The goal of the ideology of the “end of ideologies” is to convince us that reality is what we are told it is, that these are the facts, that no ideological choice, no political commitment is needed or wanted: we must deal with the state of the world as a physician deals with the human body. Descriptive objectivity must prevail over an individual’s ideological convictions or political ideals. Ideological instrumentalization clothes itself in the garb of the purest scientific observation. The emotions of peoples are played upon; the facts presented to them are non-political and objective: the arrangement is as clever as it is effective and, above all, dangerous. When human choices are presented as immutable natural laws, or even as dogmas, democracy is betrayed. Were not secularism and democracy supposed to distinguish between the two authorities? The time of new religions that dare not speak their name has come.
Crisis indicators for democracy exist, and should be of primary concern to citizens. The need for citizens continuously to demand their rights and the maintenance of a victim’s mentality (as in the case of immigrants, Blacks, Arabs, Muslims, etc., who feel the state or the political and economic “system” has singled them out for abusive treatment) eventually erodes the individual’s sense of responsibility: he is left with the feeling that everything is due to him, with no equivalent discipline or commitment on his part. Increasingly superficial civic education leads to falling voter turnout on election day, not to mention the media/political spectacles that have come to resemble wrestling matches between public figures, and the celebration of candidates verging on personality cults. Citizens show less and less interest in public affairs and local political issues, even though these issues are of direct concern to them. Ours is an era of passivity, in which the “ethics of citizenship” have fallen into abeyance. Protest movements have indeed broken out, short-term and massive outbursts of indignation (such as the Arab uprisings or the protests of the “indignant” in Spain, Greece, Israel or the United States). But their very short-term and mass character reveals an absence of long-term democratic commitment. Responsibility and rights are to be found where democratic structures are being built by the population and by civil society, and not merely in mass protest against government policies.
As popular movements take to the streets to demand democratization, Arab and Muslim majority societies must take stock of today’s crises and find a way to propose other solutions. They would be well advised to call upon their history, their collective memory, and their intellectual, religious and cultural references in their attempt to construct alternatives. As against the simplistic and ultimately dangerous rhetoric (“Arabs and Muslims have at last become just like us; now they are making our values, and the universalism that we in the West represent, our own.”), new dynamics of mobilization must emerge from within the youthful and energetic populations of the Global South. There is also hope for the industrialized societies of the North fraught today with crisis and lacking genuine perspectives for the future.
Far from the timeworn and politically exploited confrontation between secularists and Islamists, attention must now be turned to the role of civil society, of institutions and intellectuals, as well as the prerogatives of the state in building the future. A veritable democratization movement in the Global South must, as its top priority, focus not only on broadening access to education but on its content. Another theme that demands political commitment to reform is that of women’s place in public life, of their rights and their autonomy. Issues such as the role of the media, the status of journalists, along with freedom of expression, of exposition, criticism and protest, are far more important that endless wrangling over symbols and the phrasing of constitutional articles. The debate over religion and culture as sources of inspiration for collective ethics (and psychology), not to mention social and political models, must remain wide open, for these factors function as the life-breath and the heartbeat of any democratic project that arises from the population concerned, from society itself, and of a nation’s founding narrative. These are the ways in which Muslim majority societies can become reconciled with what they are, and can become forces for progress in an age of economic and cultural globalization.
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