júlí 19, 2003

Íran

Góð grein eftir Reza Aslan, prófessor í íslömskum fræðum við Iowa háskóla, birtist í NYT í gær: Why Religion Must Play a Role in Iran
The president [Bush] has interpreted the current situation in Iran as a conflict between Islamic theocracy and the kind of Western secular democracy his administration envisions for Iraq. But that is not at all how most Iranians see it. Over the past two decades, academics, reformist theologians and liberal clerics in Iran have been struggling to redefine traditional Islamic political philosophy in order to bring it in line with modern concepts of representative government, popular sovereignty, universal suffrage and religious pluralism. What these Iranians have been working toward is "Islamic democracy": that is, a liberal, democratic society founded on an Islamic moral framework.

This is not theocracy; it is religious democracy. And while that may seem like an oxymoron to most Americans, it is in no way a new paradigm: the Jewish version of this ideal currently exists in Israel. Indeed, it could be argued that the United States itself began as a religious democracy founded on a Protestant moral framework that still plays an influential role in our laws and politics.

Nevertheless, the concept of religious democracy has not been allowed to reach fruition in the Islamic world, partly because of foreign interference, partly because of religious fanaticism, but mostly because of the West's overwhelming fear of Islamic government. It is this fear that has sustained an outdated foreign policy in the Persian Gulf [...]

It is this same fear that has led to American military and economic support of antidemocratic regimes in Pakistan, Egypt and Jordan. More recently, this fear of Islamic government has forced the United States to forgo elections in Iraq in favor of appointing a Governing Council, lest the Shiite majority exercise its democratic right to self-determination.

[...]

What the United States must learn from the colonialist experience is that the only way to promote lasting democratic reform in the Middle East is to encourage it to develop according to its own indigenous culture and its own religious identity. That is precisely what reformists are trying to do in Iran, and rather than being feared or isolated, they should be supported.

If it can successfully fuse its democratic aspirations with its Islamic identity, then Iran, rather than Iraq, may be able to provide the template of democracy in the Middle East. At the very least, it can become the middle ground between the Islamic dictatorships of Egypt and Jordan, and the fundamentalist regimes of Saudi Arabia and the Taliban.

(Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company)
Ég held að flestir sem hafa eitthvað vit á stöðu mála í Mið-Austurlöndum viti að besta leiðin til að stöðva þróunina í Íran og hleypa öllu í bál og brand, sé að Bandaríkjamenn fari að skipta sér um of málum þar.
Agust skrifaði 19.07.03 12:39

Flokkun: Meðmæli , Mið-Austurlönd