{This analysis stems from the article “The True Clash of Civilizations” written by policy experts Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, appearing in Foreign Policy, March/April 2003, pp. 63-70.}

In 2003, an article appeared in Foreign Policy entitled “The True Clash of Civilizations,” by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, published the same month the United States waged war on Iraq. It appeared as a critique of Samuel Huntington’s controversial 1993 article, “The Clash of Civilizations?”, which he later turned into the gargantuan bestseller, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

To broadly paraphrase Huntington, he suggests democracy will likely fail in Arab-Muslim countries because the civilization itself is at odds with the values of the system (for instance consider the separation of ‘church’ and state); the “clash” herein is between the way in which religiosity is internalized, thus translated, into a system of government. With reason, some critics claim aspects of Huntington’s treatise is an oversimplification, framed in a xenophobic purview of the Muslim world.

Ingelhart and Norris: A Précis

Among the various nations represented in the survey are those within Western and Eastern Europe (including former Iron-Curtain countries), the Americas, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Japan and India. Among the conglomerate of countries with a Muslim majority surveyed are Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey. The authors maintain that the findings lead to a curious paradox. More like some bad news.

With the exception of Pakistan, the survey indicated that respondents from Muslim nations almost unilaterally support the notion that democracy is the ideal system of government. However, when questions about the liberalization of minorities were broached—questions varying from the social and economic emancipation of women, as well as social tolerance for those with alternative lifestyles, such as homosexuals—Arab-Muslim respondents remained ardently opposed. Conclusively, Inglehart and Norris postulated that Islam’s religious and socio-cultural values may impede the progressive initiatives needed to foster democracy; that Muslims within these countries only theoretically support democracy. Thus, because practitioners of Islam are at odds with the underlying principles that remain the backbone of democracy—tolerance and equality—imposing such a system may prove futile.

Inglehart and Norris come to several eye-opening conclusions. But to be fair, however, let’s suppose these authors came to these findings prematurely. To complicate, I see two loose threads in their argument. First, succumbing to pie-charts, graphs and numbers is problematic; stastics can measure the likelihood (not the bona fide outcome) but leaves little room for possibility. Huntington, Norris and Inglehart assume “knee-jerk traditionalism” is at the helm of every Muslim decision maker.

Second, Inglehart and Norris use Western paradigms to make estimations about the future of democracy in Muslim countries—comparing the way U.S. or German citizens embrace pluralism—but it may be more valuable to consider a regional model. Case in point, we can look towards the extraordinary developments made within the country of Tunisia.

Tunisia is a Muslim nation comprised of Arabic-speaking Shiites, and a thriving sovereign republic with a viable economy. Although a neighbor to some of North Africa’s more radically-prone Muslims, Tunisians, comparably, embrace more progressive politico-religious values. As a result, Tunisians have succeeded in attenuating the socio-cultural rigidity we see otherwise sustained in Muslims nations such as Egypt, Iran, Azerbaijan and neighboring Algeria.

Changes to Tunisia’s cultural and political landscape is attributed primarily to President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. For instance, at the behest of Ben Ali, terror-prone fundamentalists threatening the country’s infrastructure were suppressed and dealt with accordingly. Interestingly, Tunisia is overlooked in both the WVS survey and the article.

From our worldview, Tunisia may be considered an aberration, but it isn’t the only progressive country in the region. It is, however, an encouraging exemplar. In 2002, Tunisia hosted the First Annual Women’s Summit, which gathered to discuss ways to promote the emancipation of Arab women. Such reforms for the social advancement of women were not implemented instantaneously. The Women’s Summit as well as the inclusion of other social reform programs are recent manifestations indicating progress—and progress without sacrificing cultural pride or religious devotion.

Certainly, the argument can be made that the French protectorate, an extrinsic force, helped promote economic diversification and cultural awareness. But we can also argue that true progress can only be sustained when indigenous or intrinsic forces rise to stymie corruption; in effect, challenge radicalism from the inside.

In the past, industrialization has contributed to the manumission of women and minorities by broadening the scope of opportunity, productivity and education for both the oppressed and the oppressor. In the postindustrial society—the U.S. and Western Europe—social equality continues to grow, slower in the United States than in Europe, although on both continents equality is not fully achieved. Inglehart and Norris discuss the ways in which industrialization helped to promote political and social liberalization. Even so, both authors reluctantly endorsed the possibility of democracy within these regions, fearing that the absence of a genuine commitment to democracy’s undergirding principles would result, as they write, solely in the “trappings of democratic governance.”

Historically, democracy has increased the level of tolerance as civil rights are secured. However, by installing a democracy, are America and her allies obliterating the fundamental essence of democracy, namely, choice? A system implemented by the people and for the people; a system which employs the cumbersome but necessary actions of gridlock between discrete camps battling it out? I don’t mean to rehash an argument that served to divide this country last year. So what the hell is my point, you ask?

Connecting the Dots in Washington

I write this column just days after attending an historic event.

This weekend I traveled to Washington, D.C for the March for Women’s Lives. The central issue: Reproductive Rights. Abortion, to put it mildly, is a divisive issue; and no doubt, I wrestle with my own demons on the subject even though I consider myself an activist of social equality.

I marched alongside three camps, three sets of supporters who I thought to be the most unlikely candidates to attend this march: Catholic Women for Choice, Anti-Abortion Advocates, and Republicans for Choice. These supporters, I suspect, understand the dangers of back alley abortions, a pernicious practice that continues to claim lives in the United States (although abortions are legal), but especially abroad in developing countries. More importantly, these protesters understand that to deny choice is to infringe upon civil rights and autonomy that would abrade the underbody of democracy.

But these women marched for other reasons, too. A brief and partial laundry list:

• Women’s healthcare is on a slipper-slope into the toilet.
• Effective and honest sex education in schools, the very programs that would encourage safety and belabor the ramifications of engaging in sexual activity to teens, is on the brink of being expunged and replaced by “Abstinence-Only” programs—such programs, of course, are a smokescreen for religious propaganda in public schools.
• In cities where the Religious-Right is strongly represented, many rape victims and abortion-seekers are denied abortions and emergency contraceptives, shamefacedly turned away by health professionals or intimidated by scurrilous pro-lifers standing at the thresholds of abortion clinics from obtaining these legal recourses.

It is safe to assume, if asked, that these marching women would steadfastly urge abortion-seekers to carry a fetus to term. It is also safe to assume that, if asked, these women would tell you that the decisions made by one woman about her own life are no business of the government. (As activist and actor Camryn Manheim astutely pointed out, this would have been the GOP’s dictum of yesteryear: "‘Get the government out of my private life.' So where in the world is the original Grand Ole Party hiding now?")

I discuss these two concepts in tandem because a discussion of fledgling democracy imposed by us elsewhere should force us to consider both the problems and freedoms we share in our own country. I had expected more anti-abortionists wagging angry fists at marchers. I hadn’t expected these very individuals, the unlikeliest of supporters, to stand firmly in solidarity. In a profound way, those women taught me a crucial lesson about democracy: that to not agree about a subject that continues to bifurcate us as a country is very democratic indeed.