the meridian country club so boring sure to find this piece of the first earth all sure can pinsky swiss hotel closing the hold built in let me go to golden apple boutique hotel. past the hour here in moscow time to update you on our menu stories including breaking news this hour a jury in new york convicts russian businessman big to boot to trying to sell weapons to colombian terrorists and sentence will be announced later he faces anything from twenty five years to life in jail the. results of the investigation into september's plane crash that killed a russian hockey team named pilot error as the cause and speak of traces of a strong sedative in the co-pilot's blood. whistleblower wounded

by verdict the high court in london rules the wiki leaks founder julian assange should be tried in sweden over controversial sex crime allegations. sense of disillusionment dominates and protests ahead of the g. twenty summit in cannes as world leaders gather to contain the global financial mayhem and the greek announcement of a referendum on the euro zone's risky deal has only fueled the flames. but with voting and islamic party into power and the same likely to happen in egypt people of alaska's kind of experts should the world now get used to the idea of islamic democracy cross-talk is next and i'll be back with more news for me and less than half an hour from now. live. live live live live. live you can. still.

listen to the link. below and welcome across the computer world as tunisia goes so does the rest of the arab world to be sure successfully holds the first election of the arab spring but islamic party coming out on top egyptians also will soon go to the polls and there is an exam a party they're expected to garner the most votes should we now get used to the idea of islamic democracy lives to take you. live. to cross like a future of islamic democracies i'm joined by you sarah god meucci in tunis she is a member of the in the after party in jerusalem we have david rosenberg he's a columnist for the jerusalem post and in denver we cross to major i see me he's a professor at the university of denver all right folks this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want my very much encourage it but first we get used to the idea of islamic democracy so well at least insofar as elections go to

my p.c. and social change may have been their spring slogans be events unfolding in the margin regimes show that real change is mighty slow in coming while democracy has so far only produced a form of political islam tunisians election and the first vote in the arab spring for a parliament that will draft a new constitution had more than sixty percent voter turnout and was hailed free and fair by international observers for the release of the results crowd a wave of protests and more than a hundred feel spiled namely over these almost amount of party which came in first claiming ninety seats in the two hundred seventeen seat assembly. yeah there you go you know. this is a day of victory this is a day of pride. this is a day if you realty this is the day when tears he spoke with one voice in order to realize the aims of the revolution. in the upcoming months and years tunisia will be testing to see if the new assembly can translate the struggle for democracy into

real changes that serve the people this may be a long shot for the not a party which now has to juggle good governance secular skepticism and a shattered economy. hopeful also. international and not a party turns out to be a reasonable and daughter corded that would be a good battle for the rest of the region for that exact reason to just experiment with democracy and islam may play an important role when the other emerging arab spring countries shape their own political ideologies and for dental weigh a modest success follows a call by levy and want to see to uphold the islamic law of sharia and in egypt which wields great cheer political clout the muslim brotherhood's freedom and equality party is expected to become a major force and remembers parliamentary elections so certainly a new and fascinating trial and let's discuss this here you should if i can go to you think it's very interesting we have a sound bite in there and mashes report there and you know it's the west you know

trying to characterize your political party and your political victory in tunisia and we always hear these terms well we hope it's moderates and now if we don't want any kind of extreme form here do you think it's very judge mental coming from the west about trying to claim what is moderate and what is not moderate considering the west supported what they called moderate secular regimes like ben ali and mubarak. that's in. many many people around the region but i think what they're concerned about is not the view of the west or europe they're concerned about the societies the economies that democracies. need these revolutions and going forward to hold these historic elections the first real democratic elections after the revolution so to museums are at the moment very proud very positive there are immense challenges that you've mentioned regarding

skepticism of certain sectors and most importantly economic challenges but there is a positive feeling that just as soon as you head the you know the revolutions around the arab world they were the first to hold these real democratic elections and despite the challenges there is now a real feeling of achievement and of the possibility of all working together for getting these provoke and exaggerated ideological differences because the real challenges are really practical on the ground ok you do it in jerusalem if i can go to you do you think about the election outcome in tunisia because again there is this kind of we can feel from the west because basically you know we don't we haven't seen too many elections like this for me in the arab world because of what i would call western new york colonialism now they have overthrown their decatur's now they're starting down a new trend which the west has always for democracy democracy democracy and their

skepticism or tunisia's and they were skepticism when hamas was elected seven years ago. just. i think the us is a legitimate concerns as far is. the rest of the arab spring countries the fact of the matter is that in the past and i want to emphasize very much in the past the experiment with democracy in islam has not been very successful we see what happened here and we see what happened with hamas in the gaza strip in with hizbollah in lebanon having said that it really does seem that we're witnessing something of a revolution in the in the arab world the fact that tunisian voters went to the polls had a choice of electing them to an islamic party or a party reflecting islamic values that's prepared to go into a coalition with secular liberal parties is a very very encouraging but we should bear in mind that in the past there have been coalitions like they're going to exist more or less in lebanon now in the past and in the palestinian areas so there was a coalition between fatah and hamas the question is not just if they're going to be

elections in the elections are free and fair but whether or not the political players going forward are prepared to play the democratic game and that's the test we have to wait for ok mate if i go to you in denver the west seems to like democracy in the islamic arab world but only if it suits their purposes so they can say this is a good democracy this is a bad democracy this is a good election this is a bad alexion isn't that being a bit hypocritical i mean if democracy is what determine on the ground i absolutely agree i think when it comes to this in vocation of the adjective moderate with respect to tunisia or egypt that what we're really talking about is moderation to the extent that it lies that lines up with western policy and to the extent that the regime is supporting working within the framework of u.s. geo strategic interest in the region it's considered to be moderate so we often hear these terms about these moderate arab regimes such as saudi arabia hosni

mubarak's egypt king. jordan yes these are moderate in the sense that they are working very closely with us foreign policy but they're certainly not moderate with respect to any objective definition of what constitutes democracy and any objective definition of what constitutes you know universal standard of human rights so i think you know yes or is point is an important one what really matters is not. how some people in the west are characterizing events in the arab spring what really matters and i think what really needs to be celebrated is that for the first time in the modern history of the arab and islamic world you are having democratic revolutions and and perhaps the first opportunity you know for people in these regions to really exercise a meaningful softly terminations so that's where i think the focus of the discussion should be that's something to celebrate and once again we see tunisia

sort of leading the way to lead the way with the with the revolt last january and and now they're leading the way with the first you know free and fair election and all power to them and if you go back to you in tunis and it was very interesting is that your electoral opponents opponents claim that you are going to ban alcohol and bikini's i mean i would hope the tunisian politics is more about alcohol then and then pick a nice. exactly you know people's concerns are really far from the you know much discussed topics and can i also make the point. regarding islam and democracy and whether the experiments in the past have been positive or negative i think we need to move away from these reductions and simplifications. islam and democracy can be compatible just as you can have a religious. inspired democracy you can have religious dictatorship and just as you

can have a secular democracy you can have secular dictatorships in the past in the arab world that's more or less where we've had throughout the arab world we've had secular dictatorships there is new definite relationship between secularism and democracy so let's let's make that clear the problem now is not that you know islam is coming into into politics the moost important change is that we have a change from the peter ship into a democratic transition who really to establish a real democratic system. you know let's move away from food to sing on peace exaggerated issues secondly. as you said you know the challenges are really first establishing a democratic system we've never had this in the past so that's going to be to me challenge establishing a real system where citizens are equal where they enjoy public and individual liberties where the powers are distributed and separated and balanced where there

is freedom of the media an independent judiciary all these will be guarantees for never having the return of dictatorship in the name of religion all over the name of liberalism or secularism and the second challenge is economic development that really needs to move forward we have a huge crisis you worsened after. the revolution and people are really expecting a lot from from these parties and the message has been clear from the election results that they want their parties as well seeing unfortunately in the election campaign to have focus on the provoked an orchestrated incident and discussions they want their parties to work together and we've seen this from there it's also yes another has come on the top. during these elections but just as other parties all have been part of the struggle against dictatorship

and they've also received a significant shelf. you know the better job here before we got all the nic what are they going to bring and i got to gave it he would i mean we shouldn't be surprised that these countries after suffering under these dictatorships supported by the west i'd like to point out if i actually want to turn to islam and just say look if you give these or sonic parties a chance to least give them a chance well i think there is a risk of kind of oversimplifying what is islam and there's a tendency your you know even among people who specialize in the subject to look at islam where's your force revolution anti western ism indoor they dismiss it as simply a political for phenomenon and really distressing and no we don't have to tell you concerned about it if you use social and economic and political reforms or address you can be addressed by anybody in the islamic parties will evaporate once people are satisfied with their social economic well being i think it's very important and we see this phenomena certainly in tunisia i think as well in egypt and probably

libya as well. on the whole despite the fact that the arab spring is a revolution these are very conservative societies they don't want the kind of let me just let me jump in here we're going to try working out we'll come back you know short break ok after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the future of democracy can the arab world stay with our king. c. c.

c. c.

welcome back to. remind you we're discussing the prospects of democracy to the arab world. to. say. ok let's go back to david in jerusalem here he's i think you know how do you look at tunisia as being a model because isn't it re. for the rest of the arab awakening here is it a good precedent or is it an aberration it's very specific that the smaller population there's not as much ethnic differences there and it's much more homogeneous they were much more liberal before the bin. dictatorship eccentric center my point is how much is to nisha a model. a compass for the future. probably isn't much of a model for many of the reasons you suggested and you know you economically tunisia has performed relatively well there seems to be a solid class of people we would probably to find is. you know

a western audience and i think we saw it in the election results it wasn't any it was everybody's pointed out conducted freely fairly without any chaos or violence and even though the islamic parties knocked it took forty percent of those you point out the other two thirds or sixty percent of the country voted for other parties i also think that. the tunisians voters were not expressing any support for revolutionary islam i think they're very much support the idea of a traditional society in the sense of having conservative moral values and things that come up in a courtroom the popular political parlance is will bikini's but the fact is they represent are real concerns and these alarmists in a very serious way address those concerns the real question will be going forward is not whether the people want to read islamic republic i think they've made quite clear they don't want one the question is whether or not. among these limits

themselves they represent a wide wide range of political opinions not all of them are very friendly to democracy or liberalism or personal freedoms whether or not society can cope with that phenomenon and if democracy in the end can we now. see that includes really when you go in israel and very again this kind of skepticism i mean our our our our muslims mature enough to have democracy because i'm afraid that's one conclusion we continue to draw from what we just heard. i'm in broad agreement with what just david david has just articulated i think the point here is that you know tunisians going forward are going to have to you know. decide what type of society they want to construct and one of the great things about what's happening today's for the first time they can actually have that opportunity to engage in the important public debates intellectual exchange is democratic bargaining and negotiation that

all emerging democracies have to go through in order to develop a broad consensus on the basic norms and values of what constitutes a just society there's a lot of you know things that have to be reconciled there's a lot of different ideological currents but that will hopefully take place nonviolently will take place in a free and fair media will take place in a democratic parliament and and that's how you know every society that is democratic has gone through these phases tunisia is experiencing its first democratic moment and i think we have to be a little bit patient here i think we have to be supportive of creating strong civil society supporting basic principles so that tunisians can have the right to exercise self-determination ok if it's go back to this i mean it is your political party and congratulations on your victory do you feel you have to placate western concerns about the nature of the islamic nature of your political party and what kind of society you want to make. as i said you know our program is

mostly addressing china's unions and we've made our program very clear we had an electoral program dealing with the political social economic and cultural fields which is very detailed and was published in arabic english and french and is available online it has reassurances fall for for for investors for years primarily but also for others we will maintain we hope to maintain good relations with our mean traditional part of us europe and to advance that status further but also to diversify our relations with the rest of the world. is to have a parliamentary system that distributes and balances powers on a wide scale as i said in our party are concerned about. and regarding a model for the other countries which are not to want to put you out and each country has its circumstance circumstances and its. peculiar conditions and history

however we believe that there are many similarities between the countries of the region and that's why the revolution intern as you did inspire similar revolutions around the region or obviously. different parts however we believe that we hope the mean point that will inspire others around the region is that we need to move away from divisions. in our societies are diverse and they will always be diverse however we need to rise above those differences accept them and focus on the immense challenge of our country and it is possible to work together you've mentioned the difficulties about working together and we're working together is possible between urgent ideological parties however we've had this in the past in chin is your for instance we've seen for movement which brought together another movement with a communist party within. bossy with liberal policies and they've managed to work

together in its opposition to the need to share but they've managed to elaborate a vision for the society they want and there is much common ground on which we can let me let me let me jump in here because there's a word that's used a lot in the west and sharia law ok and islamic law david if i can go to you i mean this is what's always brought up is that when you had the national transition council in libya they said they will respect this type of religious law and then we also have it and tunisia where this is going to be in play here and there are different variations forms flavorings you know you can go from country to country but the country that has it the most severe version of it is saudi arabia but they don't get a whole lot of criticism do they but that's correct. the fact is that islamic law is subject to a great deal of interpretation and a great deal of i'm going to be very candid fudging the words it's one thing to say we're imposing islamic laws on the thing to say will be inspired by islamic law will refer to islamic law when making our civil code use saudi arabia is

not a particularly good role model donnelly because they observed. an understatement thanks to rid of a strict form of they're not an understatement there. absolutely. so i don't think you know i don't think i mean you know we will show you what you will certainly in tunisia and look for nader you want to jump in in denver go ahead. yeah no i i agree with what david is saying that the question of sharia law really is a red herring particularly in the united states of america today where you know there are these groups that are trying to do that believe that sharia law is going to take over the united states i think the point here is that when it comes to the construction of a legal system it's important that legal system be subject to checks and balances and fundamentally to you know public accountability so you can call it what you will but as long as that law is subject to democratic checks and balances important and subject to changing reformation then i think you know that's what we need to

focus on the the term shari'a law can mean many things in the audience that the head of the libyan transitional council was referring to effectively means a a moral code rooted within traditional norms and values that respects life property and religion in the west that means chopping off hands and sort of you know killing killing minorities so i think we focus on shari'a laws really attempt to i think engage in scaremongering to sort of play out on unfortunately deep seated islam or phobic stereotypes that have resurfaced in the west but fundamentally you know the you know the question of the legal code is going to be debated in all of these emerging democracies and as long as those debates are open free and fair and subject to public scrutiny then i think we need to sort of be confident that that peoples in these regions will get it right if i go back to tennessee. can you comment on that how do you how in your political party and how you see the future

of your country how do you balance the two because you've talked a lot about you've talked to talk of democracy on this program ok and how do you balance that with religious law law sharia. we believe that you know the issue of identity is is clear in the constitution and new party has said they want to change this. is an arab and muslim state. not in our actual lord's comes from from islamic jurisprudence but the laws as they are we want to maintain laws. as they are we do not want to. see the ocracy onsen is your ours. is a state where all citizens are equal and word. gets its legitimacy from from the will of the people and then to see that you know there is a focus on you know extreme interpretations of islam and that there are extremist

currents within the societies that me take over and me also you know explored the democratic process yes there are. extremist elements in all societies and we believe to expand and grow under repression and however we believe what's clear from from from these elections and from the results is that. society is very moderate by nature and they have voted for to represent. the middle ground when you jump in here we're almost out of nowhere i noticed all the time you go to you a year from now do you think islamic democracy would be a term that the west and western audiences will be able to comprehend. well hotel security council you're going to be nearly three if you are going to be able to develop yet it if a year from now we see a thriving democracy in tunisia where there's free debate where there's

a free press we're all different political currents are able to articulate their point of view then i think you know the term islamic democracy is not going to invoke the type of you know scary images that are already let me jump in here will change that proposition a year from now many thanks to my guest today and to mr islam and in denver and thanks to our viewers for watching as we are to see you next time and remember astafy. can. still.

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