Bernard Lewis, Middle East scholar and professor emeritus of history at Princeton, has a thoughtful essay in today's OpinionJournal on the challenge of implanting and nurturing freedom in the Islamic world. Excerpts:
The attempt to bring freedom to the Middle East evokes two fears: one in the U.S. and still more in Europe, that it will fail; and the other, among many of the present rulers of the region, that it will succeed.Posted by Alan at December 28, 2003 11:36 AMCertainly, policies of political liberalization in Afghanistan and in Iraq offer a mortal threat to regimes that can survive only by tyranny at home and terror abroad. The enemies of freedom are dangerous; unrestrained by any kind of scruple and unhampered by either compunction or compassion, even for their own people. They are willing to use not just individuals and families, but whole nations as suicide bombers to be sacrificed as required in order to defeat and eject the infidel enemy and establish their own supremacy.
The creation of a free society, as the history of existing democracies in the world makes clear, is no easy matter. The experience of the Turkish republic over the last half century and of some other Muslim countries more recently has demonstrated two things: first, that it is indeed very difficult to create a democracy in such a society, and second, that although difficult, it is not impossible.
The study of Islamic history and of the vast and rich Islamic political literature encourages the belief that it may well be possible to develop democratic institutions--not necessarily in our Western definition of that much misused term, but in one deriving from their own history and culture, and ensuring, in their way, limited government under law, consultation and openness, in a civilized and humane society. There is enough in the traditional culture of Islam on the one hand and the modern experience of the Muslim peoples on the other to provide the basis for an advance towards freedom in the true sense of that word.
Even after the arrest of Saddam Hussein this week, the forces of tyranny and terror remain very strong and the outcome is still far from certain. But as the struggle rages and intensifies, certain things that were previously obscure are becoming clear. The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other. The struggle is no longer limited to one or two countries, as some Westerners still manage to believe. It has acquired first a regional and then a global dimension, with profound consequences for all of us.
If freedom fails and terror triumphs, the peoples of Islam will be the first and greatest victims. They will not be alone, and many others will suffer with them.