and political turmoil at home. as tunisia votes on an islamic party into power peter lavelle and his panel of guests discuss whether the world should get ready to welcome a new form of democracy guided by islam cross-talk is next. lonely welcome to cross talk i'm curious about as tunisia goes so does the rest of the arab world to be sure successfully holds the first election of the arab spring with the islamic party coming out on top egyptians also will soon go to the polls

and there's an exam a party they're expected to garner the most votes should we now get used to the idea of islamic democracy. taking. to cross-talk the future of islamic democracies i'm joined by you sort of got nucci in tunis she is a member of the in the to party in jerusalem we have david rosenberg he's a columnist for the jerusalem post and in denver we cross to major me he's a professor at the university of denver all right folks this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want my very much encourage it but first moshe should we get used to the idea of islamic democracies well at least in so far as elections go democracy and social change may have been the arab spring slogans be events unfolding in the margin regimes show that real changes might be 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 the new constitution had more than sixty percent voter turnout and was hailed free and fair by international observers but the release of the results brought a wave of protests and more than a hundred appeals filed mainly over the zamost 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 of humility this is a time when tennis is 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 being not a party which now has to juggle good governance secular skepticism and the shattered economy. hopeful also. in tunisia and not a party turns out to be a reasonable and moderate party that would be

a good model 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 incidentally a modest success follows a call by levy as chief of the un to seek to uphold the islamist law of sharia and in egypt which wields great political clout the muslim brotherhood's freedom and equality party is expected to become a major force in the members' parliamentary elections so certainly a new and fascinating trend let's discuss this here you should if i go to sleep it's very interesting we have a sound bite in there and i just 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 moderate now if we don't want any kind of extreme form here do you think that'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 body. that's indeed the view of many many people around the region but i think what they're most concerned about is not the view of the west or europe they're concerned about their societies the economies that democracies have. made these revolutions and they've gone 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 the economic challenges but there is a positive feeling that just as soon as you had the you know the flame of 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 getting these provoked an exaggerated ideological differences because the real challenges are really practical on the ground ok david in jerusalem if i can go to you what do you think about the election outcome in tunisia because again there is this kind of wait in fiji attitude from the west because well the space and you know we don't we haven't seen too many elections like this in the in the arab world because of what i would call western new york colonialism now they've overthrown their their dictators now they're starting down a new trend which the west has always said democracy democracy democracy and their skepticism or tunisia's and they were skepticism when hamas was elected seven years ago. i think the us is a legitimate concerns as far is on 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 in iran 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 a new you know 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 we should bear in mind that in the past there have been coalitions like that one exists more or less in lebanon now in the past and in the palestinian areas there was a coalition between fatah and hamas the question is not just if they're going to be elections and when 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 isn't 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 a 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 abdullah's 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 of human rights so i think you know his 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 self-determination and 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 they led 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 you should have if you go back to you in tunis and that was very interesting is that your electoral opponents opponents on a claim that you were going to ban alcohol in bikini's i mean i would hope that tunisian politics is more about alcohol then then bikini's.

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 dictatorship into a democratic transition hopefully to establish a real democratic system. you know let's move away from food to sing on these 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 the main challenge establishing a real system where citizens are equal where they enjoyed 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 the name of liberalism or secularism and the second challenge is economic development that

really needs to move forward we have a huge crisis that new worse and often. 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 don't want their parties to as we'll see in unfortunately in the election campaign to have a focus on the provoked and orchestrated incidents and discussions they want their parties to work together and we've seen this from their itself he has 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 share of the right you know that i jump in here before we go to the end i go to they go to the break and i go to david david i mean you know we shouldn't be surprised that these countries after suffering under these dictatorships supported by the west i'd like to point out that actually want to turn to islam and just say look you get get this give these islamic parties

a chance at least give them a chance well i think there is a risk of kind of oversimplifying what is islamism there's a tendency you know even among people who specialize in the subject to to look at islam where's your force revolution anti western ism in-door they dismiss it as simply a political for phenomenon and really distressing and though we don't have to take concern about it if you you know 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 what i think is very important and we see this phenomena certainly in tunisia i think as well in egypt and probably in 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 run out of time we're going to come we'll come back we're going to short break ok after a short break we'll continue our discussion on the future of democracy in the arab

world today with r.t. . if you. want.

a very warm welcome to you this is your news today protesters on the wall street center they have to. leave these intensely good chance of a truce isn't a good look for example the status of the human experiment is exploding with. problems in this rap music or deep snows to a military trying to make sense of global economy and its arcane trends and as financial temple sees a little research clambering to maintain our confidence in markets and being on the primitive wants to be seen trade imbalances recession look to the nations close to collapsing a sub prime loan foreclosed homes. to fail switchblade banks again feel level i

think is a us crash and imminent smash the ceiling. is it like to finish oxygen in st the sports stadium just programs increase the term economy. the so. who's.

to. say. welcome back to cross talk i'm about to remind you we're discussing the prospects of democracy in the arab world. and you can see. ok i'd like to go back to david in jerusalem here steve i think that you know how do you look at tunisia as being a model because isn't it really for the with the rest of the arab awakening or is it a good precedent or is it a an aberration it's very specific it's a 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 eccentrics cetera my point is how much is to nisha a model. a compass for the future. well it probably isn't much of

a model for either 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 define is. you know a western audience and i think we saw that in the election results there wasn't any it was as everybody has pointed out conducted freely fairly without any chaos or violence and even though the islamic parties are not that took forty percent of vote should 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 fortune the popular political parlance is no 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 fusion people want to read islamic republic i think we've made quite clear they don't want one the question is whether or not. among these lamas 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 democracy in the end can we now. see that includes let me let me go to a trade and then very again this kind of skepticism i mean are muslims mature enough to have democracy because i'm afraid that's one conclusion we could you could 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 is for the first time we're going to 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 it 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 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 tunis 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 tunisians 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 for for for for investors for primarily but also for others that we will maintain we hope to maintain good relations with our main traditional part of this europe and to advance that status further but also to diversify our relations with the rest of the world. as i said our proposal is to have a parliamentary system that distributes and balances powers on a wide scale but as i said you know tunisians and our party all concerned about.

and regarding a model for for other countries would you not to want to presume that each country has its circumstance circumstances and. conditions and history however we believe that there are many similarities between the countries of the region and that's why the revolution intern is here did inspire similar revolutions around the region or obviously they're taken the different paths however we believe that we hope the main point that will inspire others around the region is that we need to move away from divisions that are 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 challenges facing our country and that it is possible to work together you've mentioned the difficulties about working together and whether working together is possible between divergent ideological parties however we've had this

in the past into his year for instance we've had the movement which brought together another movement with a communist party within. in this policy with liberal policies and they've managed to work together in its opposition to dictatorship but they've managed to elaborate a vision for the society they want and there is much common ground on which we can build ok 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 islamic law david if i can go to you i mean this is what's always brought up is that when you had the 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. that's correct. the

fact is that islamic law is subject to a great deal of interpretation and a great deal if i'm going to be very candid and fudging another words it's one thing to say we're imposing islamic laws or the thing to say will be inspired by islamic law will refer to islamic law when making you know civil code use saudi arabia is not a particularly good role model not only do they observe. but that is an understatement thanks to rid of its strict form of it that's an understatement there. absolutely. so i don't think you know i don't think i do you know we will be lucky we will certainly in tunisia and look for major you want to jump in in denver go ahead ahead go. yeah you know i'm 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 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 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 input and subject to change in 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 it effectively means a a moral code rooted within traditional norms and values that respects life property and religion in the west it means chopping off hands and sort of you know killing killing minorities so i think the focus on shari'a law is really attempt to i think engage in scaremongering to sort of play up on unfortunately deep seated islamophobia 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 the peoples in these regions will get it right if i go back to tennessee. can you comment on that how do 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 the talk of democracy on this program ok and how do you balance that with religious. we believe that you know the issue of identity is is clear in the constitution and no party has said that they want to change this. is an arab muslim state. not in our actual laws comes from from islamic jurisprudence but the laws as they are we said we want to maintain laws. as they are we do not want to. in is your hour what we propose is

a state where all citizens are equal and the state gets its legitimacy from from the will of the people to see that you know there is a focus on you know extreme interpretations of islam and that there are extremist currents within these societies that me take over and me also you know exploit the democratic process yes there are. extremist elements in all societies and we believe they do 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 those that represent. the middle ground here we're almost out of nowhere i don't you just. 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 i

don't really think i was on your heels are you going to be there if indeed 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 where 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 have already let me jump in here will change that proposition a year from now many thanks to my guest today and to mr and in denver and thanks to our viewers for watching as you are to see you next time and remember astafy. if you. want to.

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