Democracy and Islam and the US GWOT Strategy

<p>The United States strategy of promoting effective democracy as the counter cause to Islamic insurgents fails to account for the cultural and religious inconsistencies between western democracy and Muslim nations. A cursory examination of the origins of western democracy highlights this especially when compared with Islamic law and Middle Eastern cultural dynamics. However such a comparison also yields some unexpected commonality. This paper argues that the current US strategy will remain unproductive until policy makers gain a thorough understanding of what is meant by democracy as it develops in the Middles East; particularly Iraq. Arguably effective democracy requires the implementation of practices that arose from Christian culture history and principles. Without adaptation what commonly passes as democracy does not appeal to Muslims in areas of key importance to US national security interests. The failure to recognize Christianity in western democracy and the failure to aggressively pursue adapting a form of democracy derived from and justified by Islamic scripture will continue to concede the advantage to global insurgents and potentially lead to failure in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Turkey Morocco and Jordan when examined against the Department of State's Pillars of Democracy provide interesting insights to how the United States embarked on this imperfect path of spreading democracy. They also offer perspectives for future prospects for Islamic democracy. These perspectives should be applied to current democracy strategy in order to achieve greater success against global insurgents. Success lies in national policy adopting a counterinsurgent approach to the global insurgency problem. The United States must identify influence and support Islamic democratization efforts enabling and supporting internal democratic endeavors will ensure greater success in the proliferation of democracy.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>