I imagined any serious fireworks on the panel discussion I chaired last
night on Islam and democracy would be provoked by Michael Gove, the Tory
shadow minister who has made a point of challenging liberal sensibilities
on radical Islam. His book Celsius 7/7 is a counterblast to the received
wisdom that assumes engagement with the extreme tendencies of political
Islam would be necessarily productive.
Gove was provocative enough – insisting that Iran should not be
considered a democracy and brushing aside criticism of US foreign policy.
You could almost feel the ultra-liberal Hay audience preparing to hate
him. But Gove’s interpretation of the question "Is Islam Compatible
with Democracy?", the title of the debate, was reasoned and calm. It
amounted to a sceptical "I do hope so". It was difficult to
argue with that. At one point, the New Statesman columnist Ziauddin Sardar
said Gove’s ideological allies on the American neo-con right subscribed
to a totalitarian ideology every bit as dangerous as al-Qaeda, but the
Surrey Heath MP didn’t rise to the bait. He was also extremely courteous
to Ghazi Hamad the representative of Hamas on the panel, placed right next
to Gove for maximum effect.
It took Samir Al-Youssef, the Palestinain writer and critic, to really
bring the evening to life. He began by saying baldly that no monotheistic
religion, Islam included, was compatible with democracy. He thought the
title of the debate was daft, but felt it was his only possible answer.
Later, when the man from Hamas explained, at some length, how his version
of Islam was not only compatible with democracy, but was essentially
feminist and pacifist, al-Youssef couldn’t hold himself back. "I am
an atheist," he said, "If I said that where you are in power,
you would kill me." It was quite a moment.
I had only been told about the presence of Hadad on the panel at the last
moment. I’m not quite sure what
book he was promoting, apart from the Quran. His interventions amounted to
a series of party political broadcasts. But I took the opportunity to ask
him whether he recognised any political system not based on Islam,
Hadad’s answer was the longest, most tortuous "no" I have ever
heard. For an Islamist the answer must always ultimately be no to this
question.
We did not hear enough from the young Bangladeshi writer, Tahmima Anam,
whose novel, A Golden Age, is set during her country’s independence
struggle, She said the rise of the Islamist party Jamaat-i-Islami in
Bangladesh was founded on the political cowardice of secular political
parties who felt they had to make an accommodation with the religious
radicals, She said most people, Muslims included, were terrified by the
idea of Islamic state based on sharia law. Her comments raised the loudest
applause of the night.
