Democracy in both America and Britain is coming under
scrutiny these days. Quite apart from the antics of MPs and
congressmen, it is said to be sliding towards oligarchy, with increasing overtones of autocracy. Money and its power over technology are making elections unfair. The military industrial complex is as powerful as ever, having adopted "the menace of global terrorism" as its casus belli. Lobbying and corruption are polluting the government process. In a nutshell, democracy is not in good shape.
How strange to choose this moment to export it, least of all to countries that have never experienced it in their history. The West not only exports the stuff, it does so with massive,thuggish violence, the antithesis of how self-government should mature in any polity. The tortured justification in Iraq and Afghanistan is that elections will somehow sanctify a "war against terrorism" waged on someone else's soil. The resulting death and destruction have been appalling. Never can an end, however noble, have so failed to justify the means of achieving it.
Simon Jenkins, Former editor of the Times writing in the
Guardian newspaper on 8th April 2010
http://www.khilafah.com/images/images/PDF/Books/Democracy_in_crisis_may2010.pdf
