Page 2 of
2 Israel, the hope of the Muslim
world By Spengler
immediate relation to the
collective. The citizens or tribesmen voted in
person in full public assembly. Modern
representative democracy requires something else.
The individual citizen chooses not only a party
and its platform, but also a personality, who has
the freedom to act on behalf of the voters at
variance with an existing platform. The voters do
not simply trust the tribe or state; instead, they
trust an individual and give that individual proxy
powers. They must trust that the body of such
representatives will reach an
agreement that takes into account their interest.
Such a system simply cannot arise in a pagan
culture, where conformity to the collective is a
precondition of life.
Not for nothing did
the founders of the American republic insist that
its functioning was unimaginable without the
Christian religion. The purely negative aspects of
the American constitution, namely the balance of
powers that protects minority interests, means
nothing without transcendent trust in something
higher than the elements that constitute the body
politic. In pagan society there is family, clan,
and state; there is no intermediate function of
representation, because there is no transcendent
trust. Pagans can have (and frequently do have)
plebiscites or presidential elections that in a
sense are real elections, but they never have a
functioning parliamentary system.
As
noted, there are non-Christian societies where
parliamentary democracy flourishes, notably India.
Hinduism is a subject from which I have steered
clear, given the complexity of its history and
variety of its practice. But the subject of
humility is central to every manifestation of this
religion, which honors the holiness of life to the
point of forbidding the consumption of animals.
Modern India, moreover, grew out of a centralized
government established by the British, and
received ready-made British laws and civil
service, and with ease adopted the British model
of parliamentary democracy. It was guided by
leaders who lived as well as taught the Hindu
concept of humility.
Japan is another
exception. Buddhism in many forms teaches divine
humility, but the Zen variety prevalent in Japan
adapted itself well to the requirements of the
samurai caste, which knew loyalty and submission,
but not humility. After the suppression of feudal
rights in 1868, Japan modernized without recourse
to democracy. Only after its humiliation in World
War II and the imposition of a democratic
constitution by the American occupation did
representative democracy come to Japan.
It
is not clear whether Japanese culture will survive
the great humiliation of 1945. As I observed
elsewhere (They made a democracy and called it
peace, Asia Times Online, March 8,
2005), the nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki may have killed more than the few hundred
thousand immediate casualties. It is possible that
the attacks killed all the Japanese who ever
lived, and all the Japanese who ever might live.
In Japan’s feudal past, humiliation was too
terrible to endure, and suicide the only response.
Japan’s failure to reproduce may constitute a form
of national suicide in response to national
humiliation.
Admirers of the Jewish state
praise it as an exemplar of democracy in the
Middle East. Whether that is true or not is
irrelevant to the concerns of the Muslims.
Democracy is not a procedure that a country learns
by example, like water management or
road-building. It is adopted or not as an
existential choice. For the Muslim world, what
matters is not that Israel is a functioning
democracy located in the Middle East, but rather
that it is Israel that humbled the House of Islam.
Because success is central to Islam’s
promise, and the restoration of the Jewish
commonwealth in its historic territory along with
its ancient capital seems to validate Jewish
scripture rather than the Koran, Israel offers an
existential challenge to the Muslim world. Muslims
will never accept the permanent presence of Israel
unless compelled. But the bad news in this case is
the good news, for if the Muslim world were to
accept Israel’s existence, the collective
humiliation would be so profound as to force the
concept of humility into Muslim political life.
The best thing Western governments could do to
foster democracy in the Muslim world, in fact, is
to move their embassies to Jerusalem.
I
noted elsewhere (It's easy for the Jews to talk about
life, September 18, 2007) that the
presence of the state of Israel has had a decisive
impact on Christian evangelization, especially in
Africa. African Christians, as Philip Jenkins
reported in his recent book on the Bible in the
Global South, take the Hebrew scriptures
seriously. [2] The apparent validation of God’s
promise to the descendants of Abraham gives them
confidence that the New Testament’s promise to
Christians will be valid as well. What fosters
Christian faith, by the same token, introduces
doubt into Muslim faith. The humility that goes
hand in hand with doubt - conceding that one’s
opponent might have a valid point - is what makes
democracy possible in the first place.
Perhaps the Muslim world will respond to
humiliation after the fashion of Japan. Iran’s
fertility rate has already fallen below
replacement, Prof Jenkins reported in the November
9 New Republic. Even if
that is the outcome, it is better than the
alternative, namely a violent explosion over the
remainder of this century. Washington’s misguided
effort to foster Islamic democracy might be the
stupidest idea in the history of foreign policy.
It began in the late 1970s with Jimmy Carter’s
backing for the Ayatollah Khomeini against the
Shah of Iran. It may end with simultaneous civil
war in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey,
Lebanon and the West Bank. If that occurs, think
of Rwanda and multiply by a thousand.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
