Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id JAA06044 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 19 Jan 2002 09:24:43 GMT Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 01:20:19 -0800 Message-Id: <200201190920.g0J9KJZ26562@mail22.bigmailbox.com> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) X-Originating-Ip: [65.80.162.155] From: "Joe Dees" <joedees@addall.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Islamism Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk('binary' encoding is not supported, stored as-is)
>Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 08:32:42 +0000
> Douglas Brooker <dbrooker@clara.co.uk> memetics@mmu.ac.uk Re: IslamismReply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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>Joe Dees wrote:
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>>
>> Here, Falwall & Robertson got publically censured for expressing such sentiments; in many Islamic countries, the terror flyers received joyous street demonstrations for acting upon them. And right now, the youth (who are in the majority there) have overwhelmingly supported Khatami's reforms, but they are stymied, sometimes violently, by Khameini's jihadic henchmen. This situation cannot perdure. Revolution is coming to Iran - again.
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>Khameini's jihadic henchment sound a bit like the police in LA, on one hand. But they also have a constitutional function defined by legislative text. Are Iran's supreme judicial insitutions any less politicized than the US Supreme Court?
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>State institutions function more or less according to the constitution in Iran. Elections are held, results are accepted without extensive litigation. The political struggles take place within the structure of the Constitution.
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The constitution functions according to sharia law, which means that whatever the people or their elected representative favor is immaterial, so long as the clerics oppose it.
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>Maybe there will be will a revolution in Iran but there's nothing to indicate it will be an autochthonous event. More likely when and if Khatami's forces get the upper hand there will be constitutional reform. You could argue these would constitute a 'revolution' but that's a loose use of the term - sort of like saying the military action in Afghanistan is a 'war', when it's really just another military intervention.
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The Khatami-led forces of reform do not posess, under the Islamicist structure of the iranian government, the democratic ability to change the religiocratic constitution to answer to popular desires. If change comes, it will be through revolt, or the very real threat of it.
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>Another Islamic democracy to consider is Bangladesh (125 million of the poorest people in the world - the live in a territory the size of Wisconsin, but by a recent UN survey the 'happiest' people in the world).
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Happiness can be a function of the ignorance of better alternatives.
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>It's anyone's guess what will happen in Saudi Arabia after they kick out the US forces, which also seems to be in the wind. There is a fledgling democracy movement there, but for some reason it doesn't receive much support from the US.
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The movement is not democratic, but theocratic, pushed mainly by the Wahhabi sect, which is more or less surreptitiously angling to rid themselves of their House of Saud patrons and control the petrolode directly. The problem that the West has with abandoming the authoritarian regimes in such places as Algeria, Egypt and saudi Arabia, among others, is that what would apparently replace it would resemble Afghanistan more than it would Turkey.
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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