I would say Islam is compatible with democracy, with the Koran as the constitution. Which means elected representatives could pass legislation on issues, so long as the courts of jurisprudence say it is Halal.

If a governing council were to pass a law guaranteeing freedom to change religion, or punishing wife-beaters, ect, ect...it would be struck down by the courts.

Is there anything in the Koran that proclaims an Islamic government cannot be elected to do the mundane things that aren't addressed in the sharia?

Posted by: Jimmy the Dhimmi at May 18, 2008 9:40 PM

Question of the Year: Bush's vocabulary

Does Bush know what dhimmi, takiyya, jahiliya and kaffir mean?

http://bravenewsworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/question-of-year-bushs-vocabulary.html

Posted by: Max Publius at May 18, 2008 9:54 PM

If the demos is uneducated in anything but the intolerant Koran, "democracy" is merely a greased route to a "popular" tyranny.

An inalienable Bill of Rights, first, is more important than any mob rule.

Posted by: profitsbeard at May 18, 2008 10:11 PM

Bush also spoke about Arab states building actual economies. Good, if whimsical, advice.

This would also be an unprecedented event.

Dystopia seems to be the operant descriptive relevant to Arab "culture."

The higher the price of oil, the more virulent the dystopia.

And American Democrats insist, oil must be priced exorbitantly.

It could be a perfect storm.

Posted by: Layer Seven at May 18, 2008 10:17 PM

Democracy was never intended to be the political system of the Ameican government when it was founded. In fact, the founding fathers even referred to democracy being a stepping stone on the way to dictatorship being diligent students of Ancient Rome. Specifically, the US was founded as a republic limited by the clear strictures of the Constitution. This is a critical distinction. In a democracy, if the majority voted to impose Sharia law...then it would become law even though Sharia law would disband the democracy in short order. But in a constitutionally limited republic if the First amendment said' Freedom of Religion' then any legislative attempt at Sharia law would be stopped cold as being unconstitutional. Fuzzy headed thinking confusing democracy and limited republic seem to be at the root of this problem.

Posted by: Americantothecore at May 18, 2008 10:26 PM

This is how the part of his speech that dealt with democracy has been reported:

"Bush rebutted what he said are the many arguments from 'skeptics about democracy in this part of the world,' without specifying who they are. He said democracy is not 'a Western value that America seeks to impose on unwilling citizens' and nor is it incompatible with the religion of Islam.

He made clear how he defines democracy.
'Some say any state that holds an election is a democracy,' Bush said.

'True democracy,' he said, requires 'vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate,' institutions that ensure legitimate elections and accountability for leaders, and an opposition that can campaign 'without fear and intimidation.'"

Bush, then, simply asserted -- he did not argue, he did not prevent the semblance of an argument or any evidence but simply asserted -- that Islam and democracy are compatible.

But assertion will not do.

Here is the argument that Bush should have addressed, and answered, if he had an answer.

The development of democracy in the advanced West has depended on political theory, on the notion that the state, and the state's monopoly of violence, can be justified by the need of individuals, living in a state of nature (that is, without a state), live lives in which each is threatened by each, where life, as Hobbes famouslly says, is "nasty, brutish, and short." This idea developed further, and Locke said that it was important for property to be secure, and that property could only be secure where the state possessed the power -- handed over to it by individuals -- to protect that property. Rousseau's Social Contract continues in the same line of thought, and argues that the state's legitimacy depends on its fulfilling its task, and its task must be to adhere to the will expressed, the General Will, of the people. If the state does not reflect the will of the people it is not legitimate.

But, it is suggested, in Islam the ruler can be a despot. He need only reflect the will expressed by Allah in the Qur'an, and as glossed by the Sunnah. As long as he remains a good Muslim, he can govern as he wishes. His model in all things is the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil, Muhammad, who was himself no democrat but a despot. Now it might be argued that being "a good Muslim" means you must adhere to the Shari'a, and adhering to the Shari'a is, of course, what your Muslim subjects wish, for how could they wish otherwise, and so isn't this, someone might say, the same thing as advanced Western democracy? But this argument rests on the idea that only Muslims count, and that furthermore, these Muslims need not vote, or express their views, for any good Muslim will naturally reflect what their views should be. The ruler "knows" what his subjects need.

And Bush did not ask, aloud, why it is that of all the Muslim nation-states, there is hardly one that can be called truly democratic in the Western sense, and only two seem to approach that. These are Lebanon and Turkey.

Lebanon does possess more political freedoms, more sense of the need for such freedoms, and that is because Lebanon has historically had a large, and dominating, and certainly civilizing, Christian population that, until recent decades, dominated the country. Lebanon is not a true democracy because it rests on a confessional arrangement, in which the most important positions in the government are guaranteed to belong to this or that sect, and other powers are assigned on the basis of a falsehood -- that is, the census of 1935, which has long been out-of-date but carefully -- thank god -- preserves the rights of the most advanced, i.e., Christian, Lebanese.

The second Muslim country that has something like democracy is Turkey. And Turkey has something like democracy because more than 80 years ago a remarkable man, Kemal Pasha, Ataturk, decided that in order to bring Turkey into the modern world, he would have to systematically, and ruthlessly, constrain Islam as a political and social force. And that is what he did, beginnning as soon as he came to power in the early 1920s. As an undeniable war hero, he had the prestige to do what he needed. He did what he could to sever Turkey from Arabdom, and Arab Islam. He had the Qur'an, and a tafsir (commentary) translated into Turkish. He jettisoned the Ottoman (Arabic) script for Latin, i.e., Western letters. He passed the Hat Act, banning the fez and replacing it with Western caps (harder to bow in prayer with such caps rather than the red tarboush). He gave women the right to vote. He established a Ministry of Religious Affairs that had the power to write sermons and to carefully monitor all that went on in mosques. When he faced opposition from imams, he did not hesitate to arrest and jail them, and to destroy their mosques. He was ruthless, and he had to be. He gave women the right to vote, and did give everything he could to give them legal equality with men. He created an army that would guard vigilantly the heritage of Kemalism. He prevented students who had attended madrasas from going to state-funded universities. He made sure that the officer corps was secular, and would vigilantly remove any soldiers thought to be "too religious." Had he not been a despot, had he relied on "democracy" to effect these changes, they would never have been made.

But as a despot, Ataturk could do these things, and in doing them, he actually made democracy possible in Turkey. In other words, to achieve democracy, despotism -- the despotism of someone determined to constrain Islam -- was a necessary precondition.

George Bush gives no signs of understanding either the notion of political legitimacy in Islam, or of what distinguishes the handful of Muslim states, or largely Muslim states, that can be said to bear a likeness, even a distant likeness, to Western democracies.

He doesn't think things through. A child of privilege, he attended good schools without ever having had to think. He's not evil, and he's not deserving of the violent hatreds he evokes. But he is very dumb, and around him he has yes-men just as dumb, and the whole way that Islam is being perceived by those in power, and the policies they concoct to deal with the permanent menace of Islam, show -- every day, in every way -- just how dumb they are.

And because of the failure of his would-be successor, McCain, to properly analyze the failures of the Administration when it comes to Islam, and above all the continued, touching, and enraging faith in the Tarbaby-Iraq business, with its continued squandering of men, money, materiel, and morale, all for the sake of an outcome that, from the viewpoint of the American or Infidel interest, makes no sense (what makes sense is constant internecine warfare within the Camp of Islam, what makes sense is an Iraq where the pre-existing fissures, sectarian and ethnic, widen rather than narrow, and ideally, use up men, money, and materiel from Shi'a Iran, and Sunni Saudi Arabia and its allies, and keeps them busy with each other for a long time to come). No one keeps demanding of McCain, as no one has demanded of Bush, that they begin to ask other questions, instead of relying on sentimental notions that, in the end, boil down to some version of bomfoggery, or People Are The Same The Whole World Over. They aren't.

And democracy, I think, as a political ideal, is indeed incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Shari'a, and the odd caliph who consults with the odd vizier or assorted wise men is not, pace Bernard Lewis and his acolyztes, equivalent to a political theory of democracy.

That's not all that was naive or ignorant or wrong with Bush's speech. But it's the main thing.

Posted by: Hugh at May 18, 2008 10:35 PM

Jeffersonian democracy is the real and true kind of democracy because it must separate spiritual and temporal authority, be infused with a proper moral order and be regulated by a decent and wise legal system. Islam demands no separation of the two authorities, is not possessed of a humane ethical system and has for its law code one which is not enlightened but instead is inept and draconian. Therefore, only a shell of Islam, whereby numerous Islamic tenets are not observed, can be compatible with Western democracy. Islam must bend, not democracy. Will it? The resolution of this question is still in the process of being determined. The fate of the world is the stakes.

Posted by: Wellington at May 18, 2008 10:36 PM

"In our democracy, we would never punish a person for owning a Koran. We would never issue a death sentence to someone for converting to Islam. Democracy does not threaten Islam or any religion. Democracy is the only system of government that guarantees their protection."

Like so many Americans, the President confuses our government with democracy. He, of all people, ought to know better. "Our democracy" would never install the runner-up in the election as the President, now would it? But it did, in 2000. That's because we live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules; and the majority can outlaw a religion, or mandate one. A democracy with an Islamic majority is perfectly feasible: it could easily outlaw other religions, and establish Islamic practices as law.
No, our government is a constitutional republic, albeit one with universal suffrage. It's the Constitution, not democracy, that protects our rights from the majority and from the government. The "republic" part means that the government is in the hands of the people, not an individual, or a few select families, or members of a particular clan. Even from the start, when the U.S. was far from a democracy, its citizens were the freest people on earth.
But our constitution is not a permanently secure protection from democracy, because it can be amended. If the democratic majority is large enough, and widespread enough (i.e. is present in enough states), the Constitution can be changed, or even overturned. That's what we have to fear: once the Moslem population gets large enough, it will be able to overturn the Constitution and establish Islam as the required religion, all by way of "democracy". I hope that day never comes, and I believe that JW is doing its best to prevent it.

Posted by: ebonystone at May 18, 2008 10:44 PM

Another part of Bush's speech dealt with the supposed spread of "democracy" in the Muslim world:

"He [Bush] also offered plenty of praise for democratic advances, naming countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and Jordan.

'The light of liberty is beginning to shine,'he said."

Is he crazy? In Turkey, the so-called "light of liberty" is undoing Kemalism, putting the securalists in the universities, the judiciary, and the army, under great pressure, and bringing Islam back, step by grim step, as Erdogan and now Gul, cleverly backed by all kinds of people, including the shadowy millionaire Fethullah Gulen, probe and prod at every possible weak point in the Kemalist system. Is this "liberty"? Is this the goddam "light of liberty"?

In Afghanistan, after all the vast American and NATO effort, the Taliban are back, and even without the Taliban, the democratically-elected members of the Afghani Parliament have shown, very step of the way, that they are mostly moved by the ideals of the Sharii'a, and are happy to punsih "blasphemes" with death, are happy to deny women equal rights, are happy to undo every bit of the reforms that Westerners initially managed to accomplish, in the legal rights of women and non-Muslims. The notion that "liberty" has come to Afghanistan is false. Indeed, had the Soviets won their war, and installed a puppet Communist regime, and had that regime acted with the kind of ruthlessness that the Soviet authorities did toward Islam during the 1920s and 1930s, that might have done more in the vein of Ataturk to eventually make Afghanistan a plausible candidate for democracy.

Iraq? Does anyone think Iraq is a place where "liberty" has arrived? It's a place whee, at the moment, no one sect can arrogate complete power over the country to itself, but it is also a place where a Sunni despotism has been replaced by a Shi'a despotism, and the Shi'a, whatever their party, have no intention of sharing power in any signficant way (a cosmetic compromise may be possible, in order to extract more weapons and money, over the next few years, from the Americans, but that's it) with the Sunni Arabs, or indeed to allow the Kurds to continue to dream of independence.

"Morocco"? If anything, the current king is worse, when it comes to pan-Arab hostility to the West, either than his father or than Mohammed V. The ballyhooed "reforms" are nothing at all. He still retains his position because, as a Sherifian, he possesses the prestige to withstand an outright assault by the most militant Muslims. But try to find that "light of liberty" Bush prates about, in Rabat, or Sale, or anywhere else in dismal Morocco, from which, every day, hundreds or thousands set out, determined to make it to Spain or to Italy, and from there, once they are safely in the E.U., to its farthest reaches.

The same is true with Jordan, the last country on Bush's list of places where, he claims, the "light of liberty" is spreading. Jordan remains a police-state, and thank god for that, because bad as it is, what might follow the overthrow of thick-necked Abdullah and his photogenic bride would be far worse. But there have been no reforms, so spirit or light of liberty.

Bush is a hallucinator. He talks, he likes the sound his words make, he thinks they must conform to some higher reality, and he has convinced himself they must be true. He's messianic, and also a marxist, because he believes that economic well-being, or lack of it, explains the behavior of people, and that by improving the lot of Muslims, or "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East, we will do away with the "root causes" of all the distempers, and all the craziness, and all the hatred directed at Infidels.

He's still unclear about Islam, about the simplest things about Islam. He asked the Arab students whom he saw in Israel if they attended dances with Jews. The American ambassador, Jones (himself someone with deplorable views on Israel, and also exhibiting a failure to grasp the Islamic roots of the war against Israel because if he grasped those roots, he could not possibly be such a promoter of further surrenders of territory or territorial control, by Israel), explained to Bush that such mixed dances were not exactly possible, and indeed, the very idea of such dances, among Arab boys and girls, also impossible. That Bush did not know this, that he has no real idea of what Islamic societies are like, shines from his every innocent word.

We don't want innocents running us. We want people who may not be nice, many not have such touching faith in "democracy" or any other ideal, for that matter, except the ideal of keeping us, the Infidels, from succumbing to the many-pronged assault of Islam. We can't afford the naive and sentimental lovers of something they thing is swell, something they call -- a bit too enthusiastically and too unthinkingly and too inaccurately -- call "democracy."

Posted by: Hugh at May 18, 2008 11:01 PM

Having read the posts above I felt compelled to point out that America is both a republic and a democracy. It is true that in The Federalist No. 10 James Madison made a distinction between a democracy and a republic, but that's only because Madison limited his definition of democracy to a pure democracy in which direct participation in the legislative assembly took place, as it did in ancient Athens. What Madison referred to as a republic is what is now regularly termed a representative democracy, whereby that portion of the populace which is possessed of the franchise votes for individuals to represent them in a legislative setting. So, unless one wishes to confine the term "democracy" to a pure kind only, then America is indeed a democracy. The term "republic" also means a state not headed by a monarch and thus America is a republic twice over, as a representative democracy and as a non-monarchical state.

Posted by: Wellington at May 18, 2008 11:39 PM

Dubya's question about Muslim students attending dances with Jews is precious, in the Church Lady sense.

It is nearly impossible to be in charge of anything and also to be this ignorant about Middle Eastern and Islamic cultural realities.

God help us.

HAID

Posted by: Haid Dasalami at May 18, 2008 11:43 PM

The Doomsday Bomb scenario.

Here's the big picture. Iran will soon have the Doomsday Bomb and nobody has guts enough to stop them. So this changes the whole picture, and this is Prophecy type stuff. Watch what will happen. Here is ONE scenario, very real:

We will pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, they're both losers. Simultaneous to Iran's Bomb there must be a definitive way out of the oil dilemma, preferably with a novel energy source developed by our science. Once we see the end of our oil dependence, we start our strategy in motion, no matter who's in the White House. Europeans are drowning in their Islam, though it's only ankle deep, so they will be of no help. America will go it alone.

Islam is not conducive to world peace, though without it such peace is achievable. So the solution, once we're out of Islamic lands, is to isolate them and drop oil dependence. They can go back to growing cucumbers and herding goats and camels, which is just about the only economy they are fit for, or slaving. Islamic theology will become totally discredited as a destructive mind control Cult, including Sharia, which then opens the way for a broadside attack against their seats of power. Hit their mosques and their imams first, and their holy places. Ignore all their siren songs of the 'Crudades' etc., totally irrelevant. Take these seats of power out first, and then turn attention on the common people. They will not be won over with candied goodies, but will respond to threats to themselves and families, and their clans. Anyone who steps out of line gets summary justice, like post war Germany or Japan, no questions asked. (That's how cults had been handled in the past, and so it will be again with theirs, i.e., Aum Shinrikyo, Jim Jones, Heaven's Gate, David Koresh , etc.) This world cult of Islam is a much bigger target, 1400 years old and over a billion strong, but Iran will make it any easy target to identify. Anyone who sides with Iran is due for demolition, no questions asked. We immediately set out for total destruction of Iran's government and nuclear capabilities, and then stand ready for who shows up to complain, and they're next. The final operation is to eliminate all traces of this Islamic Cult, the way the Romans handled it in the past: total destruction of their temples, and no possibility of rebuilding them, including their most holy sites. (China and Russia will sit it out, they're not stupid.)

Once this first phase is in place, look to rebuilding Islamic societies. First see what is their propensity for success: drug trafficking, sex slavery, arms smuggling? We need better. Look to the UAE's Dubai for guidance, they're already telling you what they want: Gambling casinos and mega condo complexes. This is their best bet for success, and why not go along? The whole world is a market. So built them their mega condo resort complexes and gambling casinos, and start there. The manufacturing and services economy can come later, though it may take several generations to undo the Islamic 'inshallah' damage to achieve that. Keep tight reign on mafia activities, because these are sure to be there, but in time they too will lose their grip, and Islamic society can gradually begin to integrate into the rest of the world's modern economies. THEN introduce Democracy, not before. By then revenue should be flowing to make democratic changes more likely to succeed. (This never worked in Iraq because the oil revenue was not incentive enough for Islamic greed.)

LAST phase, induction into total reeducation of their religious clerics, from forced education of learning non-Arabic languages to study of Western philosophy and government, with special attention on how work our constitutional freedoms and human rights. This will be a big job, since they will resist, even attempt suicide bombings in the class room, because their Islam Cult brainwashing is real. But like any cult leaders, they can be rehabilitated over time, though it may take decades, and expect periodic recidivism to violence and Jihad. This is a disease that will take a long time to cure. Like any pandemic virus, Islam must be contained and then gradually redirected to render it harmless. In time, islam will be as humorous to the Islamists, "What those primitives believed in!", as it is to us today. Within a hundred years Islamic Cult will have fallen by the wayside into a footnote of modern history, including its Jihad.

This is ONE possible scenario, once Iran has the Doomsday Bomb. The OTHER scenario is more violent: total nuclear annihilation from Tehran to Mecca. All other Islamic nations are put on notice for the same.

The BEST scenario is that the Islamic Cult of Jihad is immediately stopped by all Islamic organizations from OIC to CAIR, right down to the Saudi Princes, and discredited, their imams recalled, and their demands for more mosques and madrassa building stopped. However, since this is the least likely scenario, since it would involve an Ataturk type secularization of Islam, this is the least likely to succeed. This would call for a Reform of Islam, which is highly unlikely. (Zero chance on this one.)

Which way will it go for the Islamic Cult? We should know by next year, regardless of who is in the White House. The die is set by Iran, and their Doomsday Bomb - 2009- and so we shall see. Lybia understood, North Korean understood, but Iran is slow because of their suicidal Mahdi belief... We shall see which scenario will play out. The best scenario is where we drop all dependence on Middle Eastern oil now, develop newly found large reserves off the coasts of Brazil and Peru, including Idaho and US/Canadian large reserves, and go for alternate energy in a big way. Within a decade this Jihad Cult can be defeated, and within century Islamic Cultism will be dead.

I leave this as my 'prophecy' and battle plan, for Bush and co, really for the next administration.

Battle of Tours

Posted by: Battle_of_Tours at May 18, 2008 11:47 PM

We can only hope that dumb and dumber, are not replaced with Bevis and Butthead...US politics looks a lot like 'Wayne's World'...'Party on dudes'...

Posted by: duh_swami at May 18, 2008 11:53 PM

Democracy is not hostile to Islam,

but Islam is hostile to Democracy!

Posted by: Mystical Time Traveler at May 19, 2008 12:18 AM

Democracy in the Middle East is a waste of lives and money. As we can all see, they just vote in terrorists groups. Bush's ego is way too big.

Posted by: Exposing Islam at May 19, 2008 12:43 AM

Islam is hostile to democracy.

Posted by: Exposing Islam at May 19, 2008 12:46 AM

At an International Convention of Dimwits, President Bush would be the guy handing out towels in the men's room.

Posted by: HotSpur at May 19, 2008 1:05 AM

Good one, HotSpur!

Robert: Your posting headline needs clarification. Instead of "Bush: Democracy is not hostile to Islam," it should read "Bush reads speech someone else wrote that says democracy is not hostile to Islam."

I can't imagine this man reviewing a rough draft of a speech without saying "Good to go!" We know JFK and RR would make little notes in the margins of draft speeches. But THIS guy? After what we've been through? No way.

Posted by: Bingo at May 19, 2008 4:49 AM

Democracy is not hostile to Islam and Islam isn't hostile to democracy, as long as Islam has the upper hand. Witness the many "democratic" elections in Iran. Democracy is Islam's greatest weapon of propaganda.

Islam is hostile to FREEDOM.

Freedom of the human mind is Islam's greatest enemy.

Posted by: PMK at May 19, 2008 11:15 AM

He (Bush) asked the Arab students whom he saw in Israel if they attended dances with Jews.
From the original story.

Poor man. He really should not be allowed to speak extemporaneously in public. He embarrasses himself, and us, every time he opens his mouth. And someone should send him a copy of Sayyid Qutb's Milestones so he can learn what Muslims think about dancing of the kind he was undoubtedly assuming (male/female, bodies held tight, rhythmic swaying of hips, etc.) in a setting he can relate to (Colorado in the late 1940s).

Posted by: Eastview at May 19, 2008 2:05 PM