We don’t need Western models
H. H. 16 January 2008

This text represents the second contribution of Hassan Hanafi in his dialogue with Andrew Arato, published by the magazine Reset in its September-October 2007 issue (no.103).

Misunderstanding is no less dangerous than aligned confusion. Calm, serenity and good faith are prerequisites of dialogue more than passions, pre-judgments and prejudices. Democracy can be rejected only by a crazy, and I am not. The difference is: what does democracy mean and in what form? It means for me the right to differ, to dissent and to oppose against monopoly of thinking and decision. I mean consultation, Shura. Concerning the form representative democracy form based on majority-minority is not the only since the majority of today becomes the minority of tomorrow, and the minority of today becomes the majority of tomorrow it can be the foundation of law. Law is a natural law, a rational law or a human law. There is only consensual democracy practiced in Japan based on consensus not number of voters. A quantitative and individualistic concept of democracy is not the qualitative and communitarian concept.

The target is one, against dictatorship, despotism and authoritarianism. Therefore, the right of differs, in and out, is in every culture. If democracy is not base on a common value, system, a universal code of ethics, it may switch to the opposite. What is the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats in USA or between Labor and Conservatist parties in UK concerning the invasion of Iraq, of Afghanistan, of Chechnya, of Kashmir or of Palestine except a difference of degree, not of nature? Democracy is a tool not an end, a popular tool to implement a universal code of ethics, not an end per se. America is taken as the model of democracy but now the administration concerning war against Iraq has no popular support. It practices the most horrible State terrorism against States and their citizens.

Indeed, democracy is a real need in Third World countries as an internal agenda of the peoples, aspiration for freedom and liberalization against authoritarian culture inherited from the past, the oness of truth and the oness of leadership. It has been inherited from the past a pyramidal concept of the world, a vertical Weltanschauung between the top and the bottom, which are the roots of authoritarianism. Democratic reform and democratization of traditional societies do not occur by imposing Western formal concept of democracy but by extracting the roots of dictatorship from the mass culture. Democracy is not a political system but a mass culture. There is no democratic regime without a prior democratic culture and a democratic Weltanschauung. The relation between two things is not between the top and the bottom, the vertical one, but between the forward and backward, the horizontal one. Consequently, the idea of progress can emerge, and serve as a device to switch from permanence to change, from authoritarianism to liberalism.

All the best,
Hassan Hanafi

Hassan Hanafi is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cairo, where he has been head of the Philosophy Dept. since 1988. Over the course of his career his interests have been focused on analyses of Islamic and Western philosophical traditions and on the relationships which have bound them.

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