June 12, 2008

I have just returned from two weeks in Europe and Istanbul, where, as is apparent to all American travellers, the world is watching the US elections with fervent hope if also some trepidation. A possible Obama presidency is seen everywhere as a potentially transformational moment for American leadership in the world.

Yet while the world is watching America, America is paying little attention to the world. Neither ordinary Americans, nor the American media nor even the preoccupied Presidential nominees themselves seem to be noticing what is happening beyond America's borders. Foreign affairs in the electoral campaign means little more than national security - the war in Iraq and terrorism. Yet crucial events are taking place that will impact the United States and Middle Eastern affairs in crucial ways.

Two cases in point, Turkey and Libya, both of which I have visited - related in the sense that each one represents new realities in the world of Islam that Americans, based on conventional readings of old realities, could hardly have anticipated and seem not to comprehend.

First, there's Turkey where the moderate Islamicism of the AKP Party is not what Americans think it is. 85 years after Kemal Attaturk's nationalist revolution, Turkey is poised to segue from what had become a rigid, increasingly illiberal secularism to a pluralistic society in which Islam plays a significant but not an overweening role. The Turkish majority has determined that religion belongs not in city hall, but in the public square. The ruling AKP party has moved to allow head scarves in public universities. The military - keeper of the dogmatic secularist frame - showed displeasure and the Constitutional Court voted last week to uphold the ban, a move that also threatens the legitimacy of the Erdogan government and the AKP, which have linked their fortunes of allowing Islam into public life.

Yet - and here is what may surprise Americans -- Turkish feminists, many quite secular, on the whole support the lifting the scarf ban. For them, though it is an Islamicist initiative, it is a way to acknowledge pluralism and to recognize the rights of Armenians and Kurds, who have also traditionally been marginalized in Turkey. Moreover, the moderately Islamacist AKP has itself maintained a pro-Western, market economy and has recently managed to broker negotiations between Syria and Israel that could lead to the return of the Golan Heights to Syria and a peace treaty for both parties. And this just a few months after Israel bombed a suspected nuclear facility in Syria!

Islam, it turns out, is as culturally variable and politically pluralistic as Christianity. There is no such thing as a monolithic Islam or singular Islamacist ideology. Sharia need not be the death of liberty. Countries must be judged one at a time. Democracy takes many forms.

Much the same is true of the second example to which Obama and McCain ought to be paying attention: Libya. Ever since Colonel Qadaffi turned away from Libya's rogue foreign policy that allied it with terrorism, and in 2003 began to cooperate with Britain and the U.S. in dismantling its WMD program, Libya has inaugurated changes whose measure has yet to be taken in America. Having acknowledged its role in earlier terrorist acts that brought down civilian aircraft (e.g., Lockerbie), it has paid or is currently negotiating final payment to the families of the victims. It has also taken the first real steps in what could be a slow but deliberate move towards civil society, market economics and democracy.

Libya raises a remarkable prospect: while the Bush Administration has spent half a trillion dollars and more than four thousand American lives (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lives) trying to impose democracy in Iraq, the small oil-rich North African country of Libya has on its own made some remarkable changes. It has not only disavowed terrorism, but has opened its oil and gas resources to US and UK energy companies. It not only supports a modern and moderate Islam and opposes fundamentalist Wahhabism, but it is on the way to privatizing many government services and state companies. It not only permits satellite television in private homes, but has initiated efforts to reform and re-structure the state to move it in a more democratic direction.

I have made three trips to Libya in the past two years, engaging directly with Colonel Qadhafi in open discussions, the last time on the BBC with the Western news media present, to talk about the Libyan effort to build a "town-meeting" type of direct democracy absent political parties. Mr. Qadhafi has listened and debated for hours with me and other scholars like Anthony Giddens the former Director of the London School of Economics, and American social scientists such as Francis Fukuyama, Joseph Nye and Robert Putnam. Acknowledging that his philosophy of direct democracy has not been realized in Libyan reality, Qadhafi still argues passionately for his ideas and against what he thinks are the weaknesses of modern representative democracies (low voter turnout, citizen alienation).

Saif al-Islam Qadhafi, the Colonel's son and a recent Ph.d. of the London School of Economics, has been a vocal reformer pushing ideas to up-grade the system of direct democracy in ways that can work in the modern globalized world. In the past few weeks, as Libya explores new political ideas, a number of open public forums have been held to debate the role of social movements, clubs and other associations in a direct democracy.

We might see this as an emerging 'civil society,' a term not easily translated into Libyan political culture or even into Arabic. Yet what Saif Qadhafi and others seem to have in mind is a place where Libyans can learn citizenship and acquire the skills they need to participate in political affairs and town meeting government. Civil society is for Libya not a rival to potential popular sovereignty but its foundation

Such changes remain controversial in Libya as it seeks its own path to a more democratic society. The recent forums received mixed notices in the Libyan press. But an official voice representing the leadership recognized that the forums afford Libya a "national dialogue" that allows it to "keep pace" with modernization… and allows Libyan citizens to engage in "practical effective participation in the formation …of a restructured state."

America's inattention to developments like these in Turkey, Libya and elsewhere can actually contribute to those who oppose change. President Bush gets some credit for the original Libyan turn in 2003, but has not always followed up (Secretary Rice has not visited since the thaw).

But the Bush Presidency is nearly over, and there will soon be an Obama or a McCain presidency. It is surely time for the candidates to turn their eyes outwards and look at the world in which they will have to exercise leadership. And persuade their followers to look with them.

Out there, major changes are underway that matter for America, for democracy and for global peace. Not just in India and China and Brazil and South Africa: but in Turkey. And yes, most surprisingly of all, in America's old nemesis and what could with some Presidential attention become its new partner in North Africa, Libya.

Previous commentaries can be found on Benjamin Barber's blog.