What is Democracy?

We should understand that though we have Muslims talking about Islamic democracies, this is not possible. What democracy actually means is the rule of the people. It was proposed by Greece in Athens before the time of Christ: the Greek philosophers decided that people should decide for their society. Sounds good.  But was it established in Athens? They did have votes, decisions were made, but if we look at the demographics of Greek society, we find that the majority of Greeks were slaves (60%); the slaves and the women had no right to vote, which leaves us with males, who constituted only 15% of the population since the woman population was more than men. That was democracy in practice in Athens.

Democracy is built up on few principles:

1. Equality: Islam is not opposed to this.
2. Rational imperialism: Mental thinking, that is, we can work it out with our minds, we have the intellect and we are able to decide what is good for us through our own reasoning.
3. Discussion and Consent: Few people form a committee and vote. Those that win the vote are the people who decide what is right / wrong.

The idea of majority deciding is not a bad idea in itself but when it comes to the fundamental principles of the society, it becomes dangerous.

If we go back to the issue of human ability to arrive at what is right / wrong, a clear example (found in Magna Carta and other documents of the society) is in the American constitution written in 1877, by the most enlightened minds of the 18^th century, the founding fathers of America. Breaking away from the domination of the British rule, they wrote in Article 1 Section 2, which is called the three-fifth compromise, that black men would be counted as three-fifths of a white man.  This was what they worked out to deal with voting and slaves. They said that when discussing this matter, they knew that some of them had slaves and some did not, so how could their votes be considered equal? This is where the rationale came in. In order to give some value to the person who had more slaves, they had to give some value to the slaves; this was a mathematical principle. Hence the vote of the person who had more slaves had more value than the one who had less. This was done by the ‘enlightened minds’ of the 18^th century! This is the nature of man-made systems.

Another example would be the Hindu system. When one tries to explain Islam to a Hindu, he is quick to respond that Islam is very rigid and that Hinduism is very open to new ideas and accepts change with time. For example, if the horrendous Sati system (the practice of burning the wife along with her dead husband on the funeral pyre) or the practice of having ‘temple prostitutes’ is pointed out to a Hindu, they say that we have abandoned those practices and moved on with the modern times. They feel that this is a sign of progress and flexibility of religion.

However, Islam still clings on to the principles of 1400 years ago. The reality is that if it is from God it should not be changing. If Sati was from God and was good then, it should be good now too. This is not religion; changing religion according to one’s outlook. This is the religion of humans and hence they had to change it. Whenever they make up some law, there is always something wrong with it because we as humans cannot make the perfect system. We will always have to make changes. This is the reality of human systems.

On the other hand, the divine system is unchangeable. This is the conflict of having secular democracy on one hand saying that we have to remove religion from the picture and on other hand that religion has to govern all walks of life; two uncompromising principles. There is no middle ground between the two. If Muslims change any of their principles to suit Western global culture, they are abandoning aspects of Islam, which is no longer Islam. This is the crux of the struggle.