Archive for the ‘arab world’ tag
How To Stifle Dissent #
The Economist offers a handy guide for totalitarian bureaucrats looking to make it hard to speak against them. It’s a troubling and useful look at the state of media freedom around the world.
Despite the flourishing of alternative media, such as satellite television and internet blogs, that challenge once-impregnable state monopolies on the flow of news, governments keep finding new ways to suppress contrary views. Whereas the dictatorships of old snuffed out opponents or chucked them in jail, today’s softer incarnations achieve similar silence by subtler means. Hyper-regulation via catch-all laws, plus financial carrots and sticks, tend to replace cruder direct control.
Islam and Democracy #
The Economist takes an admirable look at the complex issues that underpin the struggle for the coexistence of Islam and open democracy, finding the difficulty of dissent at home to be its biggest obstacle.
Vali Nasr, a professor at America’s Tufts University, terms “Muslim Democracy” a newish and potentially decisive force in the non-Arab parts of the Muslim world. In his view, the recent experience of Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia all points to a single truth: wherever they are given the chance, Muslim Democratic parties (which are responsive to public opinion and thrive in an open political contest) can prevail over harder-line and more violent varieties of political Islam. […]
There are, in short, many interesting things to say about Islam and democracy. The pity is that they are mostly being said in the West, not in Islam’s heartland.
Relatedly, this week’s edition of the newspaper (to use their term) also has interesting looks at the “soft Islam” of Indonesia and the general malaise across the Arab world.