The Riddle of Pluralism

DEMOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES:
THE RIDDLE OF PLURALISM

HABIB C. MALIK
SUMMARY
I divide my paper entitled Democracy and Religious Communities: the Riddle
of Pluralism into two parts: Democracy and Religion: The Problem and Democ-
racy and Political Islam: Pluralism under Siege. A number of themes are treated and
several arguments are presented. At one level the paper is an investigation of different
manifestations of pluralism and their implications for democracy. In the era of glo-
balization the urgent need to address problems arising from differing types of plural-
ism is heightened. Many forms of pluralism do not imply that values are relative.
They only mean that there are different paces of development towards the acceptance
of, or an accommodation with, the principles and tenets of democracy. The slowness
of particular cultures necessitates practical measures in the interim to safeguard vul-
nerable groups usually minority communities and to try to speed up the reception
of democracy in hitherto hostile settings. Often the manner of presenting democracy
to an unfamiliar culture is crucial in avoiding injustice. For example, exporting de-
mocracy to an Islamic, or predominantly Islamic, milieu requires that minority rights
be stressed over majority rule. This, coupled with the principle of subsidiarity, helps
to neutralize the threat of the heresy of numerical democracy which is nothing
more than the tyranny of the majority.
I begin in Part One by investigating the latent tension between democracy and
religion in relation to the question of the nature of truth. For democracy, numbers
determine what is right and true conduct; for religion, truth is utterly independent of
numbers. In the secular West concepts of natural law have been steadily replaced by
positivist approaches that render relative and subjective and situational the deter-
mination of moral behavior. A recent work by Cardinal Ratzinger is used as the launch-
ing point for my critique of secular humanisms discrediting of traditional metaphys-
ics. Developments in Europe that brought about this state of affairs are briefly sur-
veyed. Turning to America, the figure of John Courtney Murray is invoked as a de-
fender of religious liberty in the face of the American brand of secularism. Both
Ratzinger and Murray are to be placed in the tradition of Pope Leo XIII, who back

Democracy. Reality and Responsibility
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PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES: PLENARY SESSION 2000 368
in 1888 condemned the metamorphosis of liberty into boundless license in modern
society. Whether in Europe or in America, the situation in the West is generally one
of pluralism underneath the all-embracing umbrella of a unifying worldview one
with clear Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian roots and liberal/secular humanist (even
post-Christian) extensions. Regardless of the inner tensions between the old roots
and the contemporary branches, this sort of pluralism is very different from the kind
of situation that obtains beyond the West and which I deal with in Part Two: the
plurality of antagonistic worldviews without the benefit of an overarching and unify-
ing civilizational umbrella. The clash of cultural values in non-Western settings can be
far more abrasive than similar clashes occurring within the secure confines of a de-
mocracy. I then move to discuss what Michael Novak has called the conundrum of
pluralism, namely how to maintain diversity within a unified polity and find com-
mon grounds of agreement on the level of basic values. In other words, the question
of the universality of values. Relying on the tradition of Thomas Aquinass philosophy
and its revival by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Aeterni Patris, I affirm the perma-
nent presence of universal moral precepts that are accessible to human reason and are
a part of human nature. These form the basis for natural law and can serve to connect
different cultures and religious beliefs. The example often cited for proving the exist-
ence of universals that cut across cultural and religious barriers is the consensus dis-
played in 1948 at the United Nations around the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Referring to Maritains writings about human rights in the 1940s, I argue that
while this is an important case it came about during quite exceptional historical cir-
cumstances. The abstentions of the Islamic nations mainly over Article 18 also re-
quire careful consideration as regards their implications, particularly in predominantly
Muslim environments.
In Part Two I turn to an in-depth analysis of the detrimental effects that Politi-
cal Islam has had historically, and continues to have today, on pluralism in its midst.
The inherent connection between Political Islam and violence predisposes Muslim
rulers to assume a position of hostility towards native non-Muslim minority com-
munities living in their lands. This is especially unsettling in relation to the treat-
ment of Jews and Christians, or what Islam designates as the People of the Book.
They are given an inferior, second-class status and are known as dhimmis; however,
contrary to some popular notions as well as certain accounts by Western scholars,
the dhimmi category is not one of benevolent tolerance but of subtle and relentless
persecution leading to gradual liquidation of the targeted communities. When it
comes to Islamic attitudes towards the different other there is a remarkable degree
of uniformity and it is not an oversimplification to speak of Islam and Muslims as
a monolithic whole without taking into account the internal diversity found within
Islam. Islam has a dualistic view of the world. Muslims inhabit the Abode of Islam
DEMOCRACY REALITY AND RESPONSIBILITY 369
while the other, the non-Muslim, is automatically classified as a citizen of the Abode
of War. History is nothing but the grand triumphant story of the expansion of the
Abode of Islam at the expense of the Abode of War. Where Muslims live in a
majority and exercise political power, non-Muslims (especially Jews and Christians)
must exist as dhimmis. Even after measures were taken starting in the nineteenth
century to abolish the dhimmi category from the law books, the psychological im-
print of dhimmitude on both victim and oppressor remained and in many cases
intensified. Jihad or holy war, massacres, and a host of other forms of persecution
have recurred throughout the centuries including during modern times. I argue
that in the Wests enthusiasm to package and export democracy to the wider world
it would be highly irresponsible to emphasize the notion of majority rule and
downplay, or not stress enough, the other side of the democratic coin, namely mi-
nority rights. This would be tantamount to an invitation to Political Islam to con-
tinue to persecute its minorities with impunity. Nor should the attempt be made to
export secularism in a forced and artificial manner to parts of the world that are
either not ready for it, or continue to actively resist it. Whether we like it or not,
religion in a place like the Middle East continues to be the ultimate indicator of
individual and group identity. It is not ethnicity, not nationalism, and certainly not
secularism that determine peoples final sense of belonging and of who they are.
Imposing secularism from the outside in a predominantly Islamic context is like
trying to change the given reality with a magic wand. It is a sure recipe for further
violence. This enhances the extremes in Islam and tends to render Islamic modera-
tion somewhat pathetic and marginalized as it is caught in a tug of war between
repressive regimes and fundamentalist options. Worst still, when Westerners are
attacted by the moderate Muslim voices usually living in self-imposed exile in the
West they forget how unrepresentative these voices really are of what Salman Rushdie
has called Actually Existing Islam out there. Attempting to conduct dialogue
with Islam by engaging with these lonely moderates is a non-starter, and opting for
mere platitudes in the name of dialogue with Political Islam can be harmful. At
best it is a political exercise with limited benefits.
I end the paper with a call to the Western democracies to offer the democratic
message to mixed or composite societies beyond the West in the form of a carefully
formulated federalism. This would be in keeping with the all-important Catholic
social doctrine of subsidiarity. It need not be a federalism based on geographic
districts. The concept is flexible enough to be tailored to the givens of a particular
situation. I take Lebanon as my focus in this regard because it represents an inter-
esting and fairly unique case of a divided and differentiated society within a wider
and largely Islamic setting. Lebanon is ideally suited for applying the democracy of
heterogeneous religious communities, in other words for a federation that takes
such religious communities as its basic building blocks. Lebanon is also home to
the last remaining native and free Christian community anywhere between Mo-
rocco and Indonesia. Lebanons Christians over the centuries have proudly and
largely successfully resisted the dhimmi system. Both they and the Muslims have
legitimate fears; however, there is a clear asymmetry of phobias between the two
groups. While Muslims express socio-economic grievances and complaints, Chris-
tians harbor existential fears of survival. As it is today, Lebanon contains eighteen
officially recognized sects or religious communities and is based on a power-sharing
arrangement among them as well as a constitutional recognition of communal au-
tonomy at the level of matters of personal circumstances: marriage, divorce, inher-
itance, and the like. I maintain that democracy in Lebanon is not possible outside
the current system of political sectarianism or confessionalism. A satisfactory re-
sponse to the secular critique would be to create a separate legitimate category for
people who do not want to be associated with any of the existing and recognized
religious communities. This would safeguard pluralism while remaining loyal to the
given historical reality of the centrality of religion in the lives of people in that part
of the world. Taken together, the eighteen communities and the secular non-de-
nominational category would solve many problems in terms of voting, running for
office, education, etc. Perhaps a Lebanon refashioned along these lines in a post-
peace Middle East could serve as a useful model for other similarly divided socie-
ties around the non-Western world. The positivist concept that Islam will eventu-
ally evolve into a more benign version of itself and become more accepting of the
different other is not necessarily wrong; the practical problem is the prohibitive
time scale this is likely to follow, i.e. moving very slowly. In the meantime, security
guarantees are required for protecting indigenous non-Muslim minority communi-
ties in Islamic lands. In my view the federal formula provides the best chance for
this to occur. And an experiment in a federalism of sorts has occurred fairly suc-
cessfully in recent Middle Eastern history with the millet system under the Otto-
man Turks. Nor is a pure reliance on the essential universality of moral laws as
one might safely do in a Western context enough of a guarantee that Political
Islam will not engage in repression. Again, federalism here is the answer.
I Democracy and Religion: The Problem
On the occasion of being conferred the degree of Doctor Honoris
Causa by the LUMSA Faculty of Jurisprudence in Rome on 10 No-
vember 1999, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger addressed the issue of what
he termed juridical positivism and the more basic philosophical and
theological question it raises regarding the nature of truth. In an era
when the end of metaphysics is solemnly proclaimed by a broad con-
tingent of modern philosophers, the implications for law have been
dire. Since metaphysics can no longer serve as the source of law in the
eyes of contemporary thinkers, the concept of the democratic consen-
sus has replaced it as both the source and expression of collective val-
ues. Today, under this juridical positivism, asserts the learned Cardinal:
The majority determines what must be regarded as true and just. In
other words, he continues, law is exposed to the whim of the major-
ity and depends on the awareness of the values of society at any given
moment.
In the secular West this trend manifests itself in a variety of expres-
sions all of which represent conscious departures from the traditional
Christian conception of law. Marriage, for example, has ceased to be
the exclusively accepted form of sanctioned conjugal relationship. The
sense of the scared no longer has any meaning for law, declares Cardi-
nal Ratzinger, and he points to the disappearance of Sunday as a time
for rest and contemplation in order to illustrate the secular rearranging
of the use of free time. Even the hitherto sacrosanct domain of human
life has been rudely invaded and secular laws today protect such prac-
tices as abortion and euthanasia while allowing for genetic manipula-
tion. A limitless liberty in speech and judgment appears to have been
unleashed with the result that profanity and moral relativism have be-
come the unquestioned privilege of the liberated individual. In effect,
the modern secular state has succeeded in undermining metaphysics
and Natural Law thereby precipitating a crisis in human dignity and
compromising the human persons essence.
1
From the outset it becomes evident to anyone investigating the re-
lationship between democracy and religion that there exists a basic ten-
sion, indeed an incompatibility, between the two when it comes to the
question of the nature of truth. For democracy it is all ultimately a
11
The text of Cardinal Ratzingers speech was obtained from ZENIT, an international Catho-
lic news agency located in Rome. See [email protected]; see also www.zenit.org.
matter of numbers, of majorities, of statistics, of votes. The right and
the true becomes that which is acceptable to the largest number of
people who happened at any given point in time to have bothered to
express an opinion. Low voter turnout a phenomenon increasingly
prevalent in parts of the West and related to a rising political apathy in
some affluent societies indicates that vocal majorities are growing
smaller over time. Religion, on the other hand, views truth as inde-
pendent of numbers and as something relying upon no form of human
consensus. Truth is sacred and absolute, meaning it has divine origins
and is ontologically grounded in the Creator Himself. Truth can there-
fore reside in a numerically small group even in a minority of one.
2
The imperium of truth is not and cannot be democratic. There is no
escape from the inherent opposition that pits political notions of de-
mocracy and what they assume about truth against the unchanging and
universal concept of truth offered by religion.
Given the Christian precept of leaving to Caesar what is Caesars
and to God what is Gods, and given the eventual failures of medieval
Christian theocracies (Christendom, politically understood), it was in-
evitable in modern times that Europe, and the West in general, should
embark on the road to secularization. Pivotal historical stations along
the way such as the Protestant Reformation, the Industrial Revolution,
the minimal government political philosophy of John Locke, the
rights movements and declarations of the American and French revo-
lutions, the rationalism and deism of the eighteenth century, and the
anticlerical outbursts of the nineteenth century, all contributed to the
secularizing trend. With the separation of church and state and but-
tressed by the nineteenth century idea of progress came the ascendancy
of positive law over Natural Law. After Protestantism dethroned eccle-
siastical authority in matters of dogma and favored instead an often-
2
In the Bible this is made clear over and over again. The Jews of ancient Israel, as Gods
Chosen People, were usually outnumbered by their enemies. Christ stood alone in the face
of the Sanhedrin and the Roman authorities. The Book of Revelation speaks of the remnant
of 144,000 who will remain faithful to the truth. Other examples of truth not being numeri-
cally determined abound in scripture.
unbridled individual liberty, the stage was set for an easy acceptance of
democracy in which proper norms of conduct are decided by the bal-
lot. Along with the secularization of Europe came the promotion of a
degree of moral subjectivism and relativism as the legitimate basis for
legislation. As church and state went their separate ways, governments
view of the role of religion in society also underwent a metamorphosis,
a development well captured by the eminent historian Owen Chadwick:
Government likes religion to bless its acts, crown its dictators,
sanction its laws, define its wars as just, [and] be decorous master
of ceremonies. And since on grounds of religion religious men
may criticize acts or laws or wars or modes of waging war, gov-
ernment prefers quietness and contemplation to excess of zeal.
Though religion is important to government, it does not value
excess of religion. It is happy with general morality, reasonable
and moderate, but is uncomfortable with too much enthusiasm.
3
Whether authoritarian or liberal democratic, secular governments
throughout Europe since the nineteenth century have opted to keep
religion and the ethics it entails at arms length. It is true that Christian
democratic parties have flourished in European politics, but they have
been strained attempts at a synthesis albeit a Protestant one in inspi-
ration and conducted on secular terms between hollow vestiges of
religion, and democracy, respectively. The parting of church and state
in the contemporary period in the West appears all but irreversible.
Worse still is the consistent refusal by secular humanism to admit
where its ethical roots lie and from whence much of its moral inspira-
tion derives. This unrecognized patrimony humanisms lost Christian
heritage as Solzhenitsyn has called it finds itself increasingly under
siege today in the democratic states of the West where (again
Solzhenitsyn) a total emancipation appears to have occurred from the
moral heritage of Christian centuries.
4
23
Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 117.
24
Ronald Berman, editor, Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, and Six
Later Reflections (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1980), p. 17 and p. 18.
In America the equivalent of Cardinal Ratzingers critique of secu-
lar democracies came forcefully and recurringly from a young and
dynamic Jesuit priest: John Courtney Murray. The American brand of
secularism, as a creative response to the religious pluralism of Ameri-
can society, posed in the view of Murray and others a distinct danger
to religious liberty. Murray advocated an active engagement by the
Church in the day-to-day affairs of the public square and he regarded
the states duty as ensuring the freedom required for religion in gen-
eral, and the Church in particular, to articulate its message to society.
The role of government is to see to it, by appropriate measures both
positive and negative, that the Church is free to go about her creative
mission; and likewise to see to it that such conditions of order obtain
in society as will facilitate the fulfillment of the Churchs high spir-
itual task. Government is not to dictate the content of this task,
Murray emphasized, but within limits government can make possi-
ble or impossible, easier or more difficult, the Churchs exclusive task
of caring for the needs of souls.
5
For this reason Murray, ahead of
his time, saw the need for Catholics, Jews, and other Christian groups
to combine their efforts to rehabilitate a moral authority that is inde-
pendent of the secular state.
Nowhere are the foundations for Cardinal Ratzingers critique of
democracys approach to truth, or John Courtney Murrays defense of
religious liberty, more in evidence than in Pope Leo XIIIs encyclical of
1888, Libertas Praestantissimum. If human reason makes of itself the
measure of all things and democratic states derive their authority from
the people, then, concluded the Pope, the greatest number would de-
termine what is right. It follows that we would have the doctrine of
the supremacy of the greater number, and that all right and all duty
[would] reside in the majority.
6
Similarly, he continued, the law de-
15
John Courtney Murray, Leo XIII and Pius XII: Government and the Order of Religion,
in Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism, edited by J. Leon Hooper, S.J.
(Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 79.
16
See Libertas Praestantissimum (Human Liberty) in The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo
XIII, translations from approved sources (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903), p. 145.
termining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a
majority.
7
Throughout the encyclical Leo warned against the degen-
eration of legitimate liberty into boundless license and unrestrained
excess.
8
He saw such a development proceeding in parallel with a rising
intolerance of religious liberty, particularly freedom for the Catholic
Church.
9
What perils Leo in his day detected looming on the horizon
have become a sordid reality in our era.
Returning to America, the issue there is, and has always been, one
of religious pluralism versus a steadily pervading and uniquely homog-
enizing secularism. Yet this pluralism, when examined carefully, dis-
closes a broad range of common values and terms of reference pre-
cisely because it has been molded over two centuries in the streamlin-
ing crucible of American culture. American pluralism therefore, as the
historian Daniel Boorstin has described it, is a self-liquidating ideal.
This means that in the very process of celebrating the rich diversity that
makes up America, ethno-religious variety is sublimated into the amaz-
ing unity that defines the American experience and out of which emerges
a truly American type:
Of course, there were other regions of the worldthe Balkans,
the Middle East, South Asiawhich also were a melange of peo-
ples and languages and religions. What would distinguish the
United States was that we would give our varied peoples the
opportunity to become one. As they were dissolved in the Ameri-
can melting pot they would become part of a single country.
10
Such a process, while unique to America, shares with Europe the
fact that in both instances a single overarching worldview a secularized
humanism resting on firm though often unacknowledged Judeo-Chris-
tian foundations forms a western civilizational umbrella of collective
values covering a vast tapestry of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and socio-
cultural particularisms. In the case of the United States the particulars
17
Ibid., p. 146.
18
Ibid., especially p. 155 and p. 161.
19
Ibid., pp. 158-59.
10
Daniel J. Boorstin, Democracy and Its Discontents: Reflections on Everyday America (New
York: Random House, 1971), p. 87.
were largely churned and homogenized, while in Europe there were
fewer of them to begin with and these remained for the most part
distinct within the rubric of the single unifying civilization.
Throughout the democracies of the West, whether European or
American, there operates an undeclared assumption that differences
arising from the existing pluralism in society are to be aired under the
sway of three non-negotiable premises: the rule of law, a tolerant civil-
ity, and a modicum of universally accepted moral norms of conduct.
These are the rules of the game, as it were, taken for granted by all
players no matter how far apart they might be on other essentials. The
reason this is so is clear, as stated earlier: the presence of the all-em-
bracing worldview consisting of Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian roots and
liberal/secular humanist branches. This formidable cultural synthesis has
entailed at once a separation of religion and politics and a simultaneous
creative interpenetration of the spiritual and secular to produce universal
practical affirmations. Cardinal Ratzinger, Father Murray, and many promi-
nent religious intellectuals before or since can lament irregularities and
unresolved tensions, warn against constraints on religious liberty, deplore
excesses in secular assertion and the decline in morals, and challenge the
over-prominence of positive law. They are absolutely justified in doing all
these things and the power of their critique serves as an enriching correc-
tive to further abuse and extremism. They do so, however, knowingly
within the comfortable confines of the prevailing and overwhelmingly
accepted worldview that defines the West.
While observing closely mid-nineteenth century America, Alexis de
Tocqueville took note of the pluralism manifested within the dominant
religion:
Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all sects
preach the same moral law in the name of God.Moreover, all
the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity
of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same.
11
11
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. I, revised by Francis Bowen and edited by
Phillips Bradley, 7
th
edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1959), p. 314.
Yes, it was a straightforward and less complicated America upon
which de Tocqueville directed his discerning gaze in those days. Today,
a century-and-a-half later, the worldview forming an all-encompassing
tent above the complexity of America and the West as a whole has
surely been modified, in certain instances expanded, in others altered
(some would insist disfigured), yet the crucial fact is that a single unify-
ing civilizational reference point continues to exist and subsume all
within its broad perimeter. This is certainly not the case beyond the
West, particularly in those areas with divided or composite societies
and mixed religious communities where democracy has had a hard time
securing a foothold. The opposition between radical secular humanism
and traditional Judeo-Christian morality that one witnesses being played
out in the West, while stark and even vicious at times, pales in its impli-
cations for public life before the more awesome clash of values among
differing religions in non-democratic settings. This is not to make light
of the dizzying multiplicity of moral and amoral positions obtaining in
the West on vital issues like abortion, nor is it to neglect to applaud the
admirable moral consensus that emerged, for example, against racial
discrimination in America in the sixties. It is simply to say that the
debates and disputes generated by pluralism in a democracy that is
underpinned by considerable cultural cohesion and the recognition of
some shared values these debates and disputes are less threatening
and more easily manageable than their counterparts unfolding in an
environment poorly receptive to democratic ideals and exhibiting a
plurality of antagonistic fundamental outlooks.
There are those who assert correctly that no matter how hetero-
geneous any given pluralism might be there exist universal moral
precepts accessible to right reason that will always constitute a firm
meeting ground for disparate views and beliefs. Advocates of this
position enjoy an eminent historical lineage and can refer to some
highly respectable authority figures. A case in point is the example
of the revival of Thomist philosophy within Catholicism following
the famous call by Leo XIII in his encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879)
for Catholics to return to the thought of Thomas Aquinas, the An-
gelic Doctor.
12
Neo-Thomism, as it has been called, maintains the Natu-
ral Law tradition which appeals to the timeless and divinely ordained
moral universals that imprint human nature and that are discernible
through reason. It is here that the conundrum of pluralism is sup-
posed to find its ultimate resolution.
13
In fact one example often cited is the unanimity (counting only the
favorable votes without the abstentions) that was displayed in the United
Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 when the final draft
of what became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was
adopted. This is an important case because here you had representa-
tives of some sixty member nations embodying and reflecting nearly all
the cultures, languages, ethnicities, and religions of the world the
ultimate pluralism. Moreover, what was being voted upon was no ordi-
nary document advancing a perfunctory set of propositions; it aimed at
nothing less than defining what it means to be human and to have
rights and be entitled to freedoms, in other words a value-laden docu-
ment with profound philosophical and political implications.
If wide-ranging differences could be transcended and the people
holding them could agree on a nucleus of basic principles such as are
found in the Universal Declaration, then pluralism ceases to be the
insurmountable obstacle to national and international harmony that some
have made it out to be. Writing about rights in the late 1940s around
12
It can be safely argued that next to Pope John Paul II, Leo XIII has been singlehandedly
the most influential Catholic figure of the last hundred-and-fifty years. By ending the
Kulturkampf against the Church in Germany, launching the First Vatican Council in 1870,
reviving scholastic philosophy (Aquinas perennial philosophy that harmonizes faith and
reason), and presenting a series of powerful and far-reaching encyclicals on a variety of
pressing issuesfor example Rerum Novarum (1891) on the social question and Libertas
Praestantissimum (1888) on the political question, Leo represented a watershed in the his-
tory of modern Catholicism and became the architect who laid the foundations for crucial
developments in twentieth century Catholicism.
13
The phrase is taken from a talk by Michael Novak given in Beirut, Lebanon on 7 December
1998 at an international conference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the pivotal role played by Charles Malik in the elabora-
tion and adoption of that document. See Michael Novak, Human Dignity, Human Rights,
in First Things, edited by Richard John Neuhaus, 97 (November 1999), p. 39.
the time of the adoption of the Universal Declaration, the French
Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain stressed the primacy of the prac-
tical over the theoretical domain: The question raised at this point is
that of the practical agreement among men who are theoretically op-
posed to one another.
14
Maritain related how proponents of polarized
ideologies at a meeting of the French National Commission of UNESCO
to discuss human rights had explained the fact that they had managed
to come up with a single accepted listing of rights: Yes, we agree on
these rights, providing we are not asked why.
15
Indeed this is what
transpired within the UNs Human Rights Commission and during the
final voting on the proposed document: the advocates of a liberal-
individualistic, a communistic, or a personalist type of society, said
Maritain, will lay down on paper similar, perhaps identical, lists of the
rights of man.
16
Both the practical incentive to agree in order to act concertedly
and the presence of underlying and abiding moral imperatives shared
by all resulted in the spectacular consensus around the Universal
Declaration that was witnessed in 1948. The common tenets, as
Maritain called them, cutting across the myriad outlooks and beliefs,
guaranteed the possibility to build out of the existing pluralism a
society of free men.
17
In Western democracies, also, where any plu-
ralism is firmly ensconced in the bosom of the prevailing worldview,
common tenets can be relied upon to provide the necessary bind-
ing glue for building and sustaining the polity: The reality of an
objective moral order that can be discerned from a careful reflection
on human nature and human action thus provides a crucial layer of
the moral-cultural foundation on which pluralistic democratic politi-
cal community can be built.
18
14
Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 76.
15
Ibid., p. 77.
16
Ibid., p. 106.
17
Ibid., p. 109.
18
George Weigel, Soul of the World: Notes on the Future of Public Catholicism (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), p. 166. Weigel continues:
There have been tremendous instances of peaceful pluralist accord
in the lands where democracy originally sprouted and matured, yet
matters tend to be very different elsewhere around the world. Histori-
ans and scholars concur that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
was born under highly exceptional international circumstances, namely
during a rare window of opportunity between the end of World War II
and the start of the Cold War a rent, as it were, in the otherwise
turbulent fabric of history. The impressive consensus achieved there
can hardly be taken as a model for other cases of pluralist rapport when
they involve a multiplicity of antagonistic total outlooks. Furthermore,
the abstentions in the final voting on the Universal Declaration merit
closer scrutiny. The Islamic states, for example, were on the verge of
voting against the passage of the document because of a single provi-
sion in Article 18 declaring the right of anyone to change his or her
religion. Islam regards this as tantamount to sanctioning apostasy (ridda),
which is a crime punishable by death according to strict sharia law.
Thanks to no small amount of effective lobbying, diplomatic cajoling,
and some last-minute behind-the-scenes persuasion, the Islamic del-
egations backed away from voting against the document and decided
instead to abstain.
19
Much of what has been said earlier regarding religious pluralism in
the West needs to be tempered, if not seriously qualified, when talking
The moral obligations of othersincluding racially, ethnically, and/or religiously different
othersare a mirror in which I can discern my own moral obligations, and indeed my own
humanity. And that sense of common moral obligation is the basis of democratic commu-
nity in a civil society, a society in which the chasms of racial, ethnic, and religious difference
are bridged for purposes of achieving the common good.
19
Actually the Islamic states voted in favor of each of the 30 articles separately. They only
abstained on two articles: Article 18 endorsing the freedom to change ones religion, and
Article 16 offering equal rights for women. Credit for this outcome must go to the liberal-
minded delegate from Pakistan, Zafrullah Khan, and to Charles Malik of Lebanon, the
chairman of the Third Committee that saw the Universal Declaration through to the final
vote and adoption by the UN General Assembly. For more on this fascinating process and
the personalities behind it see the upcoming book by Mary Ann Glendon on the making of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights tentatively entitled Rights from Wrongs (New
York: Random House, 2001).
about predominantly Islamic environments containing indigenous non-
Muslim minority communities. This is a stark and sobering reality. It
does not mean that universality of moral values somehow stops at the
outskirts of Muslim societies not at all. The human mind and the
human conscience will respond to the beckonings of moral universals
and of Natural Law anytime and anywhere regardless of context. What
it does mean, however, is that in certain settings:
and the Islamic world is one of them awareness is awakened
more slowly and the temporal pace of this awakening, the response
time, is often far too incremental and even glacial to affect the here and
now. In other words, the rate of receptivity of universal values by the
receiving culture is crucial. Therefore practical arrangements, in par-
ticular democratic ones devised for the peaceful coexistence of hetero-
geneous religious belief systems, cannot always rely in such environ-
ments on the ubiquity and universality of values readily asserting them-
selves. In the West we are dealing with pluralism within an intelligible,
coherent, largely unified cultural context and historical experience. In
the East, particularly the Islamic world where you do not have the
separation of religion and politics nor a two-hundred-year secularizing
trend, one encounters at best an uneasy agglomeration of a plurality of
contentious, religiously defined worldviews, but more pervasively one
comes across the active subjugation of differing religious communities
by a dominant Political Islam.
II Democracy and Political Islam: Pluralism under Siege
In his seminal work on the clash of civilizations, Samuel Huntington
employs a phrase that evokes a world of meanings: Islams Bloody
Borders.
20
Indeed it seems that wherever the Islamic world comes in
contact with a different other, there is blood to be found. More arrest-
ing is the fact that in todays world this appears to be true only with
20
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 254-65.
respect to Islam no other other is encased in a circumference of
red the way Islam is: From Egypt to Kashmir and Mindanao, from
Bosnia and Kosovo to Chechnya, from southern Sudan to East Timor
and to Ambon and Maluku in the Moluccan islands; not to mention
Lebanon and Israel the list is a long one. This phenomenon is not
due principally to the many enemies that surround the Islamic world
and constantly harass its edges as a number of Western apologists and
conspiratorially minded Muslims would have us imagine. The primary
reason for the bloody borders is inherent; it is the organic connec-
tion that has always existed between Political Islam and violence. In
other words, the inability of Islam to view the different other except in
adversarial terms.
21
There are many variations of Islam and a correspondingly diverse
community of Muslims. It is certainly true that to speak of Muslims
or Islam in blanket fashion or in monolithic terms can be misleading.
However, one encounters a remarkable degree of uniformity when it
comes precisely to Islamic portraits of the other especially the Chris-
tian, and even more so, the Jew.
22
In this context, therefore, it is not as
much of an oversimplification to refer to an Islamic view or Muslim
outlook. And nowhere is this streamlined Muslim attitude towards
the non-Muslim more in evidence than in situations where non-Muslim
communities happen to live under Islamic rule. The historical record is
replete with instances of the active reduction by Muslims in power of
those non-Muslim communities to second-class status. The habitual and
21
It is necessary to state here that such a culture of violence is not always directed against the
non-Muslim; it preys as easily upon the sons and daughters of the faith as it does on the
outsider. Witness as an example the case of intra-Islamic violence in present-day Algeria or
Afghanistan.
22
In the Fatiha (The Opening) of the Koran, the last two lines refer to two groups not in the
straight path: those against whom Thou art wrathful (meaning the Jews), and those
who are astray (meaning the Christians). See Koran, sura of The Opening, 7. All English
translations of Koranic verses are taken from The Koran Interpreted, trans. Arthur J. Arberry
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). For the authoritative source that offers this inter-
pretation, see the Koranic exegesis of Tabari (c. 838-923) in Abi Jafar Mohammad Bin-Jarir
Al-Tabari, Jami Al-Bayan an Ta`wil Aay Al-Qur`an, vol. 1, 2
nd
ed. (Cairo: Mustafa Al-Baba
Al-Halabi publishers, 1954), pp. 79ff (on the Jews), and pp. 83ff (on the Christians).
oft-repeated anecdotes of tolerance that have become stereotypical
in so much of the specialized literature on Political Islam cannot mask
the deplorable conditions that native non-Muslim communities living
in a predominantly Islamic environment have had and continue to
endure.
23
Several ingredients in the Islamic worldview, particularly as it re-
lates to non-Muslims, explain why pluralism has had to steer such a
rough course in Muslim lands. Islams classical division of the world
into two sharply defined and segregated realms, known respectively as
the Abode or House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) where Muslims live in a
majority as an umma (Islamic community) and exercise political power,
and the Abode of War (Dar al-Harb) which includes everywhere else
outside and beyond the first realm, serves to anchor an a-priori attitude
of hostility towards the non-Muslim. This dualism was spawned and
nurtured during the early period of conquests when Islam confronted
and overcame its surroundings through the sword. But the primordial
dichotomous outlook of the two antagonistic abodes survived the tur-
bulent birth and spread of the new faith to become ingrained in the
official, as well as popular, Muslim mindset. The Abode of War was
looked upon as the realm where confusion and falsehood reigned, and
hence as the natural and legitimate expansion ground for Dar al-Islam.
In fact history was no more than the account of the triumphant exten-
sion of Dar al-Islam at the expense of Dar al-Harb. A religiously sanc-
23
Invariably, one comes across descriptions of the moderation, the gentleness, and the human-
ity of Islamic ruleits tolerance of non-Muslims living under its writ. The late Albert Hourani,
for example, barely touches on persecutions and tends to emphasize harmony of Christians
and Jews under Islam in the urban areas (cities); see his A History of the Arab Peoples
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 117-19. See also the rosy
accounts of Sir Adolphus Slade (1802-77) of the life of Christian subjects under Ottoman
rule, taken from his Records of Travel in Turkey, Greece, etc., in two volumes (London, 1832;
reprinted 1854) and quoted in Bernard Lewis, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in
the Middle East (Chicago: Open Court, 1993), pp. 69-71. This type of account, despite its
defects, remains far superior to more recent ones that squarely lay the blame for persecution
on the victim. See as an example Kenneth Cragg, The Arab Christian: A History in the
Middle East (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991). See also Habib C.
Maliks critical review of Craggs book in The Beirut Review: A Journal on Lebanon and the
Middle East, no. 3 (spring 1992), pp. 109-22.
tioned xenophobia resting on an us and them division of believers
and unbelievers took hold. Infidelity, or kufr, was the prevailing feature
of the Abode of War where the unbelievers dwelled. The sharia, or
Islamic law, makes jihad (holy war) a sacred duty for all Muslims and in
several places the Koran exhorts the believers to jihad, namely to fight
or kill in Gods way.
24
Despite Islams claim to be the final fulfillment of both Judaism and
Christianity, with Mohammad being proclaimed as the Seal (the last) of
the Prophets, the standard Islamic designation of everything that pre-
ceded Islam is jahiliyya (the age of ignorance). Such a concept repre-
sents a radical break with history and an abrupt discontinuity in its
progression. It automatically cancels the intrinsic value of the predeces-
sor, who is then never studied on his own terms nor assessed through
the prism of his frame of reference.
25
This disruption of history in effect
predisposes to violence: smashing idols, battling the vestiges of igno-
rance, and rectifying by force religious waywardness become compel-
ling obsessions for the zealous Muslim believer. Hence there is no per-
manent peace with the forces of infidelity only temporary truces to
be broken by the Muslim, and jihad resumed, whenever more favorable
conditions prevail.
Islam distinguishes between two main categories of unbelievers:
whom the Koran designates as the People of the Book (namely Jews
and Christians; Koran, sura of The Table, 76), and all the rest (mem-
bers of other religions and pagans). Being grounded in a reworking of
certain Old Testament stories as well as in Christian heterodoxy (spe-
cifically Arianism and Docetism), Islam from the start was very self-
conscious of its Jewish and Christian roots. From the earliest Islamic
period provisions had to be devised to accommodate the presence of
24
See as examples Koran, sura of the Cow, 215 and 243; sura of the House of Imran, 168; sura
of the Women, 73; sura of the Ranks, 3; and sura of Repentance, 110.
25
It is amazing how much ignorance there is of both the Old and New Testaments in learned
Islamic circles. One scholar called it Islamic Self-sufficiency. See William Montgomery
Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misperceptions (London: Routledge,
1991), pp. 41-44.
non-Muslim minority communities belonging to these People of the
Book within the Abode of Islam. Members of these communities were
called dhimmis (those under the protection of Muslims) and included
Jews, Christians, and later when the authorities needed additional
revenues from taxation Zoroastrians. Specific rules attributed origi-
nally to the Caliph Omar were instituted governing the daily life of
dhimmis under Islamic rule and their relations with Muslims.
26
Although
it became customary, both in Islamic sources as well as among Western
apologists for Islam, to view the dhimmi system as compassionate and
humane (simply because it eschewed direct physical violence against
those classified as dhimmis who strictly observed the rules), this system
was in fact discriminatory and demeaning. Not only did it legally insti-
tute a second-class status for these conquered non-Muslims (a kind of
religious apartheid); dhimmi prescriptions taken collectively constituted
a subtle form of religious persecution.
Over time the dhimmi system has functioned not as a system of
tolerance but of liquidation, with the expectation that it would eventu-
ally lead to hidaya (bringing the lost to the right path, i.e. conversion to
Islam). Entire communities toiling under the dhimmi burden were re-
duced in numbers either through wholesale conversions to Islam to
escape the stifling restrictions of the system, or through emigration out
of Dar al-Islam. There is nothing benevolent about dhimmi status. The
reputed economic prosperity of some non-Muslim minorities living in
26
These rules, known as the Pact of Omar, eventually received wide approval by doctors of
Islamic jurisprudence and were initially collected and published by Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya
(d. 1350) in his book Ahkam Ahl al-Dhimma, 2 vols., ed. by Sheikh Subhi Saleh (Beirut:
Dar Al-Ilm Lilmalayin publisher, 1981). They cover such matters as a compulsory special
poll tax (the jizya, or literally penalty tax); special dress; rules for subservient behavior so
as to remain in perpetual humiliation in the eyes of the Muslim; a prohibition on building
new places of worship or renovating existing ones; a ban on the ringing of church bells, the
sale of alcohol, the display of crosses, or the open celebration of religious festivals such as
Palm Sunday processions; and an interdiction on the carrying of weapons and an exemp-
tion from military service. In addition, a dhimmis testimony against a Muslim was not
accepted at a court of law and dhimmis were not allowed to marry Muslim women whereas
the reverse was possible. It is evident from this cursory profile of the dhimmi category that
the concept is in urgent need of demythologizing in order to cease to connote tolerance in
the mind of the misinformed.
predominantly Islamic urban areas, in the sporadic instances when it
occurred, was due to two main factors unrelated to any supposed good
will on the part of the authorities: the state needed the expertise of
these unbelievers, and they did not constitute a political threat since, in
the nature of the case, they could not have any aspirations to the
Caliphate. Upon deeper probing therefore, no set of redeeming nu-
ances emerges that somehow justifies the ravages of dhimmi degrada-
tion. Dhimmitude, as the scholar Bat Yeor aptly calls it, becomes
with time a state of mind embodied as much in ideology and legal texts
as it is in collective perceptions:
Dhimmitude can be defined as the totality of the characteristics
developed in the long term by collectivities subjected, on their
own homeland, to the laws and ideology imported through jihad.
Dhimmitude represents a collective situation and is expressed by
a specific mentality. It affects the political, economic, cultural,
sociological, and psychological domainsall these aspects being
interdependent and interactive.
27
Most striking about dhimmitude are the lasting psychological scars
it inflicts on the victim communities and which long outlast any politi-
cal and/or legal liberalization in Islamic lands. Thus the dhimmi syn-
drome, according to Yeor, is one of psychological conditioning and
represents a collection of mental attitudes and behaviors linked to
dhimmitude and common to the different groups which express them
with greater or lesser intensity depending on circumstances. The basic
components of the dhimmi syndrome lie in the combined psychologi-
cal effects of vulnerability and humiliation.
28
In the modern period, beginning with the Ottomans in the mid-
nineteenth century, attempts were made to proclaim equality in citizen-
ship between Muslims and non-Muslims and to institute legal and ad-
27
Bat Yeor, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, 7
th
-
20
th
Centuries, trans. (from French) by Miriam Kochan and David Littman (Madison, Teaneck:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), p. 221.
28
Ibid., p. 235.
ministrative reforms. One would have reasonably expected such devel-
opments to ease the burden of discrimination and persecution suffered
by the non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Paradoxically, the
opposite occurred and the roster of massacres perpetrated against vari-
ous Christian populations of the empire from the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury to the eve of World War II speaks for itself.
29
Such was the sad
record of this so-called era of emancipation when dhimmi status was
abolished from the books by imperial order, but hardly eradicated from
the hearts and psyche of both victim and oppressor. The same is true in
many contemporary Arab and Islamic countries where discrimination
against native non-Muslims persists and threatens to erupt into active
persecution at any moment despite modernizing overhauls to the con-
stitutions and legal systems.
* * *
The lofty nobility of the democratic ideal, along with the dedicated
urge to spread it far and wide, are without a doubt two of humankinds
greatest achievements. So many today chant with Thomas Carlyle: Why
should not all nations subsist and flourish on Democracy, as America
does?
30
The late-twentieth century was marked by the proliferation of
democracy in many countries such as Eastern Europe hitherto deprived
of the benefits of free expression, free markets, and political participa-
tion. We see the established democracies actively seeking to propagate
their systems of government and their open markets all over the world.
Under such slogans as yes to the market economy, no to the market
society, leaders of Western democracies think they have presented the
29
The Christians in the city of Damascus were massacred in 1860; Mount Lebanon saw the
outbreak of sectarian hostilities that same year; Bulgarians were massacred in 1876; Arme-
nians were repeatedly slaughtered in 1895, 1909, and 1915; Syriac villages in southern and
southeastern Turkey were razed to the ground on several occasions and their inhabitants
killed in 1895, 1915, and 1918; and Assyrian and Chaldaean communities in southeastern
Turkey and northern Iraq were targeted in 1918 and 1933.
30
Thomas Carlyle, As to a Model Republic, from The Present Time in Latter-Day Pam-
phlets (1850), reprinted in The Faber Book of America, edited by Christopher Ricks and
William L. Vance (London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992), p. 176.
essence of their message while simultaneously warning against the dan-
gers of excessive materialism and its social consequences.
31
As the euphoria about democracy explodes and the enthusiasm to
package and export it in every direction becomes a driving obsession,
care needs to be exercised to understand accurately the peculiarities of
the recipient cultures and their societies. Many of these potential con-
sumers of democracy are far less prepared (or inclined) to accept it
than Eastern Europe was on the eve of the collapse of the former So-
viet Union and the end of the Cold War. They were never under the
umbrella of the separation of church and state and the relentless
secularization of two centuries. This is painfully true, for example, of
the world of Islam. There, whatever pluralism is to be found in these
overwhelmingly Muslim societies is for the most part squashed, or
drained of any creative vitality by centuries of subjugation and
dhimmitude. One invariably comes across versions of oriental despot-
ism among the ruling regimes in these lands, or, on the other end of the
spectrum, militant fundamentalist extremism. Caught in the crossfire
between these two vicious forces are the beleaguered non-Muslim com-
munities and the pathetic Muslim moderates who hardly ever seem to
affect the course of events in their own societies.
This generally sorry state in which Islamic moderation finds itself
renders it for all practical purposes an elusive mirage in the quest for
international dialogue between the West and the Islamic world. Sure
the Saudi dynasty is classified as moderate in Washington because it
acquiesces to the demands of American foreign policy in the Middle
East. At home, however, the same dynasty is anything but moderate on
every level that counts in the daily lives of its citizens. Politics alone
does not determine moderation and never has. Liberal-minded indi-
vidual Muslims, while very sincere in most cases, are usually an unenvi-
able and lonely lot. Sooner or later, if they survive physically, these
liberal Muslims discover it is almost impossible to continue to exist in
31
Statement made by French prime minister Lionel Jospin at the Six Nation Dialogue held on
21 November 1999 in Florence, Italy.
an environment governed by the writ of Political Islam and remain
outspokenly critical. They either have to become silent or tone down
the rhetoric appreciably, or they have to pack and head for freer pas-
tures meaning the West. Often so-called moderate Islamic regimes
find they are compelled to restrain, or even clamp down on, critical
liberal voices in their midst in order to placate a more dangerous and
determined extremist faction or fringe. The pull factor towards repres-
sion is very strong in an Islamic setting, and the underpinning ideologi-
cal rationalizations and justifications for this behavior are all there to be
invoked when needed. Lone liberal Muslims here and there, especially
at dialogue conferences or among exile migr communities in the
West, will speak of the need to reinterpret doctrines like the Two
Abodes dualism, the dhimmi designation, the oppressive edicts of the
sharia, the fusing of religion and politics, and so on. The Islamic estab-
lishment by and large, however, is conservative and unyielding, remain-
ing impervious to such overtures and refusing to entertain seriously
these reformist outlooks. The result is that the liberal voices eventually
discover how unrepresentative of Islamic realities they really are. They
may discover it, but their Western audience including apologist aca-
demics, ecclesiastical officials reaching out to conduct religious dialogue,
or policy planners attempting to soften the image of some of their bru-
tal allies either out of ignorance or wishful thinking or design, more
often than not does not. Actually existing Islam, as Salman Rushdie
calls it (and he of all people ought to know) exhibits granite, heartless
certainties (again, Rushdies words). It can be defined as the political
and priestly power structure that presently dominates and stifles Mus-
lim societies.
32
It is what this author has chosen to refer to throughout
as Political Islam.
32
Quoted from a speech given by Salman Rushdie in December 1991 in New York City
entitled: What is my single life worth? and later printed in The Penguin Book of Twenti-
eth-Century Speeches, ed. Brian MacArthur (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), p. 485. Rushdie
goes on to declare: Actually Existing Islam has failed to create a free society anywhere on
earth.
The travails of Islamic moderation also create problems for those in
the West seeking to engage in meaningful dialogue with Islam. In the
abstract, almost any form of dialogue is preferable to the complete sev-
ering of contacts. However, dialogue with Islam requires clearly de-
fined goals and an a-priori idea of the built-in, and therefore inescap-
able, limitations of such a dialogue. Both the clarity of goals and the
awareness of limits are woefully lacking in the kinds of contacts that
take place nowadays between Christians and Muslims and that pass for
dialogue. When the Churches of the West, in particular the mainline
Churches, engage in dialogue with representatives of the Islamic faith
the outcome, at best, is usually a form of least-common-denominator
ecumenism expressed in a string of platitudes: we are both Abrahamic-
monotheistic religions; we worship the same God; the Christ of Chris-
tian faith and the Jesus (Issa) of the Koran are really one and the same;
and so on. Aside from being essentially dishonest, such platitudes serve
nothing but the respective political agendas of those exchanging them.
This is dialogue conducted at any cost. It is dialogue for the sake of
dialogue. It is politicized dialogue.
33
By serving to legitimize a repres-
sive status quo, this form of dialogue is providing Muslim authorities,
whether religious or political, with tangible political gains and an image
face-lift. To add insult to injury, the dialogue process is often predi-
cated on the Christian side by an assumption or premise that the only
valid form of Christian existence in Islamic settings is the dhimmi one.
This is tantamount to condoning persecution and canceling out a rich
and entirely other experience in history: that of free and dignified Chris-
tian existence in a Muslim environment.
Dialogue between two worldviews riddled with glaring mutual
incompatibilities has clear limitations and therefore must have as its
modest objective the honest and open presentation of each position as
33
Naturally, politicians can engage in this form of dialogue. During the Kosovo war in
spring 1999 many American officials did just that. See as a shameless example of this the
remarks made by Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Samuel R. Berger,
before the American Muslim Council, on 7 May 1999 in Washington, DC. (Text obtained
off the internet).
it is in itself with little regard paid to points of intersection (real or
imaginary), and with the aim of increasing understanding of the other.
This would also open the way for witness through dialogue, or the
kerygmatic dimension of dialogue, which is what the Christian Churches
ought to be doing anyway in a situation like this. And caution needs to
be exercised lest one holds contacts at conferences with Muslim liberal
intellectuals living and writing in the West, and interprets these con-
tacts as dialogue with Rushdies Actually Existing Islam out there. As
an occasion for witness, dialogue above all must entail compassion that
does not degenerate into patronization, comprehension that does not
stop at admonition, and an honest exchange that is not satisfied with
platitudes. Instead of these, inter-faith dialogue ought to have as its top
priority the practical goal of helping to resolve tensions in situations of
historico-civilizational encounter among differing religious communi-
ties for example in the Balkans, Lebanon, Sudan, South Asia, and
Indonesia, to name a few.
If dialogue with Islam has unavoidable built-in constraints and if
Islamic moderation is constantly under pressure from both authoritar-
ian rulers and radical zealots, how then can the political terrain in ques-
tion be induced to become receptive to democracy so that pluralism
may be protected and nourished? One unfortunately common approach
must be avoided because it represents the height of irresponsibility.
This is when democracy is presented to the Muslim world as mainly, if
not exclusively, a system of majority rule. So much misery has resulted
from this truncated presentation of democracy in a Muslim context
where there exists a propensity towards numerical determinism. Cer-
tainly democracy involves the rule of the majority, but equally (and in
the Muslim world this requires special emphasis) the other side of the
democratic coin entails rights and protection not of the dhimmi
kind(!) for minorities. If this is taken for granted in the West, it is
largely foreign, or at best feeble, in the lands of Islam. Hence the awe-
some challenge of seeing any democratic experiment to its final suc-
cessful conclusion in a Muslim country. Equating democracy solely, or
even principally, with majority rule becomes therefore a ready recipe
for persecution of ethno-religious minorities.
34
The West would be do-
ing a great disservice to human rights if it neglects this simple but lethal
nuance.
Echoing Pope John Paul IIs encyclical Veritatis Splendor, George
Weigel is correct when he says the fact of minority communities (which
is an unavoidable aspect of modernity) does not preclude the forma-
tion of democratic political community if, as John Paul puts it in Veritatis
Splendor, social coexistence is based on a morality which acknowl-
edges certain norms as valid always and for everyone, with no excep-
tion.
35
This applies everywhere and always, with the Islamic world
being no exception. The only problem is the time scale, which in this
case may have to be measured in decades (optimistic), but more likely
in centuries (realistic). Positivists, to whose ranks neither the Pope nor
Weigel belong, and other worshippers in the Temple of Progress, con-
fidently assure us that Islam like everything else will evolve and change
to become more in tune with the requirements of the modern world.
They employ the ever-present and misleading analogy with the histori-
cal development of Christianity. This is the idea that Islam today is
roughly where Christianity was in the Middle Ages; it is slowly heading
for a more benign presentation of itself. Such an analogy is flawed on
two counts: because in essence it involves a comparison of apples and
oranges (i.e. Islam need not develop the way Christianity did); and
because even if correct, the time scale is prohibitive, thereby rendering
the point irrelevant for devising practical arrangements of coexistence
and the safeguarding of pluralism in the present and near future.
What then is one to do about divided societies in predominantly
Islamic surroundings? What form should democracy assume in such
societies knowing that Political Islam throughout the wider region will
34
Even contemporary Turkey, a declared secular state and the only democratic country with a
Muslim majority, continues to have problems with its Christian and Kurdish minorities.
35
See George Weigel, Soul of the World, p. 166. See also Weigel, Roman Catholicism in the
Age of John Paul II in The Descularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World
Politics, edited by Peter L. Berger (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publish-
ing Company, 1999), p. 30.
not take too kindly to secular political structures that accommodate
pluralism? Here the only viable approach would be to erect a political
system that can be defined as the democracy of distinct and semi-au-
tonomous religious communities. Focusing on the religious community
as the basic building block and nuclear unit comprising the intended
democratic polity of a composite society is not, as some secularists
maintain, a regressive step. On the contrary, in areas of the world where
the ultimate identity of both individuals and groups has been and re-
mains religious, a democratic order based on recognition of this ines-
capable fact would be more authentic than one that either neglects it or
deliberately conceals it or tries artificially to bypass it. The Middle East
is precisely such an area where an individuals deepest identity, and that
of his or her community, continues to reside in and be derived from
religion. Neither nationalism nor ethnicity nor nowadays secularism have
managed to displace religion as the source of peoples primary alle-
giance and identity.
36
Not even families and clans two strongly en-
trenched features pervading Middle Eastern societies can overcome
the more primary religious distinctions and classifications. This fact about
the Middle East may be strange and embarrassing to the modern West-
ern mind; it is admittedly unpalatable to the secularists. However, it is
a historical given and as such it needs to be faced and dealt with.
A number of countries in the Middle East manifest religiously
grounded multi-communal agglomerations in varying degrees of differ-
entiation. Syria has Alawis, Sunnis, and Christians; Iraq has Sunnis (both
Arab and Kurd), Shias, and Christians; Egypt has Sunnis and Coptic
Christians; and Lebanon has a bit of everything. Take for instance the
case of Lebanon. This is both instructive and fairly unique since much
about Lebanon is sui generis and peculiar. To begin with, Lebanon has
36
Shared passions of Egyptian nationalism and Egyptian identity between the countrys Sunnis
and Copts have not protected the latter from periodic persecutions by the former. And the
prevailing myth in some Palestinian circles that their common national identity and com-
mon enemy supercede whatever religious differences may exist in their society is simply not
supported by the behavior of Mr. Arafats Palestinian Authority where Christians continue
to be marginalized, nor is it the case throughout Paelstinian society with the resurgence of
Islamic fundamentalism.
a mixed society composed of eighteen officially recognized religious
sects falling mainly within the two broad categories of Christian and
Muslim.
37
Unlike the Christian communities scattered throughout the
rest of the Middle East who are all dhimmis, Lebanon contains the only
native Christian community that has succeeded historically for the most
part in eluding, and often actively resisting, dhimmitude. Between
Morocco and Indonesia, Lebanon is the only place where indigenous
Christians have managed to remain considerably free. Also, Lebanons
Christians today make up around forty percent of the countrys popu-
lation, in other words a very large minority.
38
Despite the ravages of war
and external occupation since 1975, Lebanon in many ways can still
boast of a society that is freer than the other surrounding Arab socie-
ties where freedom remains a scarce commodity. Lebanon, both politi-
cally and socio-economically, has a respectable historical track record
of freedom. Alone among the Arab states, Lebanon has a system of
government that is a distinctive mixture between an adaptation of the
French parliamentary form of democracy and a homegrown version of
consociational democracy based on communal consensus and clan com-
promise. Its free market economy has demonstrated considerable dy-
namism during the periods of political calm.
The reason for taking a closer look at Lebanon is because it offers
the chance to study possibilities of reviving and anchoring democracy
in a Middle Eastern country with a religiously heterogeneous popula-
tion. It is a hybrid country, not belonging strictly to the West yet at the
same time not typical of the Arab East. It is also a country that is
neither an integral part of the developed world, nor qualifying for an
automatic third world designation. A fractured Lebanon slowly on the
mend in a post-peace Middle East requires a carefully thought-out ap-
37
These are: Maronites; Greek Orthodox; Greek Catholics (Melkites); Roman Catholics (Lat-
ins); Armenian Orthodox; Armenian Catholics; Syriac Orthodox; Syriac Catholics; Protes-
tants; Copts; Chaldeans; Assyrians; Jews; Sunnis; Shias; Druze; Alawis; and Ismailis.
38
See William W. Harris, Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions, part of the
Princeton Series on the Middle East, edited by Bernard Lewis and Heath W. Lowry
(Princeton, New Jersey: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1997), p. 60.
proach to safeguard its fragile pluralist society within a specially de-
signed democratic political framework. Otherwise, this unique experi-
ment in freedom and religious coexistence will relapse into chaos lead-
ing to fragmentation and disintegration, or remain the coveted target of
expansionist despotic regimes as well as an eyesore for those wishing to
entrench versions of Political Islam with its victor/vanquished mental-
ity. If a secure and prosperous coexistence among the disparate elements
in Lebanese society is to be attained, the asymmetry of fears and threat
perceptions prevalent among the different religious communities has to
be recognized and addressed. While the Muslims by and large express
grievances and complaints often very legitimate ones about issues of
power-sharing and socio-economic equality, the Christians for their part
harbor deep-seated phobias of the existential kind, namely the to be or
not to be variety. This asymmetry simply means that whatever system is
to be worked out has to offer solid security assurances and alleviate any
impending sense of threat felt by minorities.
39
The religious community in Lebanon is recognized by the constitu-
tion as the irreducible social and political unit and the wellspring of
identity. It is the basis for the existing system of political sectarianism
or confessionalism whereby key posts in the government are appor-
tioned to representatives of the largest religious denominations for
example, a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni prime minister, and a
Shia speaker of parliament. The constitution also stipulates that mat-
ters having to do with personal circumstances (i.e. marriage, divorce,
inheritance, religious courts, and the like) be attended to within each
community according to its beliefs, practices, and traditions. Two em-
phatic and important assertions need to be made. First, without the
system of political sectarianism there can be no democracy in Lebanon.
This does not mean the system as it stands cannot use reform; in fact,
this is the topic under discussion right here. It does mean, however,
39
For more on this see Habib C. Malik, Between Damascus and Jerusalem: Lebanon and Mid-
dle East Peace, Policy Paper no. 45, 2
nd
updated edition (Washington, DC: The Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, 2000), especially pp. 1-24.
that the wholesale abolition of political sectarianism, either in favor of
a purely secular system, or in order to usher in the tyranny of an Is-
lamic majority, would be detrimental to freedoms, would lead to abuses
of human rights, and would thwart the chances for democracy to thrive.
Second, this is admittedly not the best possible system; however, it is in
harmony with the objectively given realities on the ground and, until
the Islamic world demonstrates a more serious openness to
secularization, it remains the best system available to preserve a healthy
communal pluralism.
For political sectarianism to fall better in line with the concept of
the democracy of religious communities, a special form of federalism
needs to be applied in a multi-cultural and multi-religious kaleidoscope
like Lebanon. That way perhaps Lebanon can serve as a useful future
model for other similarly complex and divided societies. The principle
of subsidiarity that comes straight out of the lexicon of Catholic social
doctrine is the best expression for the kind of local communal autonomy
entailed in this form of federalism. As Pope John Paul II puts it: [T]he
principle of subsidiarityrequires that a community of a higher order
should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower or-
der, depriving the latter of its rightful functions; instead the higher or-
der should support the lower order and help it to coordinate its activity
with that of the rest of society, always with a view to serving the com-
mon good.
40
Unfortunately, the word federalism has received much bad press
in Lebanon. During the war years it unwittingly came to be associated
in peoples minds with failed attempts at partitioning the country. An-
other misconception about federalism is that it necessarily has to have
geographic extensions and expressions as one finds, say, in the Swiss
Cantons. This is not so in our context. The beauty of the federal for-
mula is precisely that it is elastic and flexible enough to be able to
40
Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, 48. See also the Letter of the Holy Father addressed
to the Sixth Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (Vatican, 23 Feb-
ruary 2000).
accommodate almost any set of givens. Federal arrangements and pre-
scriptions can be tailored to the specific components and requirements
of a particular situation. In Lebanon, for instance, a communally
grounded federal formula would not be geographically determined but
rather would be more of the personal/communal and legal/constitu-
tional variety. Although the Lebanon war caused massive population
displacements and communal segregation along religious lines, this
would not be used as a basis for applying the federal prescription. More
effective for Lebanon would be a federal structure that relies on the
religious community as its essential foundation regardless of its spatial
extensions. Such a federalism would be constitutionally anchored and
would afford each religious community a measure of calibrated au-
tonomy while guaranteeing the rights and freedoms of its members
regardless of demographic growth or shrinkage.
Getting down to the nitty-gritty details, things no longer begin
to appear so simple. Yet the demonstrated flexibility of the federal
idea will rise admirably to the occasion. Some specific examples from
the Lebanese context are indicated. To satisfy the desires and in-
deed the rights of citizens who do not wish to be classified under
any one of the officially sanctioned eighteen religious sects in the
country, a nineteenth category needs to be created that would take
in everyone wishing for whatever reason to dissociate him or herself
from any religious affiliation or stigma. This is the proper response
to the secular critique of the existing system because it does not
abolish political sectarianism.
Actually, two distinct legal and constitutional categories ought
to be created: one to include all eighteen existing communities (cat-
egory A); and one for any citizen not wishing to belong to any of
the eighteen (category B). This mechanism would pave the way for
allowing through category B civil marriages today it is illegal to
perform them in Lebanon and a host of other matters pertaining
to personal circumstances that the state would take on the role of
performing. Such an arrangement would offer solutions to many
problems that might arise from the federation of religious commu-
nities. In politics, for example, under the envisaged federal edifice
each religious community would elect its own representatives to
parliament according to a proportional scale based on the size of
the communities not according to geographic districts as the case
is now. But a person need not be confined to running for parlia-
ment, or voting, exclusively within his or her community. People,
even though they are registered in one of the eighteen communities
of category A, could choose to run or vote as independents in cat-
egory B. The same would apply to political parties which do not
have to be restricted to specific communities but could be trans-
communal and multi-confessional again within category B. The
significance of such a form of federalism with two independent cat-
egories is that it does not end up degenerating into a version of the
caste system where people are born into a community and essen-
tially stay stuck there for life with only seventeen other religious
options to choose from.
Lest doubts linger as to the effects of a federal system on the
cohesion of the state, it must be emphasized that the states unity
and sovereignty remain intact. One country, one government, one
economy, one currency all would not be compromised in the least
by a federation of religious communities. However, trends of indis-
criminate national homogenization across the board enforced from
the top would be resisted and undermined by the local autonomy of
the various religious communities, particularly in such delicate areas
as private education and the creative pursuit of personal and com-
munal self-realization and self-improvement. Federalism would im-
munize the communities against attempts to streamline them artifi-
cially according to a preset script dictated by the government a
clear violation of the principle of subsidiarity. One example of this
is the current debate in Lebanon over the efficacy of a single history
textbook prescribed by the state to be taught in schools. Naturally,
such a book presenting a single version of past events prepared and
imposed by the authorities in a composite society like Lebanon would
be tantamount to totalitarian brainwashing. On the other hand,
providing a number of contrasting scholarly accounts of controver-
sial historical epochs and episodes within the covers of a single-
volume history textbook becomes an entirely different matter and
one in keeping with the principles of pluralism intended to be pro-
tected by the federal formula. The whole point of federalism to begin
with is to safeguard diversity and cultural pluralism without jeop-
ardizing the cohesive integrity of the state. Since not all values are
shared in a mixed and religiously heterogeneous context, and since
awareness of universal values by some is at times delayed or slow in
coming, local communal autonomy in sensitive enterprises touching
on communal self-interpretation becomes imperative.
The advantages of federalism in mixed societies in a predomi-
nantly Islamic milieu are many. It protects minorities from the chang-
ing winds of demography by guaranteeing communal rights and
freedoms independently of the size of the community. It allows for
a more authentic and creative expression of individual and commu-
nal identities. It enhances communal security by alleviating to a large
degree latent threat perceptions. It promotes economic prosperity
through diversity and healthy competition. It is more realistically
reflective of the differentiated cultural and religious ingredients of a
society. It provides just enough room for overall national unity, yet
at the same time permits considerable centripetal latitude. Signifi-
cantly, communal federalism enjoys a modest history of success in
the Middle East where, under the Ottoman Turks it was tried in the
form of the millet system and found to work. The kind of federal-
ism proposed here for Lebanon would resemble a neo-millet ar-
rangement, minus of course the stewardship of an overbearing ori-
ental despot such as the Ottoman Porte. Instead, the rule of law
and a reformed constitution would guarantee the proper function-
ing of the system.
The only disadvantage is that federalism will be resisted by ma-
jorities bent on domination and subjugation. But then so will democ-
racy in whatever form it is presented.
* * *
Serious attempts to explore the applicability of the federal op-
tion to non-Western, religiously dissimilar pluralist contexts have
not been made systematically or responsibly. This is so in particular
with regard to the Islamic world. Nor have the limitations and
anomalies of classic, specifically Western conceptions of pluralism
been properly assessed. In what is often labeled a post-Christian
society in the West sensitivity to the all-encompassing nature of the
spiritual has been softened, if not lost altogether, in many quarters.
How can people be expected to fathom the passions that drive other
religions when they have lost touch with the roots of their own re-
ligious traditions in the West, regardless of whether they themselves
are believers or not? With the plurality of worldviews universals do
not vanish altogether, but awakening the various antagonistic
worldviews to their common universals is usually a thankless and
time-consuming task. If a person is placed in a cage with a tiger and
told the tiger can be tamed, that is probably true; however, in the
meantime that person is badly in need of protective measures to
secure his wellbeing. And it could be a crocodile instead of a tiger,
in which case no amount of waiting or taming will produce results.
Democratic federalism in mixed cultural environments offers the
best interim system until a heightened consciousness of binding moral
universals manifests itself. Clearly teams of legal and constitutional
experts will have to work out the details for every context. The
reality in the twenty-first century is that we live in a multi-religious
world and that there is evidence that outside the West at least reli-
gion is increasingly resurgent. The responsibility of democratic states
is to improve peoples lot by propagating the democratic model.
This is best done not by attempting to alter the given reality of the
world at large, but by modifying the concept of democracy to better
suit and fit the fixed givens out there.
List of Literature
The following is a short list of some of the key works consulted in preparing my paper.
They are presented in no particular order, neither alphabetical nor topical.
Good News Bible (with Deuterocanonicals and Apocrypha) for Catholics.
Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century.
J. Hooper, S.J.
, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition.
The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.
Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor.
, Centesimus Annus.
Daniel Boorstin, Democracy and its Discontents: Reflections on Everyday America.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (2 vols.).
Jacques Maritain, Man and the State.
, Christianity and Democracy.
George Weigel, Soul of the World: Notes on the Future of Public Catholicism.
Peter L. Berger, editor, The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and
World Politics.
Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America.
Mary Ann Glendon, Rights from Wrongs (unpublished draft).
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
The Koran Interpreted, trans. Arthur J. Arberry.
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples.
Bernard Lewis, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East.
, Islam and the West.
, The Muslim Discovery of Europe.
Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans; The Church and the Ottoman Empire, 1453-
1923.
William Montgomery Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misper-
ceptions.
Bat Yeor, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude,
7
th
-20
th
Centuries.
Jean-Pierre Valognes, Vie et Mort des Chretiens dOrient: Des Origines a nos Jours.
David Pryce-Jones, The Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs.
Youssef Courbage and Philippe Fargues, Christians and Jews under Islam.
Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers.
Milton J. Esman and Itamar Rabinovich, editors, Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in
the Middle East.
The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Speeches, ed. Brian MacArthur.
William W. Harris, Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions.
Engin Akarli, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920.
Habib C. Malik, Between Damascus and Jerusalem: Lebanon and Middle East Peace.

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DEMOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES:

THE RIDDLE OF PLURALISM

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