>At 01:39 PM 6/11/2002 -0400, Yoshieu wrote:
>>Islam and Democracy
>>
>>By Richard Morin
>>Sunday, April 28, 2002; Page B05
>>
>>The researchers examined data from more than 100,000 interviews
>>conducted between 1995 and 2001 in 72 countries on six continents
>>as part of the World Values Study. This ongoing project, which
>>began in the early 1980s, is directed by Inglehart in collaboration
>>with a network of social scientists in this country and abroad.
>
>There are many problems with WVS - the main among them is
>cross-national comparability. Thus comparing aggregated scores for
>different countries can be very misleading. But even if Islamic
>countries did score higher on the "democracy" measures, and lower on
>"sex" measures - the interpretation of these results that it is
>about Eros rather than Demos is wrong. Every nation has its
>favourite "sub-human species" - Southerners had Negros, Nazis had
>Jews, and Arabs have women. And it is not about sex, but also - or
>perhaps above all, about economic opportunity, education, abuse, etc.
>see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/ww2000/index.htm
>
>Thus its wrong to say that Arabs are democracy-loving people, it is
>just their different sexual morality - because the oppressed groups
>are identified in their society by gender. It would be wrong to say
>that Nazi Germany or was a democracy, only their religious views
>were peculiar.
The way you write your post suggests that you are conflating being "Muslim" and being "Arab"; the majority of Muslims in the world, however, are non-Arabs, and the largest Muslim population is found in Indonesia.
The article in question doesn't say anything about democracy as a matter of practice; it concerns peoples' beliefs about democracy -- a different (though related) question. It seems uncontroversial to me that those who are denied even a modicum of formal democracy -- as many in predominantly Arab and/or Muslim nations are -- believe more fervently in it than those who can partake in it do.
As for democracy and women's rights, it's not a simple equation. As you could see, for instance, in the example of Algeria, it sometimes takes undemocratic measures -- i.e., measures that violate formal democracy -- to safeguard women's rights.
As far as education, economic opportunities, etc. for women in poor nations are concerned, secularism doesn't necessarily do better than theocracy and other forms of despotism and dictatorship:
***** Iranian Women's Situation has Improved under the Islamic Republic
William O. Beeman
I traveled to Iran recently for the first time in many years. The most surprising development for me was to see clearly that, contrary to American belief, women in the Islamic Republic are better off today than they were under the Pahlavi regime....
...The Islamic Republic has made a special point of emphasizing women's equality in education, employment, and politics as a matter of national pride. Although women have served in the Iranian legislature and as government ministers since the 1950's, there are more women in the current parliament than ever served under the Pahlavi regime.
The average marriage age for women has increased from eighteen years before the Revolution to twenty-one years today. Education for women is obligatory and universal. More than 75% of the nation is under 25 years of age, and for this population, literacy for both men and women is well over 90% even in rural areas. University enrollment is nearly equal for men and women. As women's education has increased, Iran's birthrate has fallen steadily, and is now estimated at a respectable 2.45 percent....
<http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/publications/Iranwomen.htm> *****
To evaluate the degree of democracy, one needs to look beyond labels and into contents. -- Yoshie
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