Democracy and Islam and the US GWOT Strategy

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.