are labeled as Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. The first two are religious categories, while the third is ethnic. The majority of Kurds are Sunni, and the majority of Iraqi Shiites are ethnically Arabs. So the right, albeit inconvenient, categories would be Sunni-Kurds, Sunni-Arabs and Shiite-Arabs.

These categories would be trivial details if it weren't for the fact that Middle Eastern realities of these labels do not always overlap with established western understanding. For instance, those in the Middle East who call themselves "secularists" would be perceived in the west as the "good guys" who believe in democracy and separation of church and state.

But Turkey's historic self-proclaimed "secularists" in practice were anything but secular or democratic. As Edhem Eldem, Professor of History at Istanbul's prestigious Bogazici University observed, Turkish "secularism" often "marginalized and oppressed those who openly displayed their beliefs; head-scarf-wearing women were banned from universities, and few protections were given to religious minorities." The government ran every single mosque and prescribed the preachers' sermons. Turkey's self-proclaimed secularists were also aggressive nationalists, who denied millions of Kurdish citizens their cultural rights, including the right to speak their mother tongue. Those who did not embrace the official government ideology were sometimes beaten and jailed.

Counter-intuitive to a western audience, on the other side were participants of the Hizmet social movement, originated by Turkey's most influential preacher and social advocate, Fethullah Gulen, who advocated for democracy, equal opportunity and social justice, and defended religious rights of all faiths in Turkey, including Orthodox Christians and Jews. Gulen's sympathizers started free tutoring centers in Turkey's Southeast, serving tens of thousands of children from low-income families, often of Kurdish descent, helping protect them from recruitment by terrorist organizations operating around Turkey's borders.

In 2008, when the Turkish judiciary prosecuted military officials charged with planning or perpetrating military coups, western media called it a struggle between Islamists and Seculars. In reality, as correctly observed by Dr. John Esposito of Georgetown University, it was a struggle between pro-democracy groups and those military officers who were found guilty of some of the worst crimes against their fellow citizens. Kurdish citizens, many of who saw their loved ones disappear under military-dominated periods, celebrated this development alongside journalists who were intimidated or fired from their jobs during the same periods.

Last month, when Hizmet representatives criticized the government-proposed legislation that calls for banning exam prep schools, Turkish and Western journalists labeled this opposition as a feud between Prime Minister Erdogan and Mr. Gulen because roughly 15-25 percent of these prep schools were founded by Hizmet participants according to variousestimates.

But that is an oversimplification because this underlying struggle is between democracy and free enterprise on the one hand against government overreach and authoritarianism on the other. If enacted, this legislation would make Turkey the only country in the world to ban a whole category of legitimate private enterprise -- and that too, one that provides math, science and language arts training to children of low-income families who cannot afford private tutoring.

It is ironic that the Turkish ruling party (AKP) that fought against government overreach during their first term 2003-2007 has, since then, taken steps that completely contradict its earlier record. From recent discourse on regulating student homes and government's heavy-handed reaction to Gezi Park protests, to restrictions on freedom of the press, Turkey is rekindling its historic struggle between those committed to democracy and those who benefit from authoritarianism and dominance.

Turkey is often cited as an example for struggling Middle East countries such as Egypt and Tunisia; after all, Turkey experienced a similar transition 60 years ago. But as the Turkish experience shows, democracy is a messy process with a steep learning curve. It sometimes can seem like too much to ask of both governments and the governed to have patience to learn the difference between legitimate democratic opposition and rebellion; enforcement and oppression. Nevertheless, abandoning the path to democracy is not an option.

What was termed an Arab spring is actually a beginning of the fall of authoritarian regimes that will hopefully lead to a spring of democracy. But let's be prepared that spring will come only after a harsh winter of authoritarian establishments resisting democratizing reforms. What is clear is that people in the Middle East yearn for their freedoms, and we hope that their struggle leads them toward democracy and away from the yoke of domination. For outside observers, understanding this struggle requires going beyond the convenient labels of the news headlines.

Dr. Aslandogan is the President of the Alliance for Shared Values, a non-profit that represents interfaith dialogue organizations affiliated with Hizmet in the U.S.

Source: Huffington Post

Read more »

Islam is not the real issue we are facing in Africa

Eliza Griswold

Christians and Muslims have co-existed here for centuries. Corruption and climate change are much more pressing problems

Stretching from west to east across Africa – from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea – the Sahel today is a militant's dream. Despite the French military's recent routing of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and its allies in northern Mali, the threat of safe haven for the west's enemies is not going to end there any time soon.

Although, for the moment, the militia have melted from sight, the latest battles in Algeria and Mali are harbingers of a larger catastrophe: the Sahel, the vast grassland north of the equator, has become the latest battleground in the west's war against Islamist militants.

Read more »

Islam and Science: The road to renewal

After centuries of stagnation, science is making a comeback in the Islamic world.

The sleep has been long and deep. In 2005 Harvard University produced more scientific papers than 17 Arabic-speaking countries combined. The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims have produced only two Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics. Both moved to the West: the only living one, the chemist Ahmed Hassan Zewail, is at the California Institute of Technology. By contrast Jews, outnumbered 100 to one by Muslims, have won 79. The 57 countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference spend a puny 0.81% of GDP on research and development, about a third of the world average. America, which has the world’s biggest science budget, spends 2.9%; Israel lavishes 4.4%.

Many blame Islam’s supposed innate hostility to science. Some universities seem keener on prayer than study. Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, for example, has three mosques on campus, with a fourth planned, but no bookshop. Rote learning rather than critical thinking is the hallmark of higher education in many countries. The Saudi government supports books for Islamic schools such as “The Unchallengeable Miracles of the Qur’an: The Facts That Can’t Be Denied By Science” suggesting an inherent conflict between belief and reason.

Many universities are timid about courses that touch even tangentially on politics or look at religion from a non-devotional standpoint. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a renowned Pakistani nuclear scientist, introduced a course on science and world affairs, including Islam’s relationship with science, at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s most progressive universities. Students were keen, but Mr Hoodbhoy’s contract was not renewed when it ran out in December; for no proper reason, he says. (The university insists that the decision had nothing to do with the course content.)

But look more closely and two things are clear. A Muslim scientific awakening is under way. And the roots of scientific backwardness lie not with religious leaders, but with secular rulers, who are as stingy with cash as they are lavish with controls over independent thought.

The long view

The caricature of Islam’s endemic backwardness is easily dispelled. Between the eighth and the 13th centuries, while Europe stumbled through the dark ages, science thrived in Muslim lands. The Abbasid caliphs showered money on learning. The 11th century “Canon of Medicine” by Avicenna (pictured, with modern equipment he would have relished) was a standard medical text in Europe for hundreds of years. In the ninth century Muhammad al-Khwarizmi laid down the principles of algebra, a word derived from the name of his book, “Kitab al-Jabr”. Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham transformed the study of light and optics. Abu Raihan al-Biruni, a Persian, calculated the earth’s circumference to within 1%. And Muslim scholars did much to preserve the intellectual heritage of ancient Greece; centuries later it helped spark Europe’s scientific revolution.

Not only were science and Islam compatible, but religion could even spur scientific innovation. Accurately calculating the beginning of Ramadan (determined by the sighting of the new moon) motivated astronomers. The Hadith (the sayings of Muhammad) exhort believers to seek knowledge, “even as far as China”.

These scholars’ achievements are increasingly celebrated. Tens of thousands flocked to “1001 Inventions”, a touring exhibition about the golden age of Islamic science, in the Qatari capital, Doha, in the autumn. More importantly, however, rulers are realising the economic value of scientific research and have started to splurge accordingly. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened in 2009, has a $20 billion endowment that even rich American universities would envy.

Foreigners are already on their way there. Jean Fréchet, who heads research, is a French chemist tipped to win a Nobel prize. The Saudi newcomer boasts research collaborations with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and with Imperial College, London. The rulers of neighbouring Qatar are bumping up research spending from 0.8% to a planned 2.8% of GDP: depending on growth, that could reach $5 billion a year. Research spending in Turkey increased by over 10% each year between 2005 and 2010, by which year its cash outlays were twice Norway’s.

The tide of money is bearing a fleet of results. In the 2000 to 2009 period Turkey’s output of scientific papers rose from barely 5,000 to 22,000; with less cash, Iran’s went up 1,300, to nearly 15,000. Quantity does not imply quality, but the papers are getting better, too. Scientific journals, and not just the few based in the Islamic world, are citing these papers more frequently. A study in 2011 by Thomson Reuters, an information firm, shows that in the early 1990s other publishers cited scientific papers from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (the most prolific Muslim countries) four times less often than the global average. By 2009 it was only half as often. In the category of best-regarded mathematics papers, Iran now performs well above average, with 1.7% of its papers among the most-cited 1%, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia also doing well. Turkey scores highly on engineering.

Science and technology-related subjects, with their clear practical benefits, do best. Engineering dominates, with agricultural sciences not far behind. Medicine and chemistry are also popular. Value for money matters. Fazeel Mehmood Khan, who recently returned to Pakistan after doing a PhD in Germany on astrophysics and now works at the Government College University in Lahore, was told by his university’s vice-chancellor to stop chasing wild ideas (black holes, in his case) and do something useful.

Science is even crossing the region’s deepest divide. In 2000 SESAME, an international physics laboratory with the Middle East’s first particle accelerator, was set up in Jordan. It is modelled on CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory, which was created to bring together scientists from wartime foes. At SESAME Israeli boffins work with colleagues from places such as Iran and the Palestinian territories.

By the book

Science of the kind practised at SESAME throws up few challenges to Muslim doctrine (and in many cases is so abstruse that religious censors would struggle to understand it). But biology—especially with an evolutionary angle—is different. Many Muslims are troubled by the notion that humans share a common ancestor with apes. Research published in 2008 by Salman Hameed of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, a Pakistani astronomer who now studies Muslim attitudes to science, found that fewer than 20% in Indonesia, Malaysia or Pakistan believed in Darwin’s theories. In Egypt it was just 8%.

Yasir Qadhi, an American chemical engineer turned cleric (who has studied in both the United States and Saudi Arabia), wrestled with this issue at a London conference on Islam and evolution this month. He had no objection to applying evolutionary theory to other lifeforms. But he insisted that Adam and Eve did not have parents and did not evolve from other species. Any alternative argument is “scripturally indefensible,” he said. Some, especially in the diaspora, conflate human evolution with atheism: rejecting it becomes a defining part of being a Muslim. (Some Christians take a similar approach to the Bible.)

Though such disbelief may be couched in religious terms, culture and politics play a bigger role, says Mr Hameed. Poor school education in many countries leaves minds open to misapprehension. A growing Islamic creationist movement is at work too. A controversial Turkish preacher who goes by the name of Harun Yahya is in the forefront. His website spews pamphlets and books decrying Darwin. Unlike his American counterparts, however, he concedes that the universe is billions of years old (not 6,000 years).

But the barrier is not insuperable. Plenty of Muslim biologists have managed to reconcile their faith and their work. Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist who converted to Islam, quotes Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of genetics, saying that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Science describes how things change; Islam, in a larger sense, explains why, she says.

Others take a similar line. “The Koran is not a science textbook,” says Rana Dajani, a Jordanian molecular biologist. “It provides people with guidelines as to how they should live their lives.” Interpretations of it, she argues, can evolve with new scientific discoveries. Koranic verses about the creation of man, for example, can now be read as providing support for evolution.

Other parts of the life sciences, often tricky for Christians, have proved unproblematic for Muslims. In America researchers wanting to use embryonic stem cells (which, as their name suggests, must be taken from human embryos, usually spares left over from fertility treatments) have had to battle pro-life Christian conservatives and a federal ban on funding for their field. But according to Islam, the soul does not enter the fetus until between 40 and 120 days after conception—so scientists at the Royan Institute in Iran are able to carry out stem-cell research without attracting censure.

But the kind of freedom that science demands is still rare in the Muslim world. With the rise of political Islam, including dogmatic Salafists who espouse a radical version of Islam, in such important countries as Egypt, some fear that it could be eroded further still. Others, however, remain hopeful. Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s president, is a former professor of engineering at Zagazig University, near Cairo. He has a PhD in materials science from the University of Southern California (his dissertation was entitled “High-Temperature Electrical Conductivity and Defect Structure of Donor-Doped Al2O{-3}”). He has promised that his government will spend more on research.

Released from the restrictive control of the former regimes, scientists in Arab countries see a chance for progress. Scientists in Tunisia say they are already seeing promising reforms in the way university posts are filled. People are being elected, rather than appointed by the regime. The political storms shaking the Middle East could promote not only democracy, but revive scientific freethinking, too.

Source: The Economist, From the print edition: International

Read more »

Designing geometric designs

Niki Gamm

CNN International had an item this week on the use of Arabic geometric design incorporated into architectural designs in order to fancy up buildings in the United Arab Emirates. The designs were taken from traditional lattice work windows that allowed defuse light inside and kept windows cool without having to resort to air conditioning. Geometric design has been a part of Arabic art as far back as anyone can trace it and certainly its use proliferated in the century following the proclamation of Islam. Although few artifacts remain in the Arabian Peninsula prior to Islam, there is no reason to think that geometric design immediately appeared there after 622 AD.

Read more »

Freedom as the highest value in Islam

Şahin Alpay

I was extremely happy to visit, during most of the past week, Tunisia, the cradle one may say of the recent Arab revolutions against autocratic regimes. The occasion was the invitation to the symposium on “Religion and State in the Arab World” jointly organized by Centre for Arab Unity Studies based in Beirut and Swedish Institute, Alexandria, to present a paper on Turkey’s experience. The symposium took place between October 15 – 17 at the coastal city of Hammamet, and was attended by distinguished academics, journalists and some politicians from all over the Arab world. It provided a great opportunity for me to gain insight into Arab affairs in the post – Arab Awakenings era.

Read more »

The quest for Muslim liberalism: An Egyptian’s journey from ultraconservatism to liberalism

Ahmed M. Abou Hussein *

An Egyptian man waves the national flag 

next to a graffiti on a newly whitewashed wall

 in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday, Sept. 21. 

(PHOTO ap, Nasser Nasser)

I come from a typical Egyptian family that did not emphasize religious teachings as much as it did morals in general. Stealing, lying and cheating are bad traits because they are immoral, not because they are forbidden.

My relationship with Islam was very opaque until the age of 15, when a friend of ours started attending religious seminars and listening to Islamic recordings by state-banned sheikhs. I started to indulge myself in conservative Islamic teachings so fast that, as I remember, in the first few months of being a practicing Muslim, I read dozens of Islamic books and booklets (printed in the Gulf), listened to multiple recordings and attended dozens of Islamic seminars. The excitement of getting to know my religion and doing something against the state was quite gratifying, yet not fulfilling. Soon and at the age of 16, I stopped talking to girls or shaking their hands, listening to music, watching television or going to the movies. My family had some objections, but the more they objected, the more stubborn I became.

Read more »

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim case for liberty

Şahin Alpay

“Is Islam a religion of coercion and repression? Or is it compatible with the idea of liberty -- that individuals have full control over their lives and are free to be religious, irreligious or whatever they wish to be?

There are many good reasons to ask these questions. Islamic societies in the contemporary world are really not beacons of freedom… Not a single Muslim-majority country today can be defined as ‘fully free’…”

The above questions and assessments are the starting point of a new book by Mustafa Akyol, a young Turkish journalist who has recently distinguished himself for dealing with questions that are truly worth asking. It can be said that Akyol’s book, “Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case For Liberty” (Norton, 2011), primarily addresses the widespread prejudices in Western societies about Islam -- though neither prejudices about Islam nor those who need to learn more about it are confined to the Western world.

Read more »

Democracy May be Rejected by Religions, but Not by Believers

Reza Aslan *

The question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy is nonsensical at its core, first because it ignores basic empirical evidence (the five most populous Muslim countries in the world are all democracies) and second because it presumes that Islam is somehow different, unique or special -- that unlike every other religion in the history of the world, Islam alone is unaffected by history, culture or context.

Anyone who would answer “no, Islam is not compatible with democracy” does not even deserve a response; this is merely recycling the same old tired and disproven stereotypes about Islam that are frankly starting to get boring.

Read more »

Violence is not in the Tradition of the Prophet

M. Fethullah Gülen *

Muslims pray each day: “O Lord! Keep us on the straight path.” It is a prayer to help us move away from the extremes and maintain balance in our lives. We must neither be hostage to our reactionary instincts, nor must we remain completely silent in the face of the systematic defamation of our values and beliefs. This balance has been upset by the violent response to the insults targeting the legacy of beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The violent response was wrong and strayed from the straight path.

Read more »

John L. Esposito: Islamophobia is symptom of broader problem

Moinuddin Ahmed

Living in a globalized world poses a great challenge for theologians and scholars as they try to develop an understanding of how people belonging to different religions and faiths can coexist.

However, we are living in a time where stereotyping a particular community has become a common practice and hampers the functioning of pluralistic societies.

Read more »

Time for Muslim anger management

Mustafa Akyol

Welcome to yet another clash between Muslim notions of sacredness and Western attempts to defy them: A vulgar anti-Islamic film called “The Innocence of Muslims,” which was apparently produced by a group of anti-Islamic Americans, has sparked a wave of violent anti-American protests in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In Benghazi, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his team members were tragically killed. Fears are that the protests might lead to violence against other American targets in the Muslim Middle East and perhaps beyond.

Read more »

My Summer in Turkey

Despite her various concerns, Kassandra Fotiadis, a high school junior in New Jersey took a bold step and decided to spend her summer in Turkey. Here, she shares how this life-changing experience let to a broader/better understanding of the country, its people, culture and religion:

Read more »

'Sikhs are not Muslims' sends a sinister message

Such declarations by the news media and others has an insidious subtext: that there's something wrong with being a Muslim in America.

Scott C. Alexander *

Almost from the beginning of their coverage of the horrific and deadly shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, CNN and other news media went out of their way to send a message to the American public: "Sikhs are not Muslims."

But what were we to make of that message? If the temple's members had been Muslims, would the attack have then been justified?

Read more »

Book Review: Islam and Peacebuilding

Stanley Ridge*

Fethullah Gülen's work and thinking starts and ends in faith. In a world that commonly extends conflict by speaking of religion either in stereotyped or in ideologized terms, this is a refreshingly engaged perspective.

Faced with the challenge of mounting hostility between the Islamic world and the West, and with belligerent and increasingly fundamentalist groups on both sides supposedly speaking in the name of religion, the need for peacebuilding with integrity is pressing. The writers of different traditions whose essays resonate here explore the faith-based ideas of one of this century's seminal thinkers and tease out their implications and potential for peacebuilding.

Read more »

“The problem is not political Islam but authoritarian Islam," says Mustafa Akyol

Mustafa Akyol (Photo: Today's Zaman)

Speaking to the Washington Times’ Luke Montgomery, columnist Mustafa Akyol said:

In Islamic history, we have a tradition of pluralism. At times, pluralism was attacked and those were bad times for Islamic civilization, so I think we need to have more pluralism. In order to have that, you need neutral states without an official doctrine. I’m not advocating a strong separation between religion and politics, but I’m an advocate of the secular state in the sense that it is neutral towards different religious communities. In other words, the problem is not political Islam but authoritarian Islam.

Read more »

An Open Letter to Violent Muslim Protestors from Imam Antepli

On February 28th, 2012 Imam Abdullah Antepli wrote an open letter to his fellow Muslims. The letter was published in the Huffington Post. The Imam’s letter addresses the violent protestors in Afghanistan reacting to the NATO Qur'an burning scandal.

Read more »

Gülen Movement, emphasis on service, and reaching out

Dr. John Esposito speaks to Pacifica Institute

At a fundraiser sponsored by the Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) on Wednesday February 15th, Dr. John Esposito, one of America’s leading experts on Islam, was invited to give a talk about the future of Islam in the 21st century.

After a brief introduction of Dr. Esposito by the president of MPV, Ani Zonneveld, the event was started with a 30-minute lecture followed by a Q&A session moderated by KPCC’s Shirley Jahad.

Dr. Esposito started off by giving a brief history of the turbulent relationship the West has had with Islam and its origins.

Read more »