(A Working White Paper – a measured response to http://www.american.com/archive/2008/november-december-magazine/god-man-and-the-ballot-box/?searchterm=Gerecht)

by Gary H. Johnson, Jr.

It is not rare, today, to come across articles with inconsistent thought when considering Democracy’s turbulent rise or values in the Middle East. The Western love for Democracy stems from a belief in the equality of men and women of all races and creeds – representative government seems but a corollary to the self-evident and natural rights of mankind. Many non-profit, partisan and non-partisan foundations and Freedom Councils and other NGO organs look at the base numbers of political history and agree that Democracy bolsters freedom. However, The American, in its quest to attain some sort of light at the end of the Bush Tunnel in the Middle East, has succumbed to a particularly virulent strain of deceptive hypocrisy in the publication of Reuel Marc Gerecht’s article, God, Man, and the Ballot Box. As a resident fellow at the supposedly Conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – posing as an intellectual – Gerecht presents the Western reader with an article which can be characterized as nothing less than Sophistry. Gerecht’s sophistry, whether intentional or no, is based on poorly analyzed history and willful blindness to the global threat of Islamic Supremacism. And while some may consider Gerecht’s dalliance in Fantasia as enlightened, those who hold to the heritage of American values will find it dangerous.

Since Gerecht’s article focused on a region with a majority Muslim population, the title of Gerecht’s article should have read “Allah, Man, and the Ballot Box”. Allah is the name of the god to which Muhammad was a prophet. The word “God” is not a proper translation of “Allah”. And to accept this simple translation without reckoning is a default submission to the Muslim God whose name is Allah.

The central thesis of Gerecht’s piece is an explanation of “why, despite everything, George W. Bush was right about democratization in the Middle East.” The interesting thing about Gerecht’s article is that he disproves his central thesis over and over – but none so glaring as the following: “Any secular political system that makes a frontal assault on the clergy, the guardians of Islamic traditions, has virtually no chance of gaining sufficient popular support to be deemed legitimate.” Look at it. Stare at it.

Democratic Government is a government of, by, and for the people. In the West, Democracy is a secular effort, a reasoned effort; it is based on free will, free thought, and the right to dissent. However, by Gerecht’s own pen, we learn that Islam and its clergy holds a monopoly on values in the Middle East. Democracy, in this frame, holds no legitimacy in the Middle East as anything other than a vehicle for Islamic Values. The push for political representation through the Populism of Islamism is merely an alternative to the autocracy and absolute monarchies currently holding the reins of power in the Middle East. This virtual impossibility of a secular political system’s rise in the region guarantees that Islamist parties will rule, and it guarantees that these parties will be beholdened to Shariah Law – not manmade law, for manmade law is considered a Jahaliya, derived from a world without the new knowledge as laid down in the Koran.
The point of Democracy is to establish the inviolable nature of human rights, equality and individual liberty under the laws of governance. The point of Shariah law is to establish Allah’s Rights as supreme. Therefore, Gerecht’s runup assertion that “Any legitimate form of government in the Muslim Middle East must be viewed as complimentary to the Prophet Muhammad’s legacy and the Holy Law” is a stunning declaration of Why George W. Bush’s push for Democratization in the Middle East was decidedly flawed. In seeking Freedom via Democracy, the Bush push promises to deliver the Muslim World from the dictates of Monarchy into the chains of Allah’s Ulema. This does not advance freedom by any measure; rather, it advances Islamic Supremacism – for a separation of Church and State will not be considered legitimate in the Muslim Middle East.

On this score, the Clinton administration’s counterterror officials Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, Gerecht references, who saw “the spread of representative government as an essential tool in the battle against jihadism”, were – pre 9/11 nineties – blind to the demographic, economic, political and ethical implications of the Islamic Supremacism inherent in Shariah Law as they attempted to advance their Democratic ideals as the cure for the Islamic culture’s common Jihadist.

Gerecht’s explanation of why George W. Bush was right about Democratization in the Middle East plays to the heartstrings of The American’s Editors on the sore topic of America’s entry into Iraq and then presents a fallacious assertion: “The more one studies Islam’s historic peoples – the Arabs, Iranians, and Turks – the more convinced he becomes that democracy is the only serious, legitimate political ideal on the Muslim horizon, as fundamentalists and Middle Estern autocrats alike are realizing.” The fact of the matter is that the more one studies Islam, its history and its peoples, the more convinced he becomes of the reality that the only serious, legitimate political ideal on the Muslim horizon is the Islamic State whose Shariah is laid down in stone in the Koran, the Hadith, the Sira, and the ijma consensus of scholars such as ibn Taymiya.

Gerecht categorizes as mistaken the “former democracy enthusiasts in unofficial Washington” who criticize rapid democratization in the region and are focusing instead on the primacy of human and women’s rights in the effort to bring lasting freedom to the Middle East. He baskets the likes of Fareed Zakaria and Charles Krauthammer into this wide sweep without coming to grips with the reality that their dimming notions of Democracy’s chance of success in the Middle East is due to the fact that “any secular political system that makes a frontal assault on the clergy…has virtually no chance…to be deemed legitimate,” and they realize, each in their own framework, that if a den of pirates are the only ones given the vote that laws protecting property rights and forbidding theft are not necessarily going to be high on the elected party’s platform or agenda. And by introspection the men of reason from Zakaria to Krauthammer surmise that a democracy, whose only viable parties are based on the establishment of Islam as the arbiter of law and order harkens back to the demonstrably darker days of Totalitarian Nazi and Stalinist single party rule…and translates to a new Totalitarian tragedy in which the rights of infidels will have no chance at representation or voiced dissent, and will be forced into a government, whose structure – though far away in a distant land – flies in the face of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution, which guarantees the separation of Church and State in the bedrock of America’s quest for equality and individual liberty.

The Separation of Church and State is an inviolable right of mankind. Moreover, to dash headlong into the creation of perceived stability in any region in the world without championing this inviolable human right is to disregard the fatal crack of the foundation of Justice and to leave the door wide for the advancement and cruelty of Islamic Supremacism’s ethos.

In this frame, it is not surprising that Gerecht’s rationale turns to the Muslim Brotherhood as witness of hope for democratization. Whether veiled deceit or willful blindness, Gerecht advances his sophistry of persuasion in a segment which should be entitled “A Vehicle for Expressing Allah’s Will”. It is telling that Gerecht chooses to note that in the summer of 2007, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in response to the dictatorship which held them back, released its first ever political platform. He notes with zest that the Muslim Brotherhood has “surely become the most popular political and cultural force in the country,” quixotically framing the struggle of the Muslim Brotherhood to a mere academic and philosophical debate about representative government. And though Gerecht mentioned the Cedar’s Revolution in Lebanon in his discussion of representative governance, he chose not to mention the fact that after years of bloody internal terrorism and external jihadi strikes on Israeli interests and Israel proper, Hezbollah threw its hat into the political ring of the confessional representative system of Lebanon – a state whose citizens’ voting rights are tied to their religious affiliation in a multicultural Arabization of Democracy’s concept of Majority Rule. Neither did Gerecht mention that Hezbollah, since its political platform was released, has sparked a 7 day, a 16 day, and a 34 day war with Israel to the detriment of the individuals in Lebanon, who seek genuine democratic governance. Neither did Gerecht mention the fact that, in May of 2008, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah forced the Lebanese Government – at the point of the Khalishnikov and the Katyusha – to submit to Hezbollah’s veto power in all government affairs. The Veto Power has now been ascribed to this Politically active Islamist jihadi organization via the Doha Agreement, drafted as a sister and companion document to the Taif Accord of 1989, which allows Hezbollah to retain its weapons as a “right to resist” Zionist aggressions. When taken together, these agreements of Doha trump the international conventions such as UNSCR 1701 and 1702. Hezbollah’s Islamist entry into the representative system of Lebanese governance has generated a state taken hostage by a jihadist Islamist organization, and considering the Israeli strikes on Gaza, has possibly doomed Lebanon to another bloody civil war when the disarmament of Hezbollah proves out to be an undertaking without an end in sight. It is disengenuous for Gerecht, whose thesis revolves around the challenges of representative democracy in the Middle East to shed no light onto the surface history of the charismatic Nasrallah’s ability to steer Islamism into the driver’s seat of a nation in a quarter of a century of bloody war, jihadi terrorism, internal murder and mayhem, not to mention the silencing of the Media and all voices of dissent into a prison of fear at the point of a gun.

Now, setting the Hezbollah Model of Resistance aside, Gerecht, in a stunning display of wishful blindness, begins his segment “A Vehicle for God’s Will” with a quote from the Muslim Brotherhood’s political platform, presenting it as a ray of hope…”The Islamic State is a civil state, which means the political offices and roles are filled by elected citizens who are responsible through constitutional mechanismsfor all conduct and behavior in governing [with the aim of] achieving the true popular will. The people are the source of authority leading to the maintenance of society’s security…” And while that might sound like a rosy and ringing endorsement of Democracy from the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt to Gerecht…one must again note the fact that the only serious, legitimate political ideal on the Muslim horizon is the Supremacist Islamic State.

In considering this not-so-scary crop of the MB political platform, Gerecht makes no mention of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood holds the Koran as its constitution. Instead, he focuses on the fact that the most popular political and cultural force in Egypt – which holds Shariah Law as its “constitutional mechanisms” is giving power to the people, conveniently forgetting his own academic training which should have taught him that Allah made mankind – per the Koran – solely to worship Him. This represents the first pillar of Islam. This convenient omission by Gerecht spits on the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution – and Gerecht admits his own duplicity by saying in the same breath that the Muslim Brotherhood should not necessarily be considered “theocrats in waiting” but “rather, they are religiously and politically evolving, marrying as best they can, sometimes in a highly contradictory manner, Islam and the West.”

If we be true to our American heritage, we must, as men and women of reason, consider the opposite – that a strong demonstrable possibility exists that the Muslim Brotherhood, like Hezbollah, are – if not restrained by an Establishment Clause in the rungs of Middle Eastern Representative Governance – theocrats in waiting. We must consider the possibility as an objective check of reason, seeking the liberty of those in the Middle East who would breathe free of the Islamic Supremacist notions of the Muslim Educated Elite in the ranks and chads of the only viable parties in the Muslim Middle East. Our American check and balance system was derived to guarantee the inviolable human rights of individuals against undo power and force at the hands of government – And it is the American Legacy to teach the world – not impose upon it – the true value of this reasoned measure of Democracy based on a separation of powers and the inalienable human rights of each individual.

Indeed, in Gerecht’s overwhelming desire not to paint Islam with the monolith brush, Gerecht does not mention that Hamas – which like Hezbollah is on the US Govt’s list of terrorist organizations – is the viscious militant form of the Muslim Brotherhood’s not-so-scary political platform…a bent which won a popular vote and proceeded to link its wagon to the Khomein Revolution in its martyr lust to win back Jerusalem for some mystically ordained and dystopian future caliphate. The caliphate, which was abolished by Ataturk in Turkey in 1923, an event which gave rise to men such as Hassan al-Banna, who co-founded the Muslim Brotherhood out of – what was it Gerecht? – “an authentic, deeply historical expression of Muslim anxiety and anger.” Gerecht, willfully blind to reason, does not even think to ask: since when was an authentic mad-ness a basis for Authority? For, a reasoned lens, will quickly ascertain the fact that an “authentic” mad-ness has no place in Representative Democracy, unless its place is – by the Law of Bastiat – to punish those who once oppressed the suddenly politically active asylum seekers.

One only need see which flags are burning at Muslim Brotherhood rallies and protests to determine who the perceived oppressors are. Indeed, the daily rocket barrages from Gaza into Southern Israel – over 3,000 counts of attempted mass murder in 2008 alone – are a better indicator of the enlightened democratic flares of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political expression of Allah’s Will than the false rays of hope found by Gerecht in the populist, Islamic Supremacist organization’s political platform.

Don’t take my word for this truth – look to the US courts who just found the Holy Land Foundation guilty on over 100 counts of supporting the terrorist jihadist Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood, whose platform of deceit and supremacy drove the world to the brink of War as 2008 closed on a burning Gaza.

Gerecht’s brief focus on Turkey – whose #1 selling book for the last few years running is Hitler’s Mein Kampf – is one of longing for plurality as he shows the struggle for free elections as one in which Islamists who once held a 10% stake in the government, thirty years later hold upwards of 40% (via the Islamist Justice and Development Party AKP), all under the cruel tyranny of Turkey’s military and Judicial system which have repeatedly upheld the abolition of the Caliphate by going after the fundamentalists, “banning their politicians and dissolving their political parties.” In Gerecht’s longing for twisted values to prevail, he proclaims “if free elections were held in Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia, we would see Islamist parties develop a following that rivaled that of the AKP.” He shines on about the “tradition-loving monarchies” of Jordan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia who are facing the growing challenge in the Islamists, in wonder over what is possible should the ballot box be given full voice.

Gerecht does mention the possibility that the secular constitution of Turkey is under attack by the Islamists who may be engaging in a charade to gain power that they might shred the very constitution that gave them representative voice, but waves it off in a gesture to populism’s power over his own mind, saying that if it is a charade, it is “a charade that a large numbers of Turks support.” He then turns and dresses down those who stand against Islamic Supremacism, making the striking claim that those who would like to disband the AKP, “are effectively asking for dictatorial rule by a secular minority.” First, when did 60% of the vote become a minority? Secondly, how can it be dictatorial if its actions are constitutionally based on the abolition of an enslaving Caliphate? And lastly, even if the secular minority does control the government – shouldn’t any government exist for the sole purpose of protecting the inviolable human rights of the individual – the smallest minority? Shouldn’t it exist as a protection of the individual’s right to his reason, conscience, will, life, and liberty when staring in the jihadist face of Fundamentalist Islam or the Slaver Caste of the Islamic Supremacism and its educated elite’s calls for global domination and subjugation? Afterall…in the Middle East, “any secular political system that makes a frontal assault on the clergy, the guardians of Islamic traditions, has virtually no chance of gaining sufficient popular support to be deemed legitimate.” Gerecht’s arguments do not hold, for Islamic supremacism is rooted in the Muslim Ethos.

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Part 2