By THEODORE DALRYMPLE [New English Review] – There is a very simple problem in the Middle East: simple, that is, conceptually, not simple from the point of view of finding a practical solution to it. Islam has not found a doctrinal way of rendering unto Caesar those things which are Caesar’s; and since one of its founding principles is the inequality of man so long as not all men are Muslim, equality before the law is very difficult to establish in a country with a preponderance of Islamic sentiment. Either it must be imposed by a secularising elite, in which case it is felt as oppressive and anti-democratic, in the sense of being against the wishes and feelings of the majority; or it simply fails to exist. And where it does not exist, modernisation can be but a veneer.
At best, then, equality before the law – an essential condition of the rule of law – is precarious and likely to be more honoured in the breach than in the accomplishment. Not even in countries that invented the rule of law is it ever flawlessly adhered to; but in countries where it is imposed, it is likely to be but an ideological fig-leaf for a tiny kleptocratic; an elite that comes to be so justifiably hated that it in itself provides an ad hominem argument for those who argue for a return to the supposed (but historically false) prelapsarian purity of Islam. The choice, then, is between Scylla and Charybdis; it will not be easy, short of a loss of Islamic faith by a multitude of people, to escape this unappealing dilemma.
It might be argued, of course, that as yet the revolts in the Middle East have had little by way of specifically Islamic content. This is true; to judge by the way they dress, the youthful demonstrators could have emerged from any working class area in any European or North American city. Their demands have been democracy, liberty of expression and so forth. But liberty of expression is a two-edged sword where a large part of the population is viscerally opposed to it.
Continued at the New English Review | More Chronicle & Notices.
