Social democracy becomes secular and gender-egalitarian if social democracy arises and develops in a society that gets richer, more secular, and more gender-egalitarian. "Left social democracy" that Tariq Ali hails in Latin America is not exactly secular nor is it particularly gender-egalitarian: the FSLN and the FMLN voted for a total ban on abortions, even when a woman's life is at risk, which makes abortion laws in Nicaragua and El Salvador more repressive than those in Iran, Iraq (before the US invasion), Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries where abortion to save a woman's life is permitted.
[WS:] This seems circular, Yoshie. Wealth and development not necessarily lead to egalitarianism, secularism etc. Some eight hundred years ago the relationship between the Arab world and Europe was the opposite of today's situation - the Europeans were basically barbarian hordes invading a wealthy and learned Arab civilization. Yet it is Europe that eventually gave birth to secularism and egalitarianism, while Arab world succumbed to backward feudalism or petty autocracy. This shows that wealth of a nation is not causally linked to egalitarian and secular political system.
Much has been written about the causes of democratization, but in my view thinking of it in terms of cause and effect in the same way we think of cause and effect in natural sciences is pretty much misguided. Even if there are any causal relationships in the formation of political system, ascertaining them borders on impossibility due to the "too many variables, too few observations" problem. My own inclination is to think of this - and many other social phenomena - as chance events, something that initially happened as historical accidents, simply because certain sets of factors happened to be aligned at a particular time, and then these accidents becoming institutionalized, reproduced from generations to generations, and enshrined in mythologies giving them an aura of necessity and destiny.
>From that point of view, Western democracy is such a historical accident -
resulting mainly from a stalemate between major powers from the 16th century
onward, or using a more recent metaphor - a multipolar world in which power
was unequally divided among many players, none of which able to ultimately
defeat and subjugate other players. Geographical proximity was probably a
factor too - it kept the competing actors together, and thus influencing
each other, whereas a more spread out configuration (cf. the Islamic world)
might facilitate breaking apart.
If this is true, Western democracy is unlikely to be replicated in other countries that hitherto remained outside its orbit, even if the economic conditions may be replicated. Japan is a good example - the Meiji restoration (1868 onward) created a very successful economy and military might that effectively challenged the European power in the region - first Russia (in 1905) then the US (in 1941) - but that did not lead to the development of political institutions resembling European democracy. In fact, Japan was pretty much militaristic - more in line with its samurai tradition than European democracy. Western style democratic institutions were introduced only aftermath Japan's defeat in WW2 and the US occupation.
Therefore, there is no reason to believe that Islamic nationalism, even if economically successful, will lead to democratization, egalitarianism etc. any more than Meiji restoration did in Japan. There is, however, a reason to believe that - paradoxically - democratization and egalitarianism may be introduced by force and military conquest - perhaps not by the incompetent Bush administration and profiteers in its orbit, but something closer to FDR's "New Deal" crew.
Wojtek