| Joelcool7 said: The whole Middle East will continue to be ruled by theocracy. Shari'a law will be imposed more and more while Conservative groups limit the rights of citizens. Women's rights are on their way out the door religious freedom is going to be almost nonexistent. Freedoms will rapidly continue to dissapear. I suspect that Tunisia is also headed in that direction though at a slower rate. Any democratic movement that has a faith at its center. Cannot be a free country. Shari'a cannot be at the center of any countries constitution it simply cannot if the country is to be democratic. I am guessing that the entire middle east is lost without foreign presence being maintained. The religious Conservatives have to much power and the people impoverished and largely uneducated. It is next to impossible to have western democracy in the middle east without a Government that rules pretty harsh. Israel only survives as a valid democracy by imposing democratic values with force. No country that puts any religion above its democratic rights and its constitution cannot be free. This includes atheism a country needs to enshrine freedom of belief and speech etc..etc.. in the constitution and make that constitution unconditional. Assad is horrible and so was Saddam but they did shelter some minorities like Christians and Jews. But when we put democracy in the hands of people who have never had democracy before it takes a while to adjust. Western forces should remain in all developing democracies for 20 or so years. Democratic values need to be imposed until the country adjusts. No democracies just were born all of them took decades and massive military action. The only other way was a dictator bringing in democracy themselves voluntarily and ensuring the transition occurred peacefully but even then it takes ten to twenty years to fully transition. |
The key is development. You don't necessarily need to pull religion down off a pedestal, but you do need an electorate that is willing to think and act on its own (e.g. you can be a voting Muslim without being a puppet of the Mullahs, Imams, or Ayatollahs, just like how many Americans and Europeans are voting Catholics without being puppets of the Popes or Bishops).
Early democracies always have a swing to the Right or the Left (usually the former) that sometimes undermine the democracy, as its either run by poor people who only have revenge on the rich on their minds, or run by peasants who will vote for whoever their Lord or their Priest tells them to. France from between the French Revolution and the Third Republic was constantly plagued by these problems
Essentially democratic values of some sort need to be imposed before you allow a democracy to come into being. Late-era Eastern Europe, for instance, had a well-educated electorate that had been detached from the bonds of religion, were poor in terms of consumer goods but were well-off enough to be able to politically participate, and had already been politically organized by the State. Dictatorships often inadvertantly install all the fundamentals for a good democracy by trying to improve the country.
If the dictatorship falls prematurely, however, then you have chaos that will end up in a swing to the Left or the Right. This is what you see in much of the Middle East currently. The main problem being that the better-organized foes of the regime are often radical Muslim groups, rather than citizens' groups that represent the needs of the society broadly.
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
