21 February 2008
Islam at the Ballot Box
If radical Islamists wished to use elections to achieve their aims they would have turned out in droves for the votes in Pakistan, Malaysia, Gaza, Algeria, and other countries that Amir Taheri wrote about in his OpEd article in the February 21, 2008 Wall Street Journal. Instead, they are implored by their leaders to reject elections as orthodoxy for governance. The methods they are taught are not rational, but spiritual. Those tactics must be fought on the level of persuasive inspiration, not by means of the use of logic or force.
It is only misguided minorities of Islamists who contest elections. They even participate in the same weak percentages in sham elections under authoritarian regimes like Egypt, Bahrain, and Oman, as if going to the polls has any hope of turning a fundamentalist religious culture into a Western liberal republic.
Holding elections will not defuse the nihilism of Islamic radicalism. The West will protect its security better by energetically communicating its human values to these societies and investing in enabling their members to exercise responsible self-governance.
If radical Islamists wished to use elections to achieve their aims they would have turned out in droves for the votes in Pakistan, Malaysia, Gaza, Algeria, and other countries that Amir Taheri wrote about in his OpEd article in the February 21, 2008 Wall Street Journal. Instead, they are implored by their leaders to reject elections as orthodoxy for governance. The methods they are taught are not rational, but spiritual. Those tactics must be fought on the level of persuasive inspiration, not by means of the use of logic or force.
It is only misguided minorities of Islamists who contest elections. They even participate in the same weak percentages in sham elections under authoritarian regimes like Egypt, Bahrain, and Oman, as if going to the polls has any hope of turning a fundamentalist religious culture into a Western liberal republic.
Holding elections will not defuse the nihilism of Islamic radicalism. The West will protect its security better by energetically communicating its human values to these societies and investing in enabling their members to exercise responsible self-governance.
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