At 01:46 PM 9/29/01 -0400 Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>They did, but Khatami has no real power. Nor does the the Parliament.
>Khameini still runs the country, pretty much completely, and he's an
>absolute despot. Bangladesh is a democracy, but certainly not a _liberal_
>one by any stretch of the word, and the radical islamic parties are gaining
>power there quite a bit.
Well, the presence of radical islamic parties gaining strength, is not, in
of itself a black mark on Bangladeshi democracy.
I remember reading once that Bangladesh has the distinction of being the
only democracy where both the head of government and the leader of the
opposition are both females.
I still give Iran at least a bonus point or two for electing Khatami, as
limited as his power might be.
> Egypt is simply authoritarian - calling it
>democratic means that someone actually believes that Mubarak received 90% of
>the vote in the last election.
Egypt is more like a very primitive Constitutional Monarchy. Mubarak is
basically trying to pass power down to his son - and unlike Western CM's,
the monarch has a ton of power. Still, there are slivers of democracy and
a bit of power in the Parliament.
>Algeria is run by the military, which took
>over when Islamist parties won the last round of elections and essentially
>proposed to end democracy - so the military did it first, since they wanted
>to preserve a secular state. Indonesia's democracy is about a year old and,
>again, propped up by a secular military, and Bosnia's is largely a creation
>of the NATO powers. Turkey is a sort-of democracy in that every time the
>Islamic parties win an election, the military overthrows the government.
>While I do not believe that Islam is incompatible with democracy, it is
>worth noting that there aren't exactly hordes of Islamic democracies out
>there.
I think a much more interesting question is not why predominantly Islamic
States are not democratic, but why so many Christian States are democratic.
JDG
__________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - ICQ #3527685
"Freedom itself was attacked today, and Freedom will be Defended."
-U.S. President George W. Bush, 09/11/01
