What prevents a peaceful transition to democracy in the Middle East?

[a425couple]

from Quora -

Michael Davison
Retired Industrial Engineer and Production Manager in Israel Dec 9

How have the colonial legacies of the Middle Eastern region posed as a
threat to a peaceful transition to democracy in the region?

The Muslim majority countries can never be democratic, Islam will not
allow it.

Far from being a religion, Islam is a dictatorial type of government
system using manufactured religious law to keep populations under control.

Tribalism, distrust of the other and Islam are the three major factors
that prevent democracy from taking hold in the Middle East and North Africa.

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Matthias
· December 11

I disagree. Turkey is democratic, albeit they have some work to do to
preserve this but the overwhelming amount of Turks prefer democracy.
Tunisia is also democratic, they have even more work to do but again…

Indonesia, while not middle east, is muslim-majority and a democracy. So
is Iraq (while very imperfect, it does have elections).

The problem is more with societies inside those countries that don’t
accept democracy as a man made system. But that isn’t the view of many
muslims.

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Michael Davison
· December 16
Elections are only one facet of democracy. It’s an ongoing process and a
single “point in time” snapshot is not indicative of the whole.

Hamas was elected democratically to a majority in the Palestinian
parliament in 2006, yet their actions since have been anything BUT
democratic since, just as an example.

When interviewed, the late Omar al-Sharif had a lot to say about it when
discussing the 2003 decision of the US to invade Iraq:

Egyptian Movie Star Omar Al-Sharif: Americans Are Ignorant; We Arabs
Prefer the Neighborhood Sheik to Democracy

I bow to his knowledge, far greater and more intimate than mine.

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Ravindra Khattree
· December 26

Exceptions do not disprove the general phenomenon. Pakistan started as
Muslim democracy with a promise that other minorities will be respected
but soon went into dictatorship and later was blatantly a Muslim country
discriminating against nonmuslims and some Muslims who were clsssified
by their government as nonmuslims. Today it is a hub of islamic
terrorism. Bangladesh started as democracy and soon turned into a muslim
country with dictatorship. It did turn back to muslim democracy later
but only nominally in that Hindus are routinely attacked and
discriminated there.

Any country with muslim majority suppresses and discriminates against
its minorities.

Ravindra Khattree
· December 26
You are so right but I think “Islam” subsumes the tribalism and distrust
of others. Islam divides world into Muslims and nonmuslims. that is
tribalism. and Quran is very explicit about not trusting the nonmuslims
and kafirs.

the fact is Islam is regressive and uncivil but democracy is an advanced
civil concept. Quran explicitly endorses hatred for nonmuslims even to
the extent as to who to hate and how much to hate that group. Level of
discrimination for women, slaves, homosexuals, Christians, Jews and
Hindus are specifically specified. On the other hand democracy talks
about respecting the opinions of those who are different from you and
tolerance for diversity of opinions.