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LSE: Public lectures and events
Secularism, Human Rights and the Middle East: challenges and reflections
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A
Hello everyone. I'm Chetan Bart. I'm director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the lse. And I'd like to warmly welcome you to this event hosted by the Centre on Secularism, Human Rights and the Middle East Challenges and Reflections. And I'd like to thank you very much for joining us this evening. A lot of people have come here, so clearly this is an area in which there is considerable interest and the theme is naturally a very important one. And just to sort of contextualize it very, very briefly, it's important for several reasons and this is part of the thinking in terms of why we wanted to organize this particular event. In the aftermath of the so called Arab Spring, we see the rise of political Salafism. Not Salafism in general, but political and organized Salafism and its various claims regarding its version of religious ideology and how that might sit with a range of statist and constitutional arrangements in the possible future and also how it might work with regard to questions of women's rights and human rights in the Middle East. And I am generalizing and I'm aware that varieties of different kind of political slavism, but this also leads to new accommodations and tensions between the older movements of political Islamism typically represented by, but not exclusively by the Muslim Brotherhood. And of course within this mix there are secular forces, liberal, left wing and indeed right wing ones. And there have been a number of other sharp issues. So for example, what has been referred to as the global counter Jihad movement and its releasing of this film trailer and the aftermath of that, I suppose, and this is perhaps more directed towards some of the students here who've been dealing with some of these issues. The broader theme perhaps is about the association between secularism, secularity and human rights and what the nature of that association might be. And these are of course extremely challenging areas. So I'm therefore honored and delighted to be able to introduce to you Gilbert Ashkar, who is professor of Development Studies and International Relations at Soaz. And he is an internationally known political theorist and authority on the Middle east. And he's published widely on politics and international relations and also on the Middle east and North Africa. And his recent books have included the Clash of Barbarisms, the Making of the New World Disorder, which has been translated into 13 languages and was published in 2006. And just talking to Professor Ashkar earlier, he was talking about his latest project where he's having to work across three different languages, French, Arabic and English. In terms of his latest book, which I know you have a pressing deadline for that. So we're very grateful that you were able to make it here. He's also co authored with Noam Chomsky, Perilous the Middle east and US Foreign Policy and the critically acclaimed Arabs and the Holocaust, the Arab Israeli War of Narratives. And his next book, the People A radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising, will be out in the spring of 2013. Now this event is being audio recorded and if the technology works and there are no glitches, we hope to have a podcast on of the lecture and the Q and A session online in the next few days. Can I also please ask you to turn your phones onto silent? So you have to turn your phones onto silent, but if you want to Twitter, you have to. You can twitter at the same time. And the suggested hashtag for this event is lse, which is also displayed behind us. And following the presentation, there will be ample time for your questions. So may I ask you to extend your welcome to Professor Ashkar?
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B
Thank you very much, Chetan, and thank you all for coming. So many of you. Well, listening to to what Chet and explain about the complexity of the problem, you understand that it's just an impossible endeavor to try to address all these questions in 30 minutes. Especially that, as he has also told you, I've been working under terrible stress, racing against the clock to finish my forthcoming book. And well, so I had to squeeze the preparation of this lecture, which will be a number of a set of reflections which I want to share with you and discuss with you since we have a discussion here on these complex topics and well, I'll start from the observation that Chetan made about what is okay, that's what's happening in the region, this tension that we can see, but which actually existed from the start between let's say, religious political forces, forces that include religion as part of their political programs, and secular forces in very broad sense of forces which do not refer to religion as at least a major component of their program. Even you can find it in the background, but not as a major component, not as a defining component of the program. So in other words, tension between politically religious forces, or to be more specific, forces of fundamentalist character, various shades of Islamic fundamentalism and liberal to left forces, a conglomerate of forces that were very active in this whole uprising and which actually in most cases have been initiating, and that's a major feature of what happened is the fact that this big uprising in most cases has been initiated by people belonging to the spectrum of liberal to left and joined later on at a later Stage depending on countries by putting political religious forces. So this tension has been there and is still there. But in countries where the struggle is still going on, like Syria or Yemen or Bahrain, the tension is just in the background. It's the main. The dominant aspect of the struggle is the whole opposition, including this whole range of forces, from religious to secular and governments. Whereas the tension is at its peak now in the countries where victories have been achieved. And I mean, these countries are Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. And the three countries, the tensions are very clear between the two set of forces. So this tension has been here and of course, was noticeable since the beginning of the uprising. And it even led some people from the start to, you know, act as a kind of exception or against the current of. Against the euphoria that existed at the beginning of what has been called the Arab Spring, this kind of name also, I mean, being part of the euphoria, of course. So some people, minority of people, try to go against this current and actually bend the stick in the other direction with a very pessimistic assessment of what is going on. You had very early on, a book that came out with a provocative title about the Islamist hijacking the Arab uprising, and basically where the author basically explains that, you know, after all, the best regimes in the region are these. I'm quoting here because it's a complete mischaracterization. What he called constitutional monarchies in Jordan and Morocco. I mean, they are not constitutional monarchies. They are absolute monarchies with conceded constitutions, but constitutions which depends on. On the will of the monarch anyway. So, I mean, these were like exceptions at the beginning, exceptions compared with the euphoria. But now, of course, nowadays what we see is rather the euphoria, the whole euphoria being turned into a kind of, you know, deep pessimism about the. The outcome or the future of all that. And when I say pessimism, of course, I'm speaking here of the view in the west generally. But I mean, leave geographic or geopolitic characterization is actually the view from those who chair the secular liberal to left kind of range of views, as opposed to the others who have no reason, of course, to be pessimistic or sad about what is going on. And so now we enter the stage where the same people who used to speak of Arab Spring are speaking of Arab winter or autumn or whatever, you know, to maintain the seasons. And you have even, you know, cases of deep melancholic depression that are now expressed. And a very recent, most recent instance of that is the Article by Hussein Agha and Robert Malay in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. The title is Is this a Revolution? Oh, sorry, it's not even a question, it's an assertion. This is not a revolution. That's the title. And, well, this is the expression, you know, of a kind of big disappointment from people who, I would say, misjudged the event from the start. So I would say, I mean, we'll discuss that. But it's neither the kind of euphoria that existed at the start, which is warranted, nor this kind of melancholy area or depression that is warranted. Both of them are, I think, based on misjudging what is happening now? Let us get more into the direct topic that we are discussing. And indeed, at the beginning, there has been a lot of. Of comments on the way this whole uprising has swept away the very Orientalist, in the Saidian sense, assertion that existed about the incompatibility of Islam or between Islam and democracy. And this is a very common idea on which articles and even books have been written, more or less sophisticated, from the very, very crude to the. To the sophisticated, trying to explain or sustain this kind of perspective. And of course, the basic flow in such a perspective is that it is dealing with a whole part of the world, as if this part of the world, or assuming that this part of the world is determined primarily, if not only by religion. That's one point. And the second is that there is anything like Islam which you could, you know, label in one way or another and define in modern political terms. I think, I believe that this kind of view is basically flawed because, I mean, Islam in modern times, not to mention even throughout its history, is of course the object of many, many, many different interpretations. And so is the case of all religions. Actually. Is Christianity compatible with democracy? Which Christianity, the Opus dei, theology of liberation, the papacy, Protestantism, with this or that branch of Protestantism, etc. So why would Islam be different? Which Islam? Just give you an example. The Islam of Hassan Al Banna or the Islam of his brother? Here are two brothers, two Muslim scholars with completely different views of Islam, completely different interpretations of Islam. And therefore the very question of is Islam compatible with democracy? Is quite, quite flawed. Or else the answer should be any religion is compatible with democracy, of course, because it's a matter of interpretation. There's no religion that stood unchanged since its early inception until now. This doesn't exist. And the fact is that actually, beyond the question, what is meant is not really is Islam incompatible or compatible with democracy, but Are Muslims as human beings, as a set of people able to work through democracy? And that's where I think ultimately these kind of culturalist views, this kind of essentialist perspectives, defining whole peoples by culture or by some purported essence of their religion or whatever, are at the bottom of them are really brands of racism, variations of racism. Now, what the uprising has shown, and I mean, I think for anyone familiar with the region, this is certainly no surprise at all. What the uprising has shown is that the peoples of the region, there are peoples, like any peoples on earth, aspire to democracy. And they not only aspire to democracy, but they are showing us, actually, I would say, a higher standard of democracy than the one we are used to. We are used to parliamentary democracy. And this is, of course, what they achieved, what the uprisings have achieved everywhere where they triumph, be it Tunisia or Egypt or Libya, you have had parliamentary democracy put in place or parliamentary democratic forms, still discussing constitutions. But the peculiarity of what's going on is that is you have parliamentary democracy corrected by street politics, by the will, the direct will of the people, which is expressed on the streets through demonstrations. And this very central slogan of the whole uprising, the people want, which is the title of my forthcoming book, a little ad, is very expressive of that. So, I mean, this core idea of democracy, the real sense of the term, the etymological sense of the term people's power, is very much what people are fighting for and by the millions in this part of the world. But again, this is, I mean, absolutely no surprise. The surprise or not the surprise, the big question. I keep repeating that the big question is not why or how come it has exploded now. The big question is why did it take so long to explode? That was a big question. And this is actually why you had all these theories, completely misleading theories, trying to explain that actually the peoples of the region, I mean, are accustomed to despotism. That's part of their culture, that's part of their, you know, political genes. And therefore, that's why you have these. All these despotic regimes in the region. Well, all this has been completely smashed, I would say, by the uprising. And yet what do we see now? Of course, we see in at least two of the three countries, or not at least actually only two of the three countries where victories have been won. We see the hegemony or the. Let's say we see religious forces or Islamic forces or forces of political nature, mixing religion with political perspectives, predominating. And that's what I started with, which leads to this kind of pessimistic or gloomy kind of reaction among some people in the West. Now, is this, ultimately, is this a vindication of the culturalist thesis in the sense that, well, okay, I mean, you had this big euphoria and a lot of you said this smashes, as I just said myself, the very idea of the incompatibility or the purported incompatibility between Islam and democracy. And yet what do you see? You have these religious forces coming to the foreign, seizing power, and the outcome will be even worse than what you have now during this transitional period. And that's it. So that means that actually this whole uprising was basically for the majority of those who were part of it, a way to replace governments which were despotic, but more or less secular. And then you would think of Tunisia, which had this reputation, the Tunisian government in particular, with, with Muslim forces, Islamic forces. And, and that's what it is about. And it's not. And it wasn't a democratic uprising, or even it was not or it is not a revolution, as the title that I mentioned said. Well, as I said, this is. This whole thing is based on a misjudgment. I mean, for decades we have been those who are familiar with the region expecting that in any explosion which most observers thought would be or is inevitable actually, and there were a lot of prognosis of explosion in the region, the common assumption was or expectation was that in case of explosion, Islamic fundamentalist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the most important of such forces in the region, will prevail or actually will lead. That was absolutely the expectation. And why so? For a simple reason, which is that for three decades at the very least, these forces have been the hegemonic forces in the expression of popular discontent in the region. But they have been like that, not forever, not as part of the cultural essence of the region, but since a certain period in time, when I say three decades, it means that before that they were not the hegemonic forces. And the region in the 50s and 60s was definitely not dominated by such forces. And the kind of forces that were the most important forces in the expression of popular discontent were of brands that belong to this broad range of secular left wing forces, from the nationalist to the communist. I mean, people forget that in the same countries where some of the same countries where we see now total domination of fundamentalist forces, take Iraq as an example. People forget that in this country in the late 50s, if you take the Iraqi south, the dominant force were not the likes of Mokhtad Al Sadr. Or whoever, but the communists. So it's just showing that we are dealing with historical phenomena. Of course, everything is historical, but not anything essential. So nevertheless, the fact that you had this big failure of the nationalists of the left and the rest left or created a vacuum which was filled by the Islamic fundamentalist forces. And I mean, it was all the more filled by them or all the easier for them to do so that this coincided with the rising cloud of the Saudi kingdom, which is the epicenter of fundamentalism, of Islamic fundamentalism and huge financial support to these developments and also the use made by various governments of these same forces in order to defeat the remnants of the left and nationalism. And so this produced the situation that we have had for the last few decades. And therefore we were expecting that this situation would lead, in case of explosion, therefore to the domination of these fundamentalist, Islamic fundamentalist forces. And as I started by saying, I mean, actually the real novelty of what happened or the surprise was that they did not initiate and new forces emerged, especially among the youth, using the technologies of communication and the rest, new forces emerged that played the key decisive role in unleashing this whole process. And that was the real novelty. But as long as the central demand, politically speaking, is democracy, it was quite obvious that any elections organized, you know, just after a few months of the uprising would lead to the victory of those who had a much larger political organization and much more financial and communication means not only money, but also television, which all of us know how much television is central to the modern political and electoral processes. And therefore it was absolutely clear that they would be winning. And it's only wishful thinking that led many people to, to doubt of that in the start, you know, just because there wasn't any mechanism to be, to be sure about what these forces represent. But whatever they represent, people didn't take enough into consideration that even if you are not, you are a minority, but if you are an organized minority with money and television and the rest of the facing people who are unorganized basically, or scattered into small groups, then you, I mean, it is quite normal that you triumph in elections or the rest. Now the question, I mean, the issue is that this itself has to be relativized. When you look, and I don't have time to go into that, but when you look at the actual processes in Egypt or Tunisia, not to mention Libya, where actually the Muslim, the local Muslim Brotherhood was defeated, I mean, beaten by another so called secular liberal force. But if you take even Tunisia and Egypt, the victory achieved by the Muslim Brotherhood then or the, the likes in Tunis, but it's practically the same organization, is not, you know, not a landslide as it is projected. It had more or less disappearance in the, in the parliamentary election in Egypt, but already this had faded away in the presidential election where the score was much, much less significant than, I mean, the score of Muslim Brotherhood than whatever they achieved in the parliamentary election. And therefore this is a situation, I mean, in process, it's moving. And again, what happened is not surprising. It's definitely not surprising. And despite all the gloomy depiction of things, I still think that actually what is mostly amazing is how quickly these forces are or have lost ground and how there are, I mean, increasing resistances by other forces and especially forces on the left, whether in Tunisia or in Egypt. Now the question, whatever is the outcome is why would we assume that the forces that have been prevailing until now.
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Represent.
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Or are in contradiction with the democratic aspirations? So the question now becomes not is Islam compatible or not compatible with democracy? Which is, as I said, completely flawed question. But the question becomes, and that's much more specific, are these forces, is the Muslim Brotherhood compatible with democracy? I mean, is the Muslim Brotherhood an organization which can reconcile itself with democratic functioning? Now here the issue, I would say, is not one of suspicion a priori or priori. It is on the one hand the clear contradiction between democracy and their programs, their historical programs, their traditional programs, whatever they try to say. Even the change in language in terminology, like turning from the Islamic state to the civil state with Islamic reference, well, this is semantic, but basically the interpretation that is given remains one where you have this Islamic reference and therefore the Islamic framework of the state, that is the state defined by a religious framework. And that's the key point. So you have on the one hand this programmatic problem, on the other hand, you have the actual record. And the actual record, I should say, whether in Tunisia or in Egypt, is not one showing a commitment to democracy. It is quite worrying. On the contrary, again, don't have time to get into the details, but if you're following the news about whether Tunisia or Egypt, there's plenty of, there are plenty of facts to indicate or to show how worrying the situation is when it comes to the behavior of these forces that are dominant in the government. And actually, I mean, people would tell you, well, but there are, we can see that would point to Turkey as an example of a party belonging to this tradition of so called political Islam which is in power and yet basically respecting the general framework of democracy. Whatever criticisms or observations one can make about what is happening in Turkey. But the fact is that the Turkish has broken with the tradition. It's not a continuity of the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, it's rather the product of a break with this tradition, a split from that tradition. And I would say to see anything like that in the region, or we can point to maybe some people or individuals or even political forces now representing something similar to that, but they have broken, they have split from the Muslim Brotherhood. That's the reality. So that's the point here. And this would lead us to another question then. It is the one of the very assumption which is lying behind what we are, what I am discussing right now, which is of course I have a set of values in mind. I have a conception of democracy in mind, I have a conception of human rights in mind and I'm taking that as my standard for the judgment I just made. So of course like any judgment, it's based on some standards. And the question is, is this standard valid? In other words, we have here the classical debate on the values, on the universal values versus, versus religious, regional, whatever kind of values. Classical debate which is the debate around the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it's no coincidence that despite all their differences, both the Saudi Kingdom and the Islamic Republic of Iran reject this declaration as non Islamic. So here you have a certain conception of things rejecting this, the set of values that are expressed in this declaration in the name of religion. And I should say that the recent declaration by the Organization of Islamic Operation is really in contradiction with some of the key aspects of human rights as they are in the Universal Declaration. You have different versions of this, like the so called Asian version values which were upheld by Mahadir bin Muhammad from Malaysia or Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore. And two quite authoritarian, or in the case of Singapore, even more than authoritarian, despotic one could say regimes. And here we see how therefore religion or the region, or so called regional culture, whatever it may it might mean, are used to reject Dio's basic rights that the minions have been demanding very recently and are still demanding even in Kuwait, recently in the Arab world. So the key question is here, and I should say the basic, I would say the most important or basic refutation of this claim of, you know, of this rejection of the universal or the values embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as Western is again that it's based on, on a completely flawed reasoning. And well, let me read a little quote from Amartya Sen because he put it quite rightly on this issue when he said that the practice of democracy that has won out in the modern west is largely a result of a consensus that has emerged since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution and, and particularly in the last century or so. Again, this is historical. To lead in this a historical commitment of the west over the millennia to democracy and then to contrast it with non Western traditions, treating each in turn as monolithic would be a great mistake. Nicely, this is indeed completely misleading to portray these values of democracy and human rights as Western. They are not Western. They are. Well, of course they were enforced in the west before other parts of the world. But that's also a product of the fact that this, I mean, Europe happened to be leading the way in the industrial transformation of the world and that was related to that. And I mean, had we looked at medieval, the medieval west, then we could have had the same ideas about the fact that the incompatibility of democracy or human rights or whatever, with its set of cultural values. So this is a key aspect of the problem. The other issue is the issue of religious taboos and freedom of expression and whether freedom of speech, free speech, is just a fig leaf for some kind of Islamophobic enterprise. I should say that even in this regard, it's very important, as in every aspect, it's very important to contextualize the discussion. I mean, it's clear in my view that those who are resorting to these provocations, like this extremely stupid film or the even more stupid. Priest, or I don't know what it is in the United States wanted to burn Korans, are, I mean, extremely reactionary and Islamophobic, racist minded people. That's absolutely clear. But I think to say that should not lead us to defend the idea that there should be a limitation on free speech with regard to religion. That is to introduce, like some people have been suggesting, an international legislation against blasphemy. And you see, the very concept of blasphemy is actually setting us back for centuries. Because the issue here is like anything with free speech. I mean, free speech can be used in the most reactionary ways, it can be used in the most progressive ways. But the existence of extremely reactionary uses of free speech should not lead us to throw the baby with the bathwater. I think that would be a major mistake. And in Muslim majority countries this is very important because people there, instead of playing into the hands of those who are exploiting these provocations in order to push forward their extremely obscurantist views, those who are, you know, there have Been a lot of exploitation of these provocations, the main role of people there. Because again, I'm contextualizing. I don't think you can take the same or you don't have the same priorities in your political stance, whether you are in the west, for instance, or in Muslim majority countries on such issues. And depending on the issues, every time you have to contextualize. So I think it's something very important. I mean, it's a very important distinction because we see from historical experience precisely what I was saying about the west and quoting Amartya Sen. We see from historical experience how much the criticism of religion has been the key historical condition, actually for the advancement of knowledge, for political emancipation and for women's liberation. I mean, all these issues have gone through, you know, a religious wall that they had to break to breach in order to progress. And therefore, this criticism of religion is basically a key condition for all these progresses. And it's not different in Muslim majority countries or Arab countries or whatever. Actually they provide us. And this is a part, I mean, I belong to, I'm an Arab myself. I think the Arab world provides us with a negative illustration, the negative illustration or confirmation of the fact that the freedom to criticize religion is a key condition for all sorts of emancipation. Freedom to criticize religion, which is of course, part of freedoms, freedom of belief, freedom of, I mean, all sorts of religious freedoms. But I mean, this is connected to this ability, therefore to criticize, to discuss everything which is, I mean, the very condition of even the scientific mind or spirit itself. And ultimately, I mean, my last point is about secularism, therefore, in this regard, some people have, and I won't names, not getting into politics here anyhow, have characterized secularism as the doctrine of. Of Western imperialism. You have had a lot of writings, some of them very sophisticated, with basically this view. I took part recently, I mean, a few years ago actually, in a debate with a person was making that point and explaining the occupation of Iraq in this perspective. So I made an observation to this person that the United States, which purportedly was, you know, according to this person, bringing secularism as part of its ideological arsenal, had waged that war from the territory of the Saudi Kingdom, which is the closest friend of the United States in that part of the world and definitely the most fundamentalist state on earth, and in alliance with nice Iraqi forces called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution or the Islamic party, etc. Overthrowing a government which was portrayed even. Of course, this is very debatable, but at the very least, compared to these forces, it was portrayed as secular. So how can we say in light of this historical experience, that secularism is the doctrine of imperialism in that regard, this is completely, I mean, a complete misreading of the facts. And there is at least enough, or actually much more ground to sustain the opposite theory as, as Israzmi would put it, to define culturalism, as he would put it, as the grand narrative of capitalism, exultant, and to describe the kind of views that I mentioned, as he does, as postmodern obscurantism, branding like that, or forms of culturalism. So I do believe, in the same way that I think, that human rights, democratic values, are universal values. And we see a confirmation of that in the permanent process of history. And this uprising is but the most recent confirmation of this, of the fact that these values are common to humankind. They. I mean, secularism in the sense of the separation of religion and state is a basic prerequisite of democracy, of democracy or any form of democracy, because the very idea that legislation should be compatible with religious text, this very idea is contradictory with the very idea, with the core of democracy, which is the sovereignty of the people. Now, you could say, well, the people may vote for this, for a religious constitution, but then you get into what has been, you know, summarized in a famous formula, one person, one vote, one time. That would be a closure of democracy. So this separation is absolutely essential, because democracy is not precisely one person, one vote, one time. It is the sovereignty of the people, not one time, but in permanence. And I put it differently. The reversibility of laws, like the revocability of rulers, are essential prerequisites of democracy. And if religion, which is sacred, which is, I mean, which is from beyond the realm of humankind, is inserted into any constitution, this is in itself a contradiction with the democratic aspiration. Thank you very much.
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A
Okay, thank you very much indeed for a very stimulating and enlightening lecture dealing with some very provocative themes. Now, we have good time for questions, and I know many of you have questions to answer ask. So I'll take questions in groups of three, if I may. And also you'll see our wonderful LSE stewards who are hovering around, and they will come with a microphone to you when I indicate you to them. So can I also request that you hold a microphone in front of you before you ask your question? And please also don't hang on to it, otherwise the stewards might start tickling you with a feather duster until you release it. But please let everyone speak into the microphone so people can Hear your question. This could be. This might cause a short delay waiting for the microphone, but please, I ask you to be patient.
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Also.
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There are people on the top gallery and the LSE stewards are very super powered, but they don't have the capacity yet, we're working on it, to scramble up the sides of the walls. So you might have a little longer delay. But again, please be patient. Also when you do ask a question, can I please request that you state your name and any institutional organizational affiliation, please? Who would like to go first? Yeah, hi, my name is Ahmed. I'm just a doctor in the nhs. Basically. A question. I wonder if Professor Ashkar could care to copy a comment on the Syrian situation. And I gave you that the left has a very important part to play in fighting against reaction Islamist forces. Now unfortunately, the stance of many segments of the left, and I know you are noble exception to this, the stance of many sections on the left in the Arab world and outside has been extremely disappointing on the Syrian revolution, characterizing it as an imperialist conspiracy as Islamist led and which is extremely disappointing to many Syrians such as myself, who I would consider myself as a left wing persuasion. And I'm just wondering if you'd care to comment on whether this stance that many sections of left have taken has actually made the struggle more difficult than what's going to happen. Because it'll be a very difficult struggle indeed from what comes next after Assad. Thank you, thank you very much for that question. Can I take a couple more? So there's one just over there.
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B
Yes. Hello, Mr. Askar, I'm Ayo Pidera, I'm a student at LSE. I would like to ask you actually about the attitude of the west towards the Arab Spring. We have noticed that for many decades the Western countries supported dictators and depicting them as like, okay, they are autocratic, but they respect the rights of women or economically speaking, they're good. The French President Jacques Chirac said about Ben Ali 10 years ago that the first of human rights is to have food. So now they were like, I agree with him on that, but that wasn't the case in Tunisia. So yeah, what do you think? Do you think that they still hold on this line or move with the Arab people?
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Okay, thank you for that. Can I have one more question? We have 1 actually, there's three people with their hands up.
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I might lecture at the center for.
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The Study of Human Rights. To the extent that we have the freedom to criticize secularism as well, or.
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The enlightenment version of secularism.
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That you pronounce very strongly on. Could I please ask you to elaborate? What exactly is the incompatibility between political Islam and democracy? Could you say more about that, please?
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Because it's one thing to call Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalist, another thing to respect it.
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As a political project. And I don't see really what exactly is the incompatibility? Thank you very much for that. Can I just take one more question? There's one at the back, just there. Yes, you who just.
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Hello. Thank you. Professor, my name is Darien Hajj, I'm Lebanese and I'm an LLM student. Don't you think that for a revolution to be meaningful there should be also revolutions in the social values so that at least democracy in the minimum standards of it, which is human rights, rule of law, protection of liberty is realized? Because if not, then it would jeopardize the main concept of the reversibility of laws that you have explained.
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Okay, thank you, Professor Sajka. Good bunch of questions to begin with.
- [55:59]
B
Yep. Well, thank you for the questions. Syria. Yes, indeed. I mean, this is maybe the extreme case illustrating what I was saying and the shift in attitudes of people who were supportive of, of the overall movement when they started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and then changed their positions, some of them already with the Libyan case and a lot with the Syrian case. Now, I mean, the first of all, the idea that the Syrian uprising is dominated by Salafists or whatever kind of forces is at the very least extremely exaggerated. So that's already a very wrong way of portraying what is happening and what is basically a popular, genuine, very genuine popular uprising in which actually no political force whatsoever was prevailing or dominant. And to this point, actually on the ground, there isn't any political force that is appearing as dominant. This is very peculiar to what's happening in Syria. So we have this popular movement clashing with one of the most brutal and ruthless dictatorships, not only in the region, I would say, in the world. What we have been seeing over the last months has been really appalling. And I mean, to support the dictatorship or even to be neutral under the pretext that there are some reactionary forces of a religious character in the uprising should have been applied as a rule to Tunisia and Egypt where you had the same kind of forces. I'm just being speaking a lot about the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. So what's the difference? So basically it amounts, I mean, the core of all that is actually.
- [58:37]
A
The.
- [58:37]
B
Idea that not that the Syrian regime is secular when its closest ally Is Iran actually, but that it is anti imperialist. Now this is, I mean, this is not a very original view, but we have seen a lot of such views at the time when you had the Soviet Union and the system of people supporting repression in those countries under the pretext that these were socialist or anti imperialists or whatever countries when they were repressing their populations or supporting the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, et cetera. So of course this means that here basically the key problem is what is your basic value? Is it the right of the people to self determination or is it anti imperialism per se? Because if your basic value is the right of people to self determination and that is the reason why you are against imperialism as by definition oppressing this right, this is one thing, but your main criterion is the right of people self determination. Otherwise if you make of anti imperialism a general category and Decentral 1, and in the name of that you support regimes suppressing their own people, then I mean, the range, I mean the discussion is clear. So there's a very basic disagreement here more generally also concerning the, I mean Western or Western government's attitudes towards the Arab Spring. Indeed, it has been, it has displayed the same kind of hypocrisy that we have been seeing for so many decades in the region. And especially on this issue of democracy and the rest. I mean, any pretension that the Western governments were or are promoting democracy in the region.
- [61:16]
A
Is.
- [61:18]
B
Contradicted, refuted by the touchstone represented by the Saudi Kingdom, which is the main ally or main friend or the dearest friend to all Western governments, the government of this country included, and which is again the real antithesis of democracy, human rights, women rights, et cetera. And this is the touchstone. So all the rest is hypocrisy. All the rest is an attempt, you know, at recuperating a movement which insert itself not in what the very naive adherence to conspiracy theory describe as, you know, as an almighty United States pulling the strings of all that, this is ridiculous. The United States is in real, I mean really facing dire straits in the region. The US hegemony in the region is at its lowest point since 1990, which was the peak. Just look at the outcome of Iraq. Iraq. I mean, don't take the real measure because the withdrawal from Iraq was less dramatic than the withdrawal from Vietnam. But actually it's a biggest defeat. It's an absolutely huge defeat for the United States. What, what happened in Iraq and the fact the United States had to, to leave Iraq not even able to Leave there a government which they could consider as a client of Washington about the incompatibility between. Well, political Islam is not a formula I use except with quote marks because I find it loaded with orientalist perspective. Why don't we speak of political Christianity, political Judaism, etc. Why political Islam? I mean, I'm very cautious with any formulas trying to essentialize any phenomenon. And that's why I also reject personally the term Islamism, which I find misleading and in the mind of many people creates a confusion with Islam as a religion. And that's why I speak of fundamentalism, whatever the discussion we can have. But when you take a broader concept of fundamentalism, at least it applies to all religions. Jewish fundamentalism, Catholic fundamentalism, Protestant fundamentalism, Shia, Sunni, whatever. That's a major point. So that's a key thing. And so let's be more concrete. The Muslim Brotherhood, why is it programmatically incompatible with democracy? Well, I mean, when they tried a few years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to produce a program, they had a program in which you had an assembly of Islamic experts. I mean, they don't have the. Of Iran, but the idea of the assembly of experts vetoing the legislation was there and it's still there in the idea of the civil state with Islamic reference. And now, I mean, the project of constitution she's discussed, you have a clause, I mean, one of the versions where Al Azhar is defined as the, you know, the Ulam of Al Azhar would have the power to decide the constitutionality. I mean, they would actually be a kind of constitutional court because they would have to decide the compatibility orbility of legislation with Islam. So this is, I'm sorry, but this is very clearly contradictory with democracy. Democracy puts no limitations on the will of the people and the decision, the sovereign decision of the people. Well, not to mention, of course, views like the fact that women can, I mean, a woman cannot be president or whatever, which are also part of the story. So you can't have a fundamentalist perspective. And here by fundamentalist I mean the literalist interpretation of religion, which sees religion as a necessary part of a necessary component of polity and not only of society. This is what I would call fundamentalism. And this is not compatible with democracy, whatever the religion, whatever the religion. I would tell you exactly the same for Christian fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalists, or whatever their views are not compatible with democracy. That's the point. And. Well, I mean, the last intervention was not so much a question as far as I understand it, as more a kind of statement with Which I agree, which is what I tried to say. So I have no nothing to add to what was said.
- [66:24]
A
Okay, we can take some more questions, but can I also remind you that when you're asking a question the the length of your question should be shorter in time than the answer that you expect. So no long speeches and so forth. Any more questions? That's this one there. Thank you. I have a question regarding Tunisia and Libya. That parliaments in the states are dominated by Islamist parties. These parties are right in the constitutions.
- [66:52]
B
If you look for instance to countries in Europe or the United States, it might my country, the Netherlands, the constitution was written by liberals and the constitution still express, even 160 years later, Liberal value. So aren't you worried that the constitutions that are written now will express these Islamist values? And that maybe even in 100 years.
- [67:12]
A
The constitution will remain almost unchanged.
- [67:15]
B
It will still express these Islamist values.
- [67:18]
A
Thank you for that. There's a question at the front here.
- [67:30]
B
Sorry, I'm Yaar, I'm from the MSC in Human rights. My question is according to your definition of fundamentalism, do you think that the Jewish fundamentalism and Zionism as Israel acted in 1948 and 1967, it means that Israel is a fundamentalist state to its core or not?
- [67:58]
A
Okay. And thank you for that. And one we have one more which will be if we make it the final question. Thank you. My name's Zoe, I'm from the University of Melbourne. In light of the hypocrisy, the history of hypocrisy and the continuing hypocrisy of Western government stance towards the Middle east and Arab democracy, I'm wondering if you can envisage any kind of intervention on the part of Western governments in circumstances like Syria or Libya, which you're critical of, that could actually genuinely be in aid of Arab democracy and human rights and not just self interested. Thanks. Okay, really good set of questions. Thank you.
- [68:43]
B
Yep. Well, the first question about the constitutions that are being written right now or discussed. Yes, of course there's a big fear and danger that they may be like what you said and that is leading to a very strong reaction and resistance and fight of all forces opposed to this kind of outcome in these countries. And by the way, the very, I mean in Tunisia at least, the process itself is less contested. In Egypt, even the process itself, the so called Constitutional assembly that is drafting the constitution is very much contested in its very principle, in this form of composition. So indeed there's a big threat and the fight is going on and that's, I mean, that's why I said the key point is that, I mean the euphoric view of what is happening in the region was as much wrong as the gloomy view that you have presently. The key point, I think the key achievement of this whole uprising is really that the peoples of the region have learned to want to express their will. And you can see that whatever elections you have, demonstrations are going on. That's what I said when I emphasize the fact that we are seeing there a higher, let's say, standard of democracy than the one than parliamentary democracy. I said, I spoke of parliamentary democracy corrected by street politics, by the people coming out, not, you know, waiting for the next election and you know, taking everything in the meantime, but expressing what they want in the streets. I mean this has become part of the general tradition, I would say in countries with long history of democracy in the region. It is new and that's extremely important. And this is, this is, I mean it will be very difficult to reverse. I'm not saying it's irreversible, nothing is irreversible. But this is something which for the time being has become very, very, very strong. Zionism, Zionism is not, I mean Zionism is a movement that encompasses a whole very broad range forces from the secular, some of them even claiming to be radical left, to the fundamentalists. So Jewish fundamentalism, but Zionism itself is not Jewish fundamentalism. That's something different. Now I mean, if you're asking me about that more generally about the compatibility of Zionism with democracy, I would say that Zionism is democratic for the Jews and that shows the limitation of the so called democracy when it becomes an ethnic democracy which is based on a religious definition. So it may be secular, but ultimately it can't be regarded as really democratic in the full sense of the term as long as you have second class citizen in the country itself and whole populations dispossessed and oppressed and an occupation that has been going on for several decades already. As for the Western intervention, whether it could be devoid of self interest or I mean whether it could be genuinely motivated by humanitarian feelings, I don't think so. I don't think that, I mean, except, you know, I mean, I don't think that military interventions by Western governments and the record does not give us any indication of that can be purely motivated by humanitarian views. I mean if we had governments ruled by humanitarian views, there are much easier things to do than military interventions. It would take a small fraction of military expenditure to eradicate diseases that kill millions or tens of millions of people every year. It takes a small fraction of that. And you can give so many other examples. And when we look at the record of intervention and we compare, I mean the huge intervention for the between Kotmarks liberation of Kuwait with so many cases of much larger countries and much bigger peoples under occupation and left like that, you see that things are related to interest. And in the same way, the difference between Libya and Syria is very telling. It's very telling. Of course there are a lot of differences between Libya and Syria, but a key one is definitely the fact that Libya is a rich oil state, as Kuwait was. So basically these interventions are motivated by narrow economic interest ultimately or strategic interest, and definitely not by humanitarian consideration, whatever the rhetoric is. Thank you.
- [75:24]
A
Okay, actually, before we give our formal thanks and before we leave, can I remind you of two forthcoming Centre events? The first one is on the Status Citizen, Irregular Migration and Cosmopolitan Citizenship. And that's on Tuesday 6th November with Professor Andreas G. Kalivas and Dr. Ayesha Chubukchu from the Centre. And then we also have our large UN International Human Rights Day event which is Putting rights back together again. And that will be on Thursday 6th December at 6:30 with Salil Shetty, who is the Secretary General of Amnesty International. Also, if you want to be informed of the Center's events and other activities, you can sign up to receive our email alerts and also follow US on Twitter SEHumanRights. Can I thank Gilbert Ashkar for an extremely stimulating. And before we go, can I also thank Zoe Gillard, our Centre manager, for all her help in organizing all of our one range of public events. Can I thank the wonderful LSE stewards for their work and also to yourselves for your thoughtful and stimulating and extremely helpful questions. Thank you very much.