Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Miscellaneous, grade: 18/20, Vrije University Brussel (Université Libre de Bruxelles), course: Seminar, 50 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Western Initiatives in the last years and especially in the aftermath of 11 September 2001
multiplied and intensified (e.g. the U.S. proposal of a Greater Middle East Initiative, Barcelona
Process by the EU) in order to bring democracy to a region which by any definition has the Arab
World at its core and which in comparison to Eastern Europe and Latin America seems reluctant
to follow the common trend of establishing representative democracies as form of government.
Besides the "exportation" efforts also internal Arab political discourse generally endows
democracies with a virtually talismanic quality capable of solving all outstanding problems, as
Al-Azmeh rightly points out.
The Arab Word is stretching from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east including a variety of
different state structures (small city states like Kuwait , large states like Libya, extremely rich
and extremely poor regions)3 and is populated by heterogeneous ethnic groups (large Berber
minorities in the Mahgreb and Kurdish, Turkic and Armenian minorities in the Mashreq).
However big the differences may be two common nominators can doubtless be identified: Islam
and a democracy deficit . The questions arising are obvious. Is the message of the prophet
responsible that no stabile democratic government is in sight in the Arab World ? Is the deficit in
democratic ruling indeed a cultural and religious problem ? Is the Koran compatible with the
concepts of democracy ?