Islam and Democracy: Watch Iran's Elections 
International Herald Tribune
February 15, 2000
Philip Bowring

Friday's elections in Iran are not just a milestone in that nation's slow evolution from revolution to normalcy. They may prove an example to those parts of the Islamic world with immobile as well as oppressive systems, and further undermine the Western canard that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

It should also be an influence on countries, such as China, looking for paths to more plural politics which do not immediately undermine the existing power structure.

For a wider world bored of being lectured about democracy by the West, the Iran experience demonstrates that elections are compatible with a fervently anti-Western regime.

This is not to pretend that the Iranian elections are free and fair. The candidates have been carefully vetted by the religious establishment, and all must accept the theocratic nature of the state. The Parliament, like the directly elected president, remains ultimately subservient to the unelected, self-perpetuating clerical power structure headed by Supreme Leader Sayed Ali Khamenei.

But within these confines, political factions are well delineated and debate is vigorous, especially through the press.

The existence of elections which are not a rubber stamp illustrates that even in postrevolutionary Iran there are many in the clergy who believe that the spiritual elite has no divine right to rule, any more than the shah did. Power must be rooted in the people, and holders submit themselves to popular judgment.

The widespread assumption in the West is that the Muslim world is still awaiting the fruits of a post-Gorbachev global surge of democracy. This appears to be primarily a product either of Christian prejudices or of the post-Holocaust guilt complex that has underpinned a knee-jerk anti-Islamism now more widespread than anti-Semitism.

Events in Iran are a reminder of the diversity of political forms throughout the Islamic world, which deserves to be judged by its larger nations rather than by the likes of secular thugs such as Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad or the feudal states of the Arabian Peninsula.

In Indonesia, Islam is diverse and has a tradition of tolerance and democratic tendencies, both now represented by President Abdurrahman Wahid.

In Pakistan, despite its origins as a state specifically for Muslims, the challenges to democracy are from feudalism and the military rather than from mainstream Islam.

Bangladesh's democracy may be seriously flawed, but Islam is a matter of fact, like Catholicism in Mexico, and politics are largely secular.

In Egypt, which is not exactly democratic, religious extremism remains on the fringe of a tolerant society skeptical of ideology.

In Turkey, the military's secular nationalism limits both democracy and the political role of Islam.

Smaller but important predominantly Muslim countries include Malaysia, where democracy has been eroded not by religion but by Mahathir bin Mohamad's secular and centralizing agenda, and Algeria, where the West proved that it views the destruction of political Islam as more important than the fostering of democracy.

Conceivably, the Iranian electoral process will lead gradually to the replacement of an intolerant version of political Islam with a regime closer to the secular bourgeois democracy envisioned by many of those who overthrew the shah.

But more immediately, it should set an example for those, especially in the Arab world, who want a transition to systems that are at least partly accountable and give Islam sufficient stake to keep fundamentalists in check.

Circumstances vary widely, but Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia all face transitions from personal or feudal rule. It is to be hoped that their future will be neither more of the same despotism nor two decades of the revolutionary Islam that Iran has endured.

The significance for China is that a popularly elected president and Parliament can dilute the power of the Communist Party, China's equivalent of the Iranian clerical establishment, and promote the interests of the state against those of an increasingly corrupt, self-perpetuating party elite.

If China had the Iranian system,Jiang Zemin would still head the party but Zhu Rongji would have been elected executive president and the National People's Congress would witness real policy debates.

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