7 hours Ago By Firstpost
In Syria it is a little bit of Islamic history repeating. There is no place in fundamentalist society for democracy. It is either the iron fist of the dictator, with the accompanying horrors of totalitarianism, or Sharia and Jihad intertwined Islamic theocracy.
When strongmen fall, what follows is often not liberal democracy but sectarian strife, religious extremism, or both. This stark reality was laid bare during the Arab Spring, a euphoric uprising turned grim postscript, most evident in Syria, Libya, and Iraq. The Arab Spring provides no shortage of examples.
In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi’s ouster led to years of chaos, with jihadist groups exploiting the power vacuum. In Egypt, the fall of Hosni Mubarak briefly ushered in an Islamist government under Mohamed Morsi, only to be reversed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s military coup—a return to dictatorship as the perceived lesser evil. These failures illustrate a harsh truth: in fundamentalist Islam, the state and society are deeply intertwined; liberal democracy cannot take root.
Without strong institutions or secular traditions, the fall of dictators often empowers forces bent on implementing sharia through jihad. The Theological Challenge: Kingship as Not Supreme Islamic theology itself complicates secular governance. Unlike Christianity after Martin Luther, which accommodates the separation of church and state, Islam posits that sovereignty belongs to God, not earthly rulers.
The Quran and Hadith, Islam’s foundational texts, leave little room for kingship as a supreme entity. Caliphs—the early successors of the Prophet Muhammad—were seen as custodians of divine law, not sovereigns unto themselves. This theological foundation has often fuelled challenges to secular rule.
When regimes fail to deliver justice or prosperity, Islamists present sharia as the divinely ordained alternative and jihad as a means to enforce it. This sentiment is potent even in modern times. For example, in Africa, Boko Haram in Nigeria frames its insurgency as a fight against Western education and secular government, calling for a return to “pure” Islamic governance.
The group exploits poverty and weak state institutions to mobilise support, much like jihadist movements elsewhere. Iraq: From Dictatorship to Sectarian Conflict Iraq’s descent into Shia-Sunni bloodshed following Saddam Hussein’s fall offers another grim lesson. Saddam, a Sunni autocrat, ruled with brutal authority but managed to suppress sectarianism.
His removal by US intervention in 2003 dismantled the Baathist state apparatus, empowering Iraq’s Shia majority and marginalising Sunnis. Groups like ISIS emerged by exploiting Sunni grievances and the vacuum left by a failing central government. Iran and Turkey: Islamisation by Different Means The case of post-revolution Iran offers a more complex example.
The 1979 overthrow of the Shah replaced secular autocracy with a theocratic regime under Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian model fuses religious authority with state power, presenting sharia as the supreme law of the land. The regime maintains its legitimacy through clerical oversight and a ruthless security apparatus, suppressing dissent while championing anti-Western jihadist rhetoric.
Iran’s experiment shows that replacing dictatorship with sharia does not guarantee justice or freedom; it often entrenches a different form of autocracy. Turkey, once the region’s democratic outlier, is now drifting toward Islamisation under Erdogan. Erdogan, who has steadily eroded Turkey’s secular traditions, sidelining the military—the traditional guardian of Kemal Ataturk’s secular vision—and consolidating power.
Erdogan’s rhetoric blends nationalism with Islamism, appealing to a conservative base that sees secularism as an imposition of Western modernity. While Turkey remains nominally democratic, its trajectory suggests that Islamisation, once unleashed, can erode pluralism and centralise power. Saudi Arabia: A Structural Trap The rise of sharia across West Asia threatens the bold reforms underway in Saudi Arabia as the Kingdom looks to tap its young demographics with a more liberal application of Islam.
The Twin Threats The tension between dictatorship, sharia, and jihad is structural, rooted in the absence of secular, pluralistic institutions in much of the Islamic world. In Islamic countries, when dictators fall, Sharia forces resurface with vengeance, feeding cycles of conflict. The result is a paradox: secular autocrats like Assad, Saddam, and Mubarak are loathed for their repression, yet their removal often empowers worse alternatives.
The fall of a strongman may be cause for celebration, but as Syria’s ruins attest, what follows is often not freedom but a deeper descent into conflict. On another level, the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East threatens to subsume minorities, including Christians and the Druze. Already the Hindu minority is threatened in Pakistan and Bangladesh, while the Sikhs have been decimated in Afghanistan.
For global democracies, the demand for secularism when Islam is in the minority and Sharia when in the majority is no longer tenable. The writer is a senior journalist with expertise in defence. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author.
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