ACMCU Opinion Pieces
World's Democracies are Facing a Moral Recession
by Muqtedar Khan
(Reprinted Courtesy of Delaware Online)
A radio interview with Professor Khan discussing the crisis in Gaza can be found at the following link, courtesy of WHYY.
I have, for years, been a strong advocate of the democracy, primarily inspired by my experience with American freedoms. As a Muslim who speaks his mind and asks critical questions, I am routinely threatened and maligned by those who, unable to cope with my reason and critique, seek to silence me. American democracy gave me the protection and the opportunity to live life as God intended humans to -- as thinking, reflecting and expressive beings.
I helped form an organization to promote democracy in the Muslim world and wrote a book making the argument that democracy was essential for good Islamic governance. However, in the past few years, democracy has repeatedly let advocates like me down. Let me give you a few examples.
Tony Blair, George Bush and Dick Cheney invaded a country and caused death and destruction in the face of opposition by millions of their own citizens. The invasion of Iraq was a grotesque war crime that democracy could not prevent. Over a million Iraqis died as a direct consequence of the war. Today, many thousands of families would be intact and we would not have a quarter million Iraqi refugees, if the U.S. and U.K. -- both democracies -- had not invaded Iraq.
Today thanks to our "democracy promotion," there are hundreds of Iraqi women forced into prostitution to feed their children. They surely have been liberated. Now they meet "new people" for $8 a day!
Laws have been passed in Britain and the U.S. that make a mockery of the idea of freedom. Discourses have been advanced that have distorted the very idea of morality. Leaders who have repeatedly lied to their own people have been repeatedly elected to office. Killing civilians, torturing, kidnapping and bribing have become standard operating procedures of democracies.
Today, citizens of democracies cannot even distinguish between a war criminal and a statesman. In India, Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, orchestrated a genocide of minorities in 2002. The state machinery worked with thugs to kill over 2,000 people, destroyed thousands of businesses and rendered over a hundred thousand homeless. Modi was condemned worldwide by human rights organizations, but in India, the world's biggest democracy, he was re-elected. In fact an Indian-American, Sonal Shah, who was closely associated with him and his group, is on President-elect Obama's transition team.
Apparently, democracies today have no problem with leaders with bloody hands. This moral decline of democracies is the direct consequence of the war on terror. Citizens have been told that the enemy is so evil that any means used to battle the enemy is justified. The continuing acts of terror, and the coverage in the global media which magnifies and dramatizes them, have blunted the moral sensibilities of citizens to the point that they not only accept whatever their governments do, but also applaud them for it.
This week, the Holy Land saw one of the most deadly of days in its recent history as Israel massacred over 200 Palestinians in Gaza.
For a week before Israel's retaliatory strikes, Hamas fired over 100 rockets into Israel without killing anyone, but providing the necessary justification for Israel, which has now killed over 250 and injured over 300.
As I listen to the statements from the Bush administration, which blames Hamas alone for all the violence, and the Messiah himself holidaying in Hawaii, I am amazed at the complete lack of humanity in their response. There is absolutely no iota of sympathy, or regret or grief for those who died. It is as if their hearts are made of stone.
Terrorism is not just threatening lives but is slowly destroying the humanity of these nations.
Hamas shot a few rockets into Israel; but that is who they are and that is what they do -- they are a terrorist organization.
Israel and the U.S. are supposed to be democracies that care about human rights. But when they massacre hundreds of people and their citizens watch in silence, no protests, no shock, then there is something fundamentally wrong.
I still believe in democracy. But I also fear that today democracies are not only experiencing economic recession, but also a moral recession.
We are gradually accepting things that until recently were taboo. In combating terrorist organizations, we have steadily lowered the moral bar with which we have traditionally judged the worth of democracies.
Unless we wake up and change course very soon, there may be no difference left between democracy and terrorism, and that will be the ultimate victory for terrorism.
Dr. Muqtedar Khan is director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and Fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.