Middle East Campaign Ads #1

Campaign spots airing on KALA "Najaf 57" Proposed reasons for the relative absence of liberal democracy in the Middle East are diverse, from the long history of imperial rule by the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France and the contemporary political and military intervention by the United States, all of which have been blamed for preferring authoritarian regimes because this simplifies the business environment, while enriching the governing elite and the companies of the imperial countries. This is a social and economic justice explanation. Other explanations include the problem that most of the states in the region are rentier states, which experience the theorized resource curse. Several orientalist scholars have attempted to explain the absence of democracy in the region. While some orientalists argue that democracy is incompatible with Islamic culture and values, others put forward the development in the conceptualization of political practices. There seems also lack of a very clear cut between religion and the state, which has in greater terms caused the lack of clear checks and balances between the two. The mainstream advances the innovative approach adopted by political actors in interpreting religious texts which underpinnes that a gradual political opening is more efficient to reach democracy. As claims about the impact of civil society in the democratization process was put forward by the political economy approaches, the post-positivist interpretation stresses the importance to consider the interplay between culture, identity and discourse in framing Middle East politics. Accordingly, this article traces the history and assesses the current state and future prospects of democracy, democratic tendencies, and democratic movements in all countries in the broadly-defined Middle East region. As of 2009, American organization Freedom House recognizes Israel as the only fully-fledged, free electoral democracy of the Middle East. In light of resistance to democracy in much of the Arab world, observers such as Samuel Huntington have advocated the notion of a "clash" between Arab and Western civilisations. This resistance even led to arguments such as "Arab exceptionalism," a phase that prescribes that Arab nations are immune to economic modernization and democratization, or that these concepts form part of the "clash". Huntington attributes to "non-rational" islamic revivalism and Shi'a fundamentalism the lower likelihood of democratic development in islamic countries. But all religions, by the very nature of their fundamental belief in the supernatural, are "non-rational.Furthermore, like other universalistic religions, Islam is fundamentally based on individual choice, while democracy, whether in its Aristotelian or twentieth-century formulations, is a humans in charge of their political destiny. Thus, "Islamic fundamentalism is as much democratic as antidemocratic, much like Judaic or Christian fundamentalism, at least in their doctrinal implications". Nevertheless, there are a number of pro-democracy movements in the Middle East. A prominent figure in this movement is Saad Eddin Ibrahim who advocates and campaigns for democracy in Egypt and the wider region, working with the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Development Studies and serving on the Board of Advisors for the Project on Middle East Democracy. When asked about his thoughts regarding the current state of democracy in the region he said: People's memories... have become tuned or conditioned to thinking that the problems in the Middle East must be a chronic condition, not that they are only 30 years old, and not realizing that the reason for the current state of the Middle East was first, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and two, the Cold War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_the_Middle_East