Three quick responses to David Cameron’s big speech on Islam and democracy in Indonesia:
1) According to Nick Watt’s report in the Guardian:
Cameron will cite Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, the former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Assad as he says: “In each case the Arab spring has shown that denying people their rights in the name of stability and security actually makes countries less stable in the end. Over time, the pressure builds up until the people take to the streets and demand their freedoms.
How can the PM keep a straight face? No mention of his friend, the King of Saudi Arabia, who is the biggest roadblock to democratic reform in the Arab world and who Cameron visited in January. No mention of his friend, the King of Bahrain, who has killed, tortured and gassed his own country’s “Arab spring” protesters and who has been invited to attend the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London in June. No mention of his ally, the President of Uzbekistan, a brutal dictator who has the UK “over a barrel” and who was visited by Cameron’s Defence Secretary Philip Hammond in February. When will the British government, and western governments in general, understand and recognize the obvious fact that we will have no credibility as critics of anti-western dictators until we decide to denounce and distance ourselves from pro-western dictators? When will we end our brazen double standards?
2) In his speech, according to the Guardian, Cameron condemns Islamist “extremists – some of whom are violent – and all of whom want to impose a particular and very radical, extreme version of Islamism on society to the exclusion of all others. And this total rejection of debate and democratic consent means they believe that democracy and Islam are incompatible.”
Yet the Prime Minister knows perfectly well that not all Islamists reject democracy or free and fair elections. See the Ennahda party in Tunisia. See the AK party in Turkey. In fact, on a visit to Turkey in July 2010, Cameron told his counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of the Islamist AK party: “I very much admire the leadership that you have given to Turkey.”
I am no fan of Islamist parties but, again, why the double standards from the PM?
3) I’m all for the British government encouraging democracy and freedom around the world but when will we realise that such values can be encouraged and promoted without the use of bombs and bullets? Intervention can be in the form of diplomacy, engagement, dialogue and trade; carrots as well as sticks. Plus, the sticks don’t have to be violent either: there are sanctions, boycotts, international criminal tribunals, etc, on offer.
In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, the empirical evidence suggests that it would be much wiser for western governments to back nonviolent, rather than violent, protests against unelected autocrats and dictators. In opposition, Cameron admitted as much: “We should accept that we cannot impose democracy at the barrel of a gun; that we cannot drop democracy from 10,000 feet – and we shouldn’t try. Put crudely, that was what was wrong with the ‘neo-con’ approach, and why I am a liberal Conservative, not a neo Conservative.”
How things change.
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