Democratization is rapidly becoming the U.S. policy of choice to meet the challenge of anti-Americanism and the radicalization of Muslims, especially in the Middle East. Both the government and experts in the American foreign-policy community insist that only democracy can undermine the conditions that engender political radicalism in the Muslim world.1 According to this view, a quick transition from authoritarianism to more open societies will improve economic opportunities and foster responsible politics by making governments accountable and giving people a sense of participation. In spite of some prominent detractors,2 the Bush administration has adopted the view that democracy is not only feasible but also necessary in the Middle East and the Muslim world.
In a landmark speech on May 9, 2003, at the University of South Carolina, President Bush announced America’s firm commitment to democracy and freedom in the Middle East as the key goal of America’s war on terror:
We support the advance of freedom in the Middle East, because it is our founding principle, and because it is in our national interest. The hateful ideology of terrorism is shaped and nurtured and protected by oppressive regimes. Free nations, in contrast, encourage creativity and tolerance and enterprise. And in those free nations, the appeal of extremism withers away. Free governments do not build weapons of mass destruction for the purpose of mass terror. Over time, the expansion of liberty throughout the world is the best guarantee of security throughout the world. Freedom is the way to peace.3
At the recent conference on Islam and democracy, hosted by a Washington think tank – the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy – William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Lorne Craner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, claimed that promoting democracy in the Middle East had become an important cornerstone of America’s war on terror.4
In rather candid presentations, both diplomats asserted that America’s foreign policy establishment was now convinced that the status quo in the Middle East was not stable anymore, and that the United States was now determined to actively push for democratization, regardless of the consequences. The issue of Turkey’s unwillingness to cooperate with the United States in the war against Iraq came up in the discussion, and Secretary Burns pointed out that democracy in Turkey had actually impeded U.S. foreign-policy goals and that democracy in the rest of the Muslim world would perhaps make it more difficult for the United States to pursue its interests in the region. Nevertheless, both secretaries argued that the assumption of “Middle East exceptionalism” – that democracy is neither possible nor desirable in the region – has been exposed as an untenable policy that fosters radicalism and terrorism.
Muslim intellectuals and scholars have long advocated the democratization of the Muslim world, and they welcome this new posture of the American government. Most American Muslims and probably Muslims everywhere, however, nurse a guarded appreciation of this shift in American policy. Many remain skeptical as well as cynical, since democracy in the Middle East was never in the U.S. interest in the past, and a democratic Middle East may make the pursuit of narrowly conceived U.S. interests in the region more difficult.
DEMOCRACY AND THE U.S. RECORD
The United States has always been the quintessential status quo power in the Middle East. Its limited interests in the region – geopolitical advantage, access to cheap oil, rich markets and uncritical support of Israel – were well served by a region that remained under the power of authoritarian regimes that placed their own self-interest ahead of that of their nation and their people. A weak, divided, disorganized and undemocratic Middle East could never realize the ambitions of its peoples to defeat Israel, gain cultural and political autonomy from the West and complete the process of decolonization. For decades, corrupt regimes with direct or indirect U.S. involvement worked to undermine legitimate aspirations of Muslims for freedom, growth and participation in governance.5
The United States has had an 80-year relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In these 80 years, the American government has done very little to actively improve the conditions regarding human and civil rights in which the people of Saudi Arabia lived, since the regime was considered “moderate” and “our ally” in the region. The United States never pressured the kingdom to democratize or liberalize until after the attacks of September 11, 2001. There was growing awareness of the plight of Muslim women in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban, and the U.S. government made many efforts to focus the attention of the world on this issue.
However, it remained silent on similar conditions for women in Saudi Arabia. Even today there is very little pressure on Saudi Arabia to institute democratic reforms. The United States has demanded modification of Saudi school curricula but not the Saudi political system.6
In 1953, a CIA-instigated coup replaced the democratic government of Muhammad Mossadeq in Iran with a monarchy so that Iran could become a client serving U.S. interests in the Middle East. If the United States had allowed, even encouraged, Iranian democracy to thrive and respected the opinion of the Iranian people, not only might Iran have become a stable and enduring democracy in the 50 years since, but it might have facilitated the democratization of the region. The Iranian revolution of 1979, which was partly a rejection of U.S. influence, has been a major force behind the growth of anti-U.S. Islamism. This movement would never have reached present levels without the rhetoric and the example of the Iranian revolution. Subsequently, many discerning commentators in the Muslim world recognized U.S. double standards by comparing U.S. opposition to a more democratic and Islamic Iran with U.S. alliances with “Islamic but authoritarian” Pakistan under Zia-ul Haq and Saudi Arabia. It seemed as if the United States was not opposed to Islam but to democracy and popular government in the Middle East.7
In Algeria in 1992, France, with tacit support from the United States, financed and legitimized a military coup that prevented Islamists from coming to power after winning an election.8 This singular episode has become for many Muslims a vindication of the claim of radical Islamists that the United States seeks to undermine the Muslim world out of malice against Islam.9 They also reached the conclusion that the United States, which had no vital interests at stake in Algeria, would not allow democracy in the Middle East. Even today, many Islamists snigger when they hear the call for democracy because they see that the United States remains a close ally and even defender of nearly all the monarchies in the region. The kings of Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan and the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait are crucial to U.S. interests. It seems unlikely to Muslims that the United States will undermine its allies. Abidullah Jan, a Pakistani Islamist, writes:
Pakistan is an example that shows democracy and dictatorships are irrelevant as long as the U.S. objectives are served. Interestingly, there is neither talk of democracy nor a progressive state for countries already under American occupation, such as Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc.10
The United States has a history of providing political cover to regimes it deems as “moderates” or allies. Even today, Washington continues to ignore Russian excesses in Chechnya, which not only complicate the war on terror but also encourage the radicalization of Central Asia.11 The refusal of the international community to come to the aid of the Chechens and the willingness of the United States to ignore Russian brutalities in exchange for cooperation make its promise to support democracy and freedom sound hollow to Muslims everywhere. The United States also has refused to take up the issue of Gujarat with India. In exchange for India’s cooperation in the war on terror, the United States has decided to ignore the massacre of 2000 Muslims and the destruction of the Muslim economy in Gujarat by Hindu rioters with support from the Hindu nationalist government.12
U.S. inaction in both cases suggests to Muslims that the United States has no problem if Muslims are massacred by U.S. allies. Presidential pronouncements such as “. . . the expansion of liberty throughout the world is the best guarantee of security throughout the world. Freedom is the way to peace,” sound empty and spurious. Islamists are not alone when it comes to distrust of the United States. Farida Naqqash, a leader of Egypt’s leftist opposition Tagammu party and a feminist human rights campaigner is vehement in her criticism:
We don’t trust American talk about democracy. The United States has supported very much this [Egyptian] regime that has oppressed, tortured and imprisoned people and stopped newspapers and closed associations. How can we believe the United States is suddenly coming now to support democracy in the Middle East? They are still friends with the Saudi regime, which is the model despotic regime in the area. Look at their record in Chile, Venezuela or Indonesia.13
A quick glance at recent elections in Pakistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Morocco and Turkey clearly indicates that today democracy is an ally of the Islamists.14 Democratization will lead to Islamization. Islamists will come to power and will be able to resist U.S. influence in the region through legitimate means. Once again, it seems unlikely to most Muslims that the United States would risk this outcome by really pushing for democracy. For years, U.S. foreign policy has been one of the barriers to democracy in the Middle East.15 It is difficult, though not impossible, for this policy to be reversed, but we must recognize that Muslim skepticism is an additional hurdle to be scaled in pursuit of democracy. In order for the United States to facilitate the democratization of the Middle East, it must gain the trust and cooperation of Arabs and Muslims in the region. Its record only inspires distrust and skepticism.
MUSLIM SKEPTICISM
For Arabs and Muslims, there are several reasons to be skeptical about the current administration’s policy pronouncements. While President Bush insists that the United States will bring political and religious freedom and even Islamic democracy to Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld maintains that Iraqis are not free to choose whatever form of political system they want.16 For Muslims, freedom means freedom to live according to one’s choice, one’s values and one’s faith, and not the political preferences of others. When they listen to Secretary Rumsfeld say that the United States will not allow an Islamic state in Iraq, they become cynical about what Americans mean by political freedom.
Muslims have also seen how President Bush has invoked “the vision of a Palestinian state,” as a preamble to declaring war against Muslim nations. They have then seen him back off and refuse to put the necessary work into realizing this vision. During the violence that followed the Middle East summit in Aqaba, Muslims felt that the United States continued to avoid a balanced approach to the crisis.17 A recent Pew survey found that people from all surveyed countries except the United States believed that the United States was too pro-Israel. Even in Israel, 47 percent felt that the United States was not balanced, while only 38 percent felt that the United States had a fair approach to the conflict. These perceptions more than anything else undermine the credibility of the Bush administration and underscore the Arab belief that U.S. policy is governed by Israeli interests.18
It has been three months since Iraq was conquered. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. Iraqis are at the moment worse off than they were under Saddam Hussein, living in a Hobbesian world of looting, chaos and anarchy. Oil, water and law and order are in short supply. Increasingly, Iraqis and many other members of the international community are becoming convinced that the United States lied, both when it claimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and when it claimed that it would bring peace and democracy to Iraq.19 U.S. credibility is in sharp decline, as are general perceptions about the United States itself. Since the war on Iraq, more and more people in the Muslim world blame President Bush specifically for the heightened instability and insecurity in the world. Many Muslims, even in countries with reasonably good relations with the United States, such as Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan, fear that the United States may attack them.20
Given this growing fear of the United States and the high level of distrust of President Bush in the Middle East, it is going to be difficult to convince Muslims that the United States is serious about democracy. If the United States fails to show the same urgency and commitment to realizing a Palestinian state and rebuilding Iraq that it showed in attacking Iraq, U.S.-led democratization in the Middle East will not materialize. Many Muslims fear that the war on terror is actually a war on Islam. The close relations between Christian fundamentalists, who have recently increased their anti-Muslim, anti-Islam rhetoric, and the Bush administration further undermine U.S. foreign policy by raising serious questions in Muslim minds about their influence on U.S. policies towards Islam and Muslims.21
WHY DEMOCRACY? WHY NOW?
While Muslim fears are important, American resolve will also play an important role. Are President Bush and his administration genuinely interested in promoting democracy? A credible answer to this question needs to be provided in order to convince the world that the United States is determined. Rhetoric, charts and computer graphics, which Colin Powell used in order to argue that Iraq had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, will not work this time. The administration will not only have to make a fool-proof argument in words but also in deeds. What it does in Iraq – whether to establish a democracy or a pro-American dictatorship or to continue the occupation indefinitely – will go a long way toward restoring American credibility or undermining it irredeemably.
A recent debate in Foreign Affairs between Thomas Carothers, who directs the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Paula J. Dobriansky, U.S. undersecretary of state for global affairs, underscores the yawning gap between stated administration policies, couched in moral discourse, and the realities of its actions.22 Not only does this gap raise doubts about the seriousness of the administration vis-à-vis democratization, it also raises questions over whether the administration itself realizes that it is making a marked departure from past policy and hence cannot continue with business as usual. It is time to trash the existing standard-operating-procedure manuals and to write new ones.
Carothers essentially argues that on promoting democracy the United States faces competing priorities. In order to reveal the exact nature of what could become a major debate on American foreign policy in the region, I reproduce some key points made by Carothers:
The United States faces two contradictory imperatives: on the one hand, the fight against Al Qaeda tempts Washington to put aside its democratic scruples and seek closer ties with autocracies throughout the Middle East and Asia. On the other hand, U.S. officials and policy experts have increasingly come to believe that it is precisely the lack of democracy in many of these countries that helps breed Islamic extremism . . . . How the administration solves this uncomfortable dualism is central not only to the future of the war on terrorism but also to the shape and character of Bush’s foreign policy as a whole.
Undersecretary Dobriansky responds by arguing that not only is the administration actively promoting democracy, but that it is actually erring on behalf of democracy promotion. This is a rather dubious claim given the administration’s silence on Chechnya and Gujurat, for example. These are some of her key points:
It is also a matter of record that this administration, whenever it encounters evidence of serious human-rights violations or antidemocratic practices in specific countries, has raised a voice of opposition to such violations and sought to address this problem. . . . In general, we do this irrespective of the identity of the offender . . . . Ironically, many of the world’s countries, including some of our allies, often chide us, not for failing to do enough in the democracy arena, but for trying to do too much, for elevating democratic imperatives above those of trade and diplomatic politesse.23
I found this comment of the undersecretary as symptomatic of the problem. She concludes by summarizing the Bush administration’s position as follows:
Overall, the promotion of democracy is a key foreign-policy goal of the Bush administration. This sentiment is reflected in all of our international endeavors and is animated by a mixture of both idealistic and pragmatic impulses. We seek to foster a global society of nations in which freedom and democracy reign and human aspirations are fully realized.24
Carothers speaks for all concerned with the effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy and determined to promote democracy when he writes:
Dobriansky’s insistence that there is no tension, and her relentless portrait of the United States as a country devoted to democracy promotion, is part of a pattern of rhetorical overkill by the administration officials that weakens rather than strengthens this country’s credibility in the eyes of others. People around the world are quite capable of seeing that the United States has close, even intimate relations with undemocratic regimes for the sake of American security and economic interests.25
The best argument that the United States has to suggest its seriousness about democracy in the Middle East is this: September 11 changed everything. The U.S. establishment now recognizes a correspondence between repression and radicalism and is willing to exchange compliance for security. Democracy in the Middle East will clearly mean that states in the region will be less willing to comply with U.S. interests at the cost of their own national interests. The case of Turkey is illustrative. However, in exchange for lack of compliance from states in the region, the United States enhances its own security. Thus democracy in the Middle East, regardless of its higher transaction costs, serves the interest of U.S. national security. There can be no guarantee more powerful than this.
CHALLENGES TO DEMOCRACY
There were three reasons for the so called Middle East exception to democracy. First, democracy in the region was inconvenient as long as the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli war were on. Democratization is an unpredictable and destabilizing process. The United States, eager to maintain the balance of power with the Soviet Union and the imbalance of power between Arabs and Israel, was not open to any kind of change in the Middle East. Events have overtaken these realities; geopolitical reasons for preferring authoritarianism over democracy in the Muslim world are valid no more. Secondly, there was a false assumption in policy circles in Washington that democracy and Islam were incompatible. The president himself eloquently refuted this argument in his May 9 speech. Finally, many of Israel’s heavy handed policies in the occupied territories are overlooked by Americans because it is the “lone democracy” struggling to survive in a sea of authoritarianism.
As far as the incompatibility between Islam and democracy is concerned, recent surveys conducted by Pippa Norris of Harvard University and Ron Inglehart of the University of Michigan,26 and the Pew Research Center have revealed that Muslims overwhelmingly prefer democracy to any other form of government. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the democratic ideal is quite widely upheld in the Muslim world. Also, there are more nations in the Muslim world that claim to be democratic – Bangladesh, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, Indonesia, Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria – than Islamic (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Sudan). Half of the self proclaimed Islamic states (Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan) also claim to be democracies.
There is nothing in Islam or in Muslim practice that is fundamentally opposed to democracy, justice, freedom, fairness, equality or tolerance. There are a few Muslims who reject democracy because they reject the West, allowing the West to have ownership of this universal value. The large number of Muslims who come out to vote in the presidential elections in the United States and those Muslims who vote in the hundreds of millions in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere testify to their comfort with democracy. In the minds of these hundreds of millions of Muslims who practice some form of democracy, there is no dispute between Islam and democracy.
Not only do Muslims value democracy, there is now a growing consensus that Islam and democracy are compatible. The first Islamic state, established by the prophet of Islam, was based on a social contract called the constitution of Medina. The state of Medina was a multicultural and multireligious federation in which Muhammad ruled by the consent of those whom he governed through the processes of shura (consultation) and ijma (consensus building). The constitution of Medina establishes the importance of consent and cooperation for governance. According to this compact, Muslims and non-Muslims are equal citizens of the Islamic state with identical rights and duties. Communities with different religious orientations enjoy religious autonomy, which essentially is wider in scope than the modern idea of religious freedom. The constitution of Medina established a pluralistic state, a community of communities. It promised equal security and equality under the law to all. The principles of equality, consensual governance and pluralism are enmeshed in the compact of Medina. It can serve as an excellent model for developing modern Islamic democracies. This constitutional precedent of the Prophet Muhammad suggests that Islam is not a barrier, but can actually serve as a facilitator and an inspiration for democracy.27
As far as Israel is concerned, by now it must be abundantly clear that peace is not achievable until there is a Palestinian state and democracy in the region. Israel’s status as a “lone democracy” has allowed it to act in a heavy-handed fashion against the Palestinians without attracting the ire of the American people. But, now more than ever, Israel realizes that its security is tied to democracy in the region. Just as for the United States, democracy in the Middle East is a necessity for the national security of Israel.
There are both external and internal barriers to democratization in the Middle East. U.S. foreign policy was one of the most powerful of the external barriers. A reversal of U.S. policy not only enhances the prospects for democracy; its transformation from a negative to a positive force implies that now there are external assets that can be employed against internal barriers. If pro-democracy forces in the Middle East get on board with the new U.S. policy, assuming that the United States is able to convince them of its honest intentions, then the inertia will shift in favor of democracy, and an era of freedom will dawn in the homeland of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.
WHAT CAN THE U.S. DO?
Bush administration officials have already taken the most important step in the right direction. By acknowledging that past policies have been counterproductive and asserting democratization of the Middle East as a key foreign-policy goal, they have placed themselves in a position where their own success will be measured by the success of democracy in the region. The administration now faces political risks if it is seen as wavering in its commitments. By acknowledging the link between terrorism and lack of democracy, they run the risk of being seen as not doing enough to fight terrorism if they fail to promote democracy. Now democracy in the Middle East is necessary not only for U.S. security but also for the legacy of President George W. Bush. Pronouncements alone are not enough, however. The administration will have to take several key steps.
Restore Credibility
The biggest challenge that the Bush administration now faces is distrust and lack of credibility in the Muslim world. If fundamental changes are to take place within Muslim societies, then Muslims must be enthusiastic about the prospects for change. This administration needs to build a partnership for change between Muslims and the United States, and for that to happen, Muslims must trust, respect and once again admire the United States. Without this necessary ingredient of mutual trust and partnership, U.S. policy in the region, whether it concerns political change or just eliminating immediate terrorist threats, is bound to fail. Shibley Telhami, an important analyst of Middle East politics, says it succinctly:
People are not going to trust the message if they don’t trust the messenger, especially in the middle of a crisis in which they see the messenger as instrumental.28
U.S. policy makers must recognize that the United States has suffered significant damage to its credibility, not only in the Muslim world but also in Europe and East Asia.29
Allay Fears of U.S. Aggression
A significant portion of the Muslim population believes that the so-called war on terror is not only a war on Islam but an unfair and unjust effort by a “CrusaderZionist” entity to destroy the Muslim world in order to advance the interests of Israel and fundamentalist Christians, both of whom enjoy extraordinary influence on the White House.30 A quick Google search on the World Wide Web verifies this assertion. As recent Pew research data indicates, even citizens of American allies think that they might be attacked by the United States. As long as fear of American aggression and suspicion about who is shaping U.S. policies and reservations about what motivates U.S. policy continue, there will be animosity, hostility and resistance to American efforts in the region. The United States is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy in the Muslim world, and overcoming it must be the first priority.
Domestic-Political Reforms
There are three things the United States can do to dispel the fear that this is a war on Islam and reduce its credibility gap. A mini regime change within the American establishment can go a long way in restoring the world’s trust.
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- President Bush must recast his foreign-policy team. A new set of faces in the Pentagon could reassure Muslims and the rest of the world that Washington has indeed instituted a policy change: diplomacy, not force is now its first option. Blame for much of the growing anti-Americanism in the world can be directly placed on the manner in which the Department of Defense has prosecuted the war on terror. Easing out those on the preemptive-strike bandwagon will signal to the world that the empire is listening to its provinces. This administration has already made a change in the economic-policy arena.31 It can be done in foreign policy too.
- A regime change must also include a realignment of domestic friends. If the White House can distance itself from some of the problematic Evangelical Christians identified earlier, and bring some Arab and Muslim Americans into the front lines of its war on terror, then it might be able to allay the fears that America is out to destroy Islam. Some key places where a visible presence of American Muslims is needed are the Office of Homeland Security, Office of Global Communications, Department of State and the National Security Council. Multilateralism at home and abroad is always legitimizing, and this administration needs to show that it is willing to trust others and work with them. Only then will others trust it and work with it.
- Finally, the Bush administration must be more balanced in the Palestine-Israel crisis and speed up the process of establishing self-rule in Iraq. A willingness to pressure Israel along with Palestinian leaders will go a long way in improving America’s credit rating in the Middle East. A timetable on Iraq’s reconstruction and transition to self-rule along with a program for gradual American troop withdrawal will also reduce fear of U.S. aggression.
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If the United States really seeks to transform the Muslim world, its relationship with that world must change. In order for this to occur, the United States as well as the Muslim world will have to change.
Reform, like charity, begins at home. Before we can precipitate fundamental changes over there, we must begin to institute parallel reforms over here.
1 See Thomas Carothers, “Promoting Democracy and Fighting Terror,” Foreign Affairs, January 2003, p. 84.
2 The strongest voice on the incompatibility of Islam and democracy is Bernard Lewis. See Bernard Lewis, “Islam and Liberal Democracy: A Historical Overview,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1996, pp. 52-63.
3 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030509-11.html.
4 For more information about CSID and a transcript of the speeches, go to http://www.islam-democracy.org.
5 See Peter W. Singer, “Time for Hard Choices: The Dilemmas Facing U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World,” Analysis Paper #2, October 2002. This can be found at: http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/ singer/20021001.htm. Also see M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “Nice but Tough: A Framework for U.S. Foreign Policy in the Muslim World,” Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 355-362; and M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Political Islam: Interests, Ideas and Ideology,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 29, No. 4, December 1998, pp. 449-462.
6 See Anthony Cordesman, “U.S. and Saudi Arabia: A Strategic Partnership,” Middle East Insight, Vol. 5, May-June 2002.
7 For a detailed review and analysis of U.S. policy and actions towards Iran and the coup against Mosaddeq, see Mark Gasiorowski, “U.S. Foreign Policy towards Iran during the Musaddiq Era,” Middle East and the United States: A Historical and Political Reassessment, ed. David W. Lesch (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 51-66; and M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “Understanding the Roots of Muslim Rage,” Canadian Dimensions, Vol. 35, No. 6, November/December 2001, p. 25.
8 See Hamou Amirouche, “Algeria’s Islamist Revolution: People Versus Democracy?” Middle East Policy, Vol. 5, No. 4, January 1998. Also see John Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 102-105.
9 For a useful exploration of Islamist perceptions of U.S. foreign policy, see Yvonne Y. Haddad, “Islamist Perceptions of U.S. Policy in the Middle East,” Middle East and the United States, pp. 419-437.
10 http://www.tanzeem.org/resources/articles/articles/abidullah-admit%20the%20truth.htm.
11 For an excellent monitoring of the ongoing Russian atrocities against Chechens visit the Chechnya Focus Page maintained by the Human Rights Watch at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/russia/chechnya/.
12 See Human Rights Watch report on the role of the state in the Gujarat massacre; “‘We Have No Orders to Save You’: State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat,” Human Rights Watch, Vol. 14, No. 3, April 2002. This report is also available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/india/. Also see M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “The Tragedy of Gujarat,” http://www.glocaleye.org/gujurat.htm. Amitabh Pal, “Bush Ignores India’s Pogrom,” The Progressive, Vol. 67, No. 7, July 2003, pp. 28-31.
13 Reported by Paul Taylor “Jihadis Gaining, Democrats Losing,” The Pioneer: http://www.meadev.nic.in/ news/clippings/20030408/pio.htm.
14 See report on Islamists electoral gains in The Milliazette: http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/01122002/ 0112200267.htm.
15 See Muqtedar Khan, “U.S. Foreign Policy in the Muslim World: A Barrier to Democracy?” http:// www.glocaleye.org/forpoldem.htm.
16 See Barry Schweid, “Rumsfeld Rules out Religious Iraqi Government,” Associated Press, April 25, 2003.
17 Hassan El-Najjar’s editorial in Aljazeerah titled “June 05, 2003: 36 Years of Israeli Occupation, Terrorism and World Hypocrisy,” is an excellent example. See: www.aljazeerah.info.
18 See the recent survey results conducted by The Pew Research Center at: http://people-press.org/reports/ display.php3?ReportID=185.
19 See Khilafah.com: http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?DocumentID=6968&TagID=2.
20 See the Pew Survey at: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=185.
21 See Fred Strickert, “The Christian Right and Support for Israel,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002, pp. 80-81. See also M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “American Wahhabis sow Seeds of Hate and Bigotry,” The Detroit News, November 26, 2002. See http://www.detnews.com/2002/editorial/0211/ 26/a09-20527.htm.
22 To follow the debate, see the January/February 2003 and May/June 2003 issues of Foreign Affairs.
23 Paula J. Dobriansky, “The Core of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 3, May/June 2003, pp. 141-143.
24 Ibid.
25 See “Carothers Replies,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 3, May/June 2003, pp. 141-145.
26 See Siraj Mufti, “Muslims Love Democracy,” Muslim Democrat, Vol. 4, No. 2, July 2002, p. 1. Also see The Pew Research Center at: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=185.
27 For a more systematic and detailed discussion of the compatibility of Islam and democracy, see John Esposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 1996). Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). Also see the chapter “Reflections on Islam and Democracy,” M. A. Muqtedar Khan, American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 2002), pp. 95-123.
28 Shibley Telhami, “Understanding the Challenge,” The Middle East Journal, Vol. 56, No. 1, Winter 2002, p. 16.
29 See David Wise, “If Bush Is Lying, He Is not the First,” The Washington Post, June 15, 2003, p. BO1; and Kathleen Cahill, “They Don’t Like Us, Worst, They dDn’t Trust Us,” The Washington Post, June 15, 2003, p. BO3. See also M. A. Muqtedar Khan, “War Exposes Limits of America’s Diplomatic Power,” Detroit News, May 7, 2003.
30 See Enwar Masud, The War on Islam (Madrassah Books, 2003). See also Khalil Shikaki, “This Is a War on Islam,” The Guardian, September 11, 2002.
31 In December 2002, President Bush fired his Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and top economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey. See Glen Somerville, “Bush Ousts Economic Team,” Reuters Wire, December 6, 2002.
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