Juppé: Democracy and Islam are Compatible

The Pope is not the only one making statements of dubious validity about the compatibility between Islam and Western institutions. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé has some insights into Islam that even Muslims aren't aware of. Joachim Véliocas posted this article three days ago:

The elections in Egypt and Tunisia have not yet taken place, no Islamic government is yet installed in the revolutionary countries, but that has not prevented Alain Juppé (who rolls out the green carpet for the Muslim Brotherhood in Bordeaux) to draw conclusions on the so-called democratic nature of the Islamic ideology. The increasing violence against Christians, the attack on the monasteries by the Egyptian army, must be a preview of "Islamic democracy". The example of Turkey led by the Islamist AK Party, that tracks overly curious reporters and hardly makes an effort to guarantee religious freedom is really encouraging. (There are fourteen times as many honor crimes since the AKP took over.)

The following appeared in La Croix on September 23:

"France has revised it Arab policy, without question," declared the French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé in a long interview September 22 with Al-Jazeerah Arab television.

According to the the head of French diplomacy, "we have given too much importance to what they called the stability of Arab countries, that is to say that we gave too much credit to regimes that told us they were the best ramparts against extremism and religious fanaticism. Thus we underestimated the frustrations of the people and their aspirations for freedom and democracy."

"Who has not made errors?" said Alain Juppé in an attempt to justify himself. "We did not see it coming. The great movement took us by surprise."

"We now understand that the situation had evolved and that we had to change quite simply our way of seeing the relation of Islam to democracy," he explained. We were a bit drugged on the idea that had been instilled in us that Islam was incompatible with democracy. I do not believe it is true. There are Muslim countries attached to their faith, to their religion, and which are completely capable of undergoing democratic evolutions. Morocco, for example, provides a sort of model that must be sustained."

Is Juppé unaware that Christians cannot build churches or announce the Christ in Morocco, thanks to article 220 of the penal code? How can Morocco, corrupt to the marrow, where the people are suffering in extreme poverty, where the apparatchiks dripping with wealth parade by, be a model that inspires other Muslim countries?

Is this cynicism on the part of Juppé or crass ignorance of the reality of Morocco?

Note: Off hand I would say that Juppé is a master of cynicism.

Joachim Véliocas mentioned article 220 of the Moroccan penal code. In another article from his website dated February 15, 2010, he quotes from an NGO called Portes Ouvertes that supports persecuted Christians:

No fewer than fifteen military vehicles surrounded the house. The Christians inside could not believe what was happening: they had merely gathered for a Bible lesson. The event took place on February 4 in Amizmiz, a small town south of Marrakech. Eighteen persons, including five children, were gathered in a private home when sixty officers, two captains and a colonel in the Royal Moroccan Army burst into the building. They arrested the whole group, and confiscated the Bibles and two computers.

The Moroccan Christians were detained in custody for more than fourteen hours before being freed. Two six-month old babies and three children under the age of four were with them. "During all this time, they kept repeating to us that these arrests had been personally ordered by the new Moroccan minister of justice and by the highest command of the gendarmerie, general Housni Benslimane," explained the leader of the Bible study group, whose name cannot be revealed for security reasons. There was also a foreigner in the group who was immediately expelled from the country. According to an Arab press agency, the operation was ordered "as a result of information on a secret meeting that was supposed to initiate people into Christianity and that could shake the faith of the Muslims and the values of the Kingdom".

The article points out that in March and December of the previous year two other Christian study groups had been arrested and held.

Article 220 of the penal code condemns any attempt to change a Muslim's mind on the subject of his faith. A spokesman for the Moroccan government declared in April 2009: "Freedom of religion does not mean freedom to choose your faith." (…)

H/T: Yves Daoudal

One of Daoudal's readers explains why Christianity, more so than Islam, is incompatible with Democracy. The comment is a bit difficult to understand, but I think the gist is clear:

Christianity is certainly much more incompatible with democracy than Islam, if only for the obvious reason that democracy is a tactic used by tyrants to get around the intermediary powers (Napoléon I, Napoléon III, Hitler…); universal suffrage was put into place for this reason: to get around the existing institutions.

Recently, after his coup d'Etat, de Gaulle expanded suffrage for the same reason: to break the "intermediary powers" (…) placing the clique of his heirs in the delicate situation of having to swallow democracy as something other than what it has always been: a political/Machiavellian strategy.

To the brutal oppression of tyrants such as Pilate, Nero and Caesar, against which Islam is unarmed (I do not know of any "Muslim Molière" who can take a stand against the fake demoniacal monarchy), democracy merely adds perfidy to better extend its web. So as Marx noted, the Christian can still invoke the spirit and the letter of the Gospel against the cynical use that the clergy makes of it in the service of public power. Whereas, in a totalitarian democratic republic, the citizen is completely stuck, caught like a fly in the spider's web of "natural right" and anthropology.

This is interesting because we often tend to think of Christianity as being "democratic" or as providing favorable soil on which democracy can grow. But as we see in our current events, democracy is neither good or evil. It depends entirely on the people and who they choose to be their elected leaders. A democracy in its final stages means a type of mob rule orchestrated by the most mercenary, ambitious and violent elements of society. Democracy is not to be confused with "republic", in which there are intermediary powers that prevent the tyranny of both tyrant and mob.

Christianity is better suited to a monarchy or to a republic, precisely because it is itself an intermediary power or an alternative power. Another intermediary power is private schools, something the democratic levelers cannot abide.

Islam is ideally suited to a democracy because the people will always elect the most ideologically indoctrinated Muslims to be their leaders. And no one will be able to dissent and survive.