Scholarly Contributions | Middle East and Africa

DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT

Professor Said was long critical of the application of Western models to democracy and development, especially within the Middle East and Africa (MEA). Efforts in the region to assimilate and modernize, Said argued, have led to a crisis of alienation, erosion of traditional religious and cultural values, and a rise in identity-based conflict. Instead, Said recognized that democracy and development are not inherently Western but global processes that should be rooted in the values and historical contexts of the people of the regions. Through his writings and lectures on the topic, he demonstrated how rethinking democracy and development to be locally driven processes can lead to more sustainable political, economic, and social development. In particular, he encouraged the reconciliation of democracy and development with values that resonate within the region, particularly Islamic principles.

Witnessing rapid political and social changes in the Middle East, Said observed in the 1970s that it was undergoing a “period of maximum transition.” Its development was associated with Western notions of modernization “in contrast to the previous two hundred years when it remained much outside the political forces operating in the West.”¹ Said argued that “Muslims were reduced to passivity in world politics” beginning in the 18th century as the subcultures of Western expansion “assumed their superiority when in contact with Islam and other non-Western cultures.”² As a result, wealth and the nation-state have been introduced as “new symbols of legitimacy and status … while many Muslims lose faith in their cultural heritage.”³ Yet even as Said criticized the wholesale application of Western paradigms, he did not avoid critique of the governance and policies of the regimes themselves. He was clear that regardless of whether regional states had adopted capitalism or claimed to adopt socialist models, “indigenous intellectual developments have been few and frequently suppressed and squashed by governments, thus underscoring the contradictions of the contemporary Middle East.”⁴ In particular, Said was concerned about the diminishing importance of traditional religious and cultural structures: “the traditional Islamic institutions have lost their effectiveness as organizing principles and as safeguards for social justice and political participation … The universalism of Islam has not found expression in the new nation-states.”⁵

Ultimately, Said explained, “lip service to Islam, capitalism and socialism combined with the failure to conform to the precepts of any of the three, underscore economic uncertainty in today’s Muslim world. Within this context, the development of economic rights of the Muslim individual is thwarted and diverted by the personal interest of ruling elites.”⁶ Further, ethnic differences and sectarianism have become “forces for political instability, that threaten the fragmentation” of the region.”⁷ Writing with the renowned human rights activist and Methodist minister Dr. Brady Tyson in 1994 on the “Problem of Development in Muslim Countries,” Said asserts that it “may well be that former colonies have merely exchanged the indignities associated with being imperial wards for the less direct exploitation implicit in becoming disciples of one developmental model or another.”⁸ Indeed, states in the region face a “paradox of development.” According to Professor Said, when leaders in the region “reject Western political, economic and social values as inappropriate to their needs, the West views them as xenophobic and reactionary” and they become isolated internationally (citing Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi as two glaring examples). On the other hand, when they “compromise their own values and traditions and adopt those of the West, they suffer internal displacement. They are rejected domestically. The Shah [of Iran] and [Egypt’s President Anwar] Sadat are two tragic victims.”⁹

By the 2000s, Said observed a great vacuum in discussions of theories of development and democracy for the Middle East and North Africa “It is obvious that the American working model of democracy is not compatible with the basic goals of the United States itself, and even less compatible with the goals of the Global South.”¹⁰ Said’s own work in reimagining development and democracy began in the 1970s and was rooted in a paradigm of human rights and dignity. He emphasized the “preservation of cultural integrity and traditional values” as well as “human development over economic development per se, and self-reliance from community to country levels.”¹¹ Similarly, while many scholars equate certain Western institutional forms of democracy with the substance of democracy, Said asserts that democracy cannot be reduced to form but is ultimately built upon participation.¹² When it came to the Middle East, he argued that the challenge for the region is how to pursue development and democracy “through its own traditions, not through Western secular ideologies.”¹³ Yet Professor Said observed a “slowly growing tide of greater self-confidence and a re-discovery of the inherent worth of their own culture among many non-Western peoples,” despite the assimilation and diffusion of Western technology across the non-Western world. “The truth is that modern cultural experience is as rich and diverse as it is fragmented.”¹⁴

Said proposed that Middle Eastern and North African countries face a choice: either they can adopt Westernization, accept the hegemony of one worldview (whether Western or not), or “build a truly eclectic world humanist culture” that would provide space for the growth of an Islamic model rooted in universal values.¹⁵ His work contributed significantly to the exploration of the latter. Professor Said called for a reconciliation of Islam with development and democracy, which can only happen “when we free development from the linear, rational idea of progress canonized by the Western mind.”¹⁶ There is no fundamental incompatibility with Islam, Said argues; rather “the lack of democracy in the Middle East is due more to a lack of preparation for it than to a lack of religious and cultural foundations.”¹⁷ He explains that “Islamic traditions provide a set of political precepts with universal implications, and Islam can make an important contribution to an integrative world order.”¹⁸ According to Said, “today’s challenge for Muslims is no more than an expansion of the original ideals of Islam,”¹⁹ including conceptions of the common good, freedom, cultural pluralism, and human dignity (see Islam and Politics).²⁰ By prioritizing the values and contexts of regional populations, Said contributes to the eclectic world humanist culture he envisioned, one in which countries in both the Middle East and North Africa can play a positive and critical role.

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