Is Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy?

Well, her talk is impressive, but let me note off-topic: She's such a pretty woman;-)

Islam, as with all great life forms, is a religion capable of fantastical contortions., We can only hope there is the will to commit to such spiritual yoga as will be required. Yet will the progressivist impetus to pacify survive as long as the character of it's originating founder and his rhetoric?

Time will tell.

I find all ideologies (religion is just one of many) to be inherently hazardous to social advances. Ideologies demand adherence even when there is information to a contrary conclusion or the conclusion given is in fact unsupported. This inflexibility in light of new information IS one of many issues. Ideologies necessarily require distortions/suppression of reality to be maintained. All discussions are necessarily distorted due to each justifying its legitimacy. I don't have THE answer (if indeed there is one answer). I don't think anyone does and we are woefully short of even being able to discuss the issues due to the various delusions that are injected into most conversations and actions.

Islam is not a bad, oppressive religion. I just feel it's a bit outdated. I see purpose in this religion, which was beneficial for a long time, and in certain regions, these teachings are still very important. (Hygiene rules for example.) What I'm completely opposed to however, is Sharia law. That's the sideline which is most oppressive to women. That's not islam, but a confluence of it, taken directly from the ideas of the prophet and enforced in only some parts of the world. Saudi-Arabia, Pakistan, and parts of Nigeria for example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5xAj...eature=related
see this video for 6 mins ..

spearding wrong information u cant be right..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHWZRzNpa94

must watch this video

Islam is NOT compatible with liberal secular democracy. Iran is a kind of Isalmic democracy. Is it liberal? No. Around the world, almost all muslim countries are Islamic republics. Liberal and Islamic together is not possible. Quran is not just a religious book but also a political manifesto. So how could it be liberal? Perhaps Turkey is as close as any as a liberal democracy. But even in Turkey the Army is keeping the democracy in control. They are very much aware of the difficulty
due to their religion.

NWM - you ask how AHA would assess the dominance of evangelicals in the Republican Party since 1968. First off, this begs a few question (since three of the four Republican presidents elected in that stretch were extremely secular, so it's difficult to link this "dominance" to obvious outcomes - like if they're so dominate why didn't they elect Pat Robertson?) - but the real question is... why would she? Why should she?

There isn't any equivalence bt the Republican Party and and Islamic Radicalism. There is not and never could be any autocratic controls maintained by the Republican Party over the U.S. So why would that question need to be answered? There's no basis for a comparison. Republicans and even those nasty evangelicals you point to have operated reasonably within the confines of a political pluralistic system.

Also, you can't wish away the violence of the Koran by pointing to a range of fringe fundamentalists in the Jewish and Christian worlds. And again, the attempt to suggest equivalence here is frivolous. None of those groups have a global agenda. None have spawned a group or multiple groups with a global agenda on a par with AQ or others.

And none owns a foundational document which explicitly and repeatedly condones (indeed, invites) violence against the unbeliever.

I think that Ayaan Hirsi Ali brings great courage and intelligence to a discussion of Islam's negotiations with modernity. At the same time, though, I see some problems with her statements in the course of this interview with Clive Crook:

Unabashed advocates for "the West" in "the War against Terror" tend to argue that governments in the Muslim world have--to greater or lesser extents--engaged Islamic fundamentalism as a diversion from these governments' failures of political and/or economic liberalization. In doing so, the argument goes, governments such as those in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Sudan have sowed a wind of anti-modern backwardness, and reaped a whirlwind of extremist-driven instability. Moving from this idea to at least the desirability of regime change in these states doesn't take too much effort.

Assertions about Muslim-world states' risky engagement of Islamic fundamentalism make some sense. However, in making this argument, Hirsi Ali makes several other assertions that merit examination.

In her conversation with Clive Crook, Hirsi Ali claims that Christianity and Judaism have "pacified" their religious beliefs, such that observation of these faiths' obligations does not exclude participation in civil society.

How would Hirsi Ali assess the dominance of Christian fundamentalists in the US Republican Party's electoral majorities since 1968, or the dependence of most Israeli governments on religious parties for their majorities in the Knesset?

What does Ayaan Hirsi Ali make of the prevalence of home schooling among Evangelical Protestants in the United States, or the existence of Yeshivot in Israel and around the world? For that matter, what does Ms. Hirsi Ali say about the Christian Dominionist and Christian Zionist movements in the US, or the overtly religious tone of most Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories? To the extent that "Christmas and Easter Christians" and "cultural Jews" exist in these countries, why does Ms. Hirsi Ali dismiss the prospects for an emergent "middle view" of Islam?

For that matter, wouldn't Ms. Hirsi Ali give any credence to arguments made by authors from Arjun Appadurai to Benjamin Barber that 1) fundamentalism across societies emerges as a reaction to strains exerted by modernity and 2) that "fundamentalism" often employs elements of modernity--communications technology and democratic elections, for instance--to the benefit of its prospects?

Did Ms. Hirsi Ali not notice the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a fundamentalist rabbinical student in 1995? Did she not hear the Rev. Jerry Falwell's exhortations to President Bush to "blow [terrorists] away in the Name of the Lord" in the advent of US military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq?

In the course of this Aspen Institute forum, Ayaan Hirsi Ali observed that unlike many states in Western Europe, the United States has no history of foreign colonization. At the same time, she did not explain how she would distinguish European states' colonial practices from US hegemony in the Americas since the early 19th Century, or between European colonialism and extension of US rule from Hawaii to the Philippines and most islands in the South Pacific during the 20th Century.

Ms. Hirsi Ali views Muslim-world states' countenancing fundamentalism as an alternative to adopting "modern" or "Western" approaches to political and economic governance in their societies. Doesn't the possibility exist, however, that allowing some space for Islamic zealotry might serve as a cover for these governments' complicity in US foreign policy and corporate globalization? Egypt contains the only non-US factory for the main battle tank first developed for the US Army, the M1A1 Abrams tank produced by General Dynamics. No state purchases a larger volume of US military hardware and support services than Saudi Arabia.

At the Aspen Institute forum, Ms. Hirsi Ali cited surveys indicating that popular support in the Muslim world for the doctrinaire, reactionary, Salafist/Wahabist currents of Islam have begun to dominate. In fact, years of polling in the Muslim world funded by the Pew Foundation indicates that popular disapproval of the US and approval of Osama bin Laden would become decimated should the US adjust or reverse certain policies, especially with regard to the Middle East.

Concluding that Islam around the world has not faced a crisis with regard to Muslims' and Muslim societies' engagement of modernity would defy too much sound argument and empirical evidence, including some provided in Ms. Hirsi Ali's writing. In addition, a fair observer would have to admire the great courage and perseverance reflected in both Hirsi Ali's personal independence and her service to other people.

In the final analysis, we have to ask who benefits from the nuance lacking in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's picture of the Islamic world and expatriate Muslims' lives in the OECD countries. Portraying Ms. Hirsi Ali as an unwitting tool of certain political and commercial interests would insult her intelligence and education. Nevertheless, one should note that the American Enterprise Institute that brought Hirsi Ali to the US could not receive more legitimate or eloquent support for neoconservative policies of regime change so long advocated by so many of the scholars resident at AEI.

Considering the Aspen Institute's well-established reputation for sustained, thorough dialogue, I found both the choice of Clive Crook as moderator and the incurious tone exhibited by most of the audience's questions more than a bit disappointing.

She is not an enigma but a true liberal!