At times it is easy to forget what that phrase actually means as it is easy to get bogged down in the nitty gritty (mostly gritty) of daily politics and, almost inevitably, that means Britain, Europe and the United States with the odd incursion into the rest of the Anglosphere and other parts of the world.
But the slogan was in Russian За Вашу и Нашу Свободу - For Your Freedom and Ours.
Let me, therefore, call my readers' attention to a Bangladeshi publication, The Weekly Blitz, whose tagline says: The Only Anti-Jihadist Newspaper Confronting Religious Extremism and Promoting Interfaith Harmony. In Bangladesh. Now that is courage. They also say that the fear none but God, which is just as well because the newspaper and its editor and publisher, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, have had a great deal of trouble from the Bangladeshi military, police force as well as the political and judicial authorities. I wrote about this brave man once before over on EURef (here and here) but his continuing battle needs to be kept in people's minds. He is, after all, fighting for us all. (Which means that I should report a little more often about developments.)
In the meantime, here is a fascinating article by Dr Elie Elhadj on why Arab democracy is an unlikely proposition (well, since you ask, the words used are "sheer fantasy".)
wasn't the promotion of "democracy" a major component of the justification of the invasion of Iraq by the US/UK? Just asking.
ReplyDeleteNick
Yes, Nick, it was, and I still think that is possible even in Arab countries, especially Iraq. Dr Elhadj, clearly, does not agree. I was intrigued by the fact that he made no comments about the possibility of democracy in non-Arab Islamic countries. But really, I wanted to call attention to the Weekly Blitz, though the article was interesting.
ReplyDeleteIn a way, i agree with you ... it is possible ... but something has to give first ... and that is religion. Remove the religious domination of society/politics and democracy has a chance. It might take a few centuries though ... as it did in Europe.
ReplyDeletesorry, above post by me!
ReplyDeleteNick
Well, arguing against myself, Nick, I must point out that Europe, particularly the part of it under the domination of the Western Church, had a certain advantage: separation of church and state, there in the Gospels and developed by religious and political thinkers at a very early stage.
ReplyDeleteThe truth is that there are countries around that are now democracies and were not ever before. Often it is some cataclysmic event that produces the situation. See Japan, for instance.