Stephen R. Grand: Shadi, in your book, you talked a lot about the tension between
democracy and liberalism; and maybe
that's a good place to start this
conversation. Why don't you say a bit of
your take on that. Shadi Hamid: Yeah, sure, well in the book, I wanted to kinda problematize the notion
that
good things go together. That coming from an American standpoint
in our own history you had the
foundations have constitutional
liberalism and then you had democracy
afterwards in a sense of universal
suffrage,
equal equal political rights for all
citizens, so we had a particular
sequencing.
So when we as Americans talk about
democracy we're thinking about
liberalism and democracy together, but
that isn't necessarily
what happens in other regions or what
will happen in the Middle East.
So I wanted to kinda raise the issue of what are the tensions here
and one of the arguments I make in the book is that democratization
is actually likely to push Islamist
movements further to the right, towards
greater ill liberalism.
So you could actually have a situation
where as you have more democracy, at
least in certain issues, in certain areas,
you might have less what so-called
liberal values or
when we're talking about, especially in the
social, in the social realm,
and the role of religion in public
life. Stephen R. Grand: I think you're absolutely right to
point out
that there exists liberal attitudes in
many parts of the Arab
World. I don't think it's surprising, given the
history. I mean it is not surprising to
find the countries that
have long lived under authoritarian
conditions
when those conditions are removed, citizens
who have
lived in very closed, very repressed, repressive societies
tend to have fairly illiberal views.
And, I think it's important that people
recognize that that's not necessarily a
product democracy,
it's a product of what came before, that
these regimes
tried to divide people, they spun a certain
national narrative
that had, often, very toxic elements
and we're now living through the
consequences of some of the divisions that
were sowed
under the prior regimes. I think
an interesting question though is; what do you do about it?
As you, I think rightly point out, people aren't gonna wait for constitutional
liberalism to take hold.
They want elections now. arm
And, so what do you do about it?
My own sense is
that it's very rare you find an enlightened
despot who's going to educate people
and make them more liberal
it's very unlikely your gonna find an enlightened despot
who's going to take the time
and have the interest to install
liberal institutions and then walk away.
So I think we both, sort of,
face this conundrum of fairly liberal
societies
elections' are not the sole answer,
but what do you do about it?
Shadi Hamid: And I think you bring up a bit a good point that
this isn't something that's that's brand
new
or distinctive to the Middle East;
although, I do think it's more pronounced
in the Middle East, but if we look at a
lot of other cases you do see these
tensions, I mean even in our own context
we struggle with these issues to a
lesser extent, but
you know for example when it comes to
the role of religion in public life,
where you have christian conservatives,
who are trying to reflect their
preferences in public policy.
If we look at the state level, you have
situations where
legislatures are trying to restrict
abortion rights
or if we're talking about discrimination
against against gays
in the US. So, I mean there are there, there are examples of this; or even in France
where you have,
you know, a democratically elected
parliament
passing laws that prevent women from
wearing the face veil
thats also illiberal in a kind of different
way, but it does restrict personal
freedoms.
So we have this situation in a variety
of contexts and I think also most recently in
India
where you have the election of a prime
minister
who is not just illiberal, but some would say
has been complicit in genocidal acts
against the Muslim minority;
so that's a whole different level, but he was democratically elected
and you know I'm a big believer that as
small D democrats we have to respect
those outcomes
even if we fundamentally disagree with
them.
