Democracy: a Pandora's box in Muslim countries?

Abstract

Like everywhere else, during the last two decades, the Arab Muslim world witnessed a great increase in the public demand for democracy. No political party and no social movement. whether secular or religious, has forgotten to assert its will to have a fair access to the mass media as well as its right to run for free elections. Is the mere claim for democracy, as conventionally expressed, the actual sign of the rise of a civil society and of a democratic political culture? Many political analysts and sociologists are inclined to think so. Are they right or did they take words for things and dreams for facts? This kind of question could not and should not be answered in an abstract way . Through the example of Tunisia " I will question the established understanding of democracy as synonymous of social progress: in a first step, by pointing out certain characteristics of the Tunisian State and society, I'll remind how progress was imposed by the State on the society .. In a second step, I'll show that the Tunisian society does not trust itself to handle together Islam and Democracy helping somehow the State to get out of the democratic game. To illustrate this second point, I'll refer to the cacophony of the democratic claims of the eighties where certain voices sounded scaring . So scaring that without delay the democratic parenthesis was dosed. If there is an image to be drawn of the Tunisian society facing democracy it should be that of the Pandora's box, or that of the chained 'Jinn ' in the old Arabic stories. The 'Jinn' would implore you for his freedom but you may hesitate to liberate him, you may even tighten his chains because you never know whether he is going to serve you or to kill you.