Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (12 page)

The Muslim states have used numerous amendments and reservations to the charter and its conventions to plug up the cracks that might have allowed citizens to breathe a bit of freedom or gain some small experience of equality. An Arab woman can only laugh at the amendments of the Egyptian Republic to Article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (December 8, 1979), signed by the pharaonic diplomats on July 16, 1980. Listen to the double-talk that these venerable officials presented as a “reservation,” and you will understand why the United Nations is seen by the masses as a charade:

What do we understand from reading the text of this reservation? Not much, since the equality ensured in Article 16 in no way “prejudices” the
shari
^c
a
if that is interpreted to guarantee a “just balance.” It is precisely this lack of clarity which characterizes the modern Arab state and which has led to confusion and the fundamentalist violence that we know today.

In fact the text reveals the symptoms or the grave malady the Arab states suffer from, which they hush up as shameful: their visceral rejection of the principle of equality. But they can’t admit this at the diplomatic level without being condemned as primitive and savage. On the other hand, stating that the
shari
^c
a
does not promote equality would risk having to make a choice between it and the charter and calling the principles of the United Nations into question. Only the delegates of those nations that have signed the conventions declaring equality and freedom to be the bases of their political system can be seated in the United Nations. So where is the loophole that permits an Arab state with its “reservations” and “amendments” to produce two miracles: to be seated in the United Nations as a signatory of all the conventions, while its officials manipulate the texts to make restrictive interpretations of principles that don’t admit of restriction—equality and freedom?

This reveals the role that religion plays in the subtle drama that our heads of state stage: they must present a modern face at the United Nations in New York, and the face of an Abbasid caliph to terrorize us at home. The “amendments” and “reservations” will multiply to camouflage all the legal texts that come into conflict with
ta
^c
a
and affirm the right to
ra
y.
²
For the Arab countries the United Nations, with its charter and its conventions, is an arena for manipulation and hypocrisy.
³
This opinion was only reinforced, alas, by the Gulf War, in which the noble principles of the charter and the lofty ideal of universality and responsibility acted to legitimize the use of force. But the fact is that the Arab states have not been using their media and educational networks to inform and educate their citizens about the revolutionary content of the charter, which they condemn to a semiclandestine existence.

The principles of the charter will never take root in modern Arab consciousness. Today the opposition leaders, who preach their discontent in terms of sacred concepts like
zulm
(injustice) and
^c
adala
(justice) and attract to the mosques youths worried by the specter of unemployment, with reason brand democracy and the charter as foreign. Most of them have never had a chance to hear anyone explain on the radio or television the universal application of that new law from San Francisco.

Religious programs produced by imam-officials and American films filled the Arab radios and television screens during the 1980s, years that saw the Islamic challenge intensify.
⁴
In 1987 almost a fifth, 18.6 percent, of the radio programs in Egypt were devoted to religious programs, and only 14.7 percent were cultural programs out of a total of 56,455 broadcasting hours a year. Israel, where religion plays a central role in society, devotes only 0.8 percent of its 34,281 broadcasting hours a year to religion, and 8.9 percent of broadcasting time was given to cultural programs during the same period. In socialist Algeria in 1985 the radio time accorded to religious programs (1,434 hours) was almost double that given to cultural programs (867 hours). The remainder of the 19,981 annual radio hours was devoted to sports and entertainment. But it is Saudi Arabia that apparently has the greatest fear for the faith of its citizens; 30 percent of its radio programs (a total of 36,865 hours) are devoted to religion. Even Catholic Italy, which has the honor of protecting the pope’s infallibility in the sumptuous Vatican, does not accord so many hours to religious programs, but rather devotes 37 percent of its programs to culture.

Never have we in the Arab states, even in the programs called educational by UNESCO statisticians, been exposed to long dissertations on the United Nations Charter, that superlaw that we are told threatens our cultural integrity. Television might have been an ideal instrument for explaining exactly how we are being threatened. Arab leaders could not say that the United Nations Charter was banned from Arab television because it was foreign. Our very Arab television gives us Hollywood films (although they tend to be films that don’t cost much, like silent movies and films from Hollywood’s classic era).

The greatest consumers of American films are the oil states. Although Egypt has its own film industry, it imports 38.7 percent of its films from the United States. According to UNESCO, socialist Algeria imports 60 percent of its films from the West. But when we look at the figures more closely, we see that the West that fascinates the Algerian decision makers doesn’t emanate from Russia. It is the United States that dominates the imagination of the average Algerian, since a third of the imported films were American. Even Arab leaders who opt for the “defunct socialist way” don’t allow too much talk about socialist principles, because people might stumble onto little anomalies like the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the place of honor that should be given to the avant-garde. A study of Arab socialism as it is broadcast and televised has yet to be done. It might give us a needed good laugh.

I think that in Iraq and Syria, other Arab countries that opted for socialist-style modernity, the officials who regulate television had no trouble disguising Papa Marx as a despotic caliph. Turning Marx into a monster was not an arduous task in Damascus (the former Umayyad capital) or Baghdad (the Abbasid capital). From the moment that the key concept of “dictatorship” was given a sacred hue and made honorable, even if it was a dictatorship of the proletariat, the memory of the caliphs could be renewed and find new life. In the 1980s Amnesty International reports listed several Arab socialist countries as sites of torture and killing.
⁵
The Arab avant-garde was carefully muzzled and its rowdiest members sent off, willingly or unwillingly, to London and Paris.
⁶
As for the “proletariat,” which might have raised the ancient Kharijite specter in the shantytown powder kegs full of partially employed youths who never succeeded in entering the modern sector that socialism extolled, it made only brief appearances on television, sandwiched between football games and religious programs.

We had to wait for the launching of private associations at the end of the 1980s to see human rights come into the streets of the Arab capitals and to begin to see translations of and commentaries on international charters and agreements circulate in Arabic for a few dirhams. The literate masses pounced on these brochures to read about what
hurriyyat al-rc
y
(freedom of opinion) meant and about how the United Nations Charter could protect them against torture.
⁷
It was only through the efforts of intellectuals of the Left and university students, agitating for rights of the individual, that bulky translations of Amnesty International documents began to circulate in Arabic. These groups were also instrumental in seeing that whole passages from these documents were printed in the leftist press when leaders came out of prison or succeeded in resuming activity after being tried and fined.

When one hears Andre Glucksmann, one of the intellectuals who influence Western opinion, reduce Muslim fundamentalism to the people’s lack of understanding of “the difficulties of the modern state” and to their desire to “[smash] that provocative Western window that is Israel,” one is sorry to have to say that Glucksmann’s ignorance of “the Muslims” exceeds the ignorance he attributes to them. His is the arrogant conviction that he alone has the truth, and the other is afflicted with an atavistic inability to understand. Moreover, his saying that fundamentalism “can be destroyed only from within” is to claim that the people meekly submit to fundamentalist authoritarianism without a struggle, while exonerating himself as a Westerner from his responsibility in the matter.
⁸
The Muslim masses battle every day against intolerance and authoritarianism. Glucksmann’s remarks are also a way of saying that we make no effort to be informed, although to be sure the Amnesty International reports are very short, allotting two or three pages to each country. Just leaf through the report for 1989. On page 282 it says that in Iraq torture is frequently inflicted on political prisoners, the “disappearance” of a large number of persons has been reported, and hundreds of executions have taken place. Turn to page 274. There the report notes the arrest of presumed opponents of the monarchy in Saudi Arabia in 1988, especially in the Eastern Province, as well as of pilgrims participating in the hajj, the Muslims’ annual pilgrimage. At least twenty-six death sentences were followed by execution, and punishment by amputation was applied.

Saying that the masses do not struggle blurs the picture by simplifying a complex reality. At the very least it is necessary when the word “fundamentalism” is thrown around to distinguish between two types: government fundamentalism, the official culture that serves as a barrier against democratic education, and opposition fundamentalism. Above all it is essential to avoid putting all Muslims in the same bag, thus denying the existence of the social distinctions that are found when Europeans are spoken of: governing class, intellectuals, and masses. Each of these groups has its own interests and expresses them in a loaded political situation that forces it to decide between two equally dangerous, disabling choices: belief versus atheism, and obedience versus freedom.

The cultural void created by the nonuse of the government mass media to explain the charter and the international agreements, combined with massive doses of religious programming and faking of the parliamentary game and manipulation of the vote, have plunged the Arab masses into a state of confusion and intolerance. Let us look at the unfortunate result when the title “president of the republic” is translated into the Arabic language.

“IMAMIZATION” OF THE PRESIDENCY:
RA
IS AL-JUMHURIYYA