Blogging Theology is coming to you now from the South of France where I'll be for a while and
i wanted to share with you some very interesting insights from this book 'A Thinking Person's Guide
to our Times' by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan. And he writes in on page 82 about some
of the things that are broken in our present world and one of them is democracy. And he says
'Western democracy is bust in the Middle East. By this i mean not what people might like to believe
ie that it has failed to be implemented. What i mean is that the very idea is at its root a failure and
is rejected by most people in the Middle East. Now this is a very emotional issue in the West,
and whenever you say 'democracy' people start purring and bowing.
Whenever a patrician like me brings it up, people start hurling abuse (and perhaps
justly so). So let me be clear why i say it is broken, and what in particular in it is broken.
Obviously, justice, fairness, the rule of law and equality before the law, accountability,
and transparency and public participation in government are NOT broken, but rather very much
in demand. What is broken is, and here we have a list of 11 items where he says democracy is broken
in the West: 1. 'freedom of speech' Charlie Hebdo style, which actually means freedom to insult God,
His Prophet upon whom be peace, the Qur'an and Islam, and it is considered a high moral value.
2. 'Freedom of choice' which actually means abortion and the mass legal culling of unborn
human children. 3. 'Freedom of consent' which means promiscuity; ubiquitous pornography;
an economy based on making a fantasy out of sex; an industry based on sexual marketing for every
product imaginable, all leading to the breakdown of the family. 4. 'LGBT+ rights' which to Muslims
and practicing Middle East Christians seem not like defending the rights of an ethnic minority
but like the compulsory celebration of moral deviance, to say the least.
5. 'Freedom of religion' which means freedom for Western-funded Christian missionaries to re-invade
the Middle East as they did in the Colonial Period. 6 'Freedom to vote' which in the democratic experience
in Palestine, Algeria, and Lebanon and Egypt means freedom to vote for those parties the West likes.
Elsewhere, it means the freedom to vote for those who will then take away the vote forever. And no
one understands how to navigate between these two polles. 7. 'Majority rule' which means 'majoritarianism',
tyranny of the majority, the 'rule' of the lowest common denominator, and the suppression, repression,
oppression, and depression of all minorities and differing opinions. 8. 'Regional freedom' which actually
means freedom to break away, to secede and enjoy endless civil war (such as in South Sudan precisely).
9. 'Freedom of the press' which actually means freedom to maliciously slander, insult,
vilify, hound, tar and popularly judge convict anyone who does not own their own media outlet,
based on the evidence of mere suspicion. 10. 'Free market economies' which actually means freedom
to buy Western goods for the states to live in bondage to Western owned financial institutes
like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. 11. 'Human Rights in general: whether people like
it or not there are profound differences between what the West regards as Universal Human Rights
and the Islamic conception of human rights. These can be seen in the differences between the
so-called Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in
Islam (adopted by 44 Islamic Countries). But there is also a great deal in common. And then he concludes:
'These are complex issues and i will return to them later to propose distinctions and a solution
but it suffices to say that Western-export democracy is truly broken'. Until next time.