Expecting democracy in un-democratic cultures

Submitted by sara (United States), Jan 30, 2012 at 17:27

It baffles me how there seems to be a perpetual expectation that arab cultures/countries want democracy. The pundits and press emphasize the freedom seekers, the activists trying to reform the system but they tend to deemphasize, or perhaps naively ignore, the masses of citizens who actually have no democratic aspirations and are striving to make the system ever more rigid and sharia compliant. The fact is, sharia is incompatible with democracy, and every devout Muslim or cultural Muslim will choose Islam over democracy any day of the week.

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