What If History Had Started To Move Again in Paris?

In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote his famous essay The End of History.  The central tenet of the essay, and of Fukuyama’s 1992 book that followed, is that the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the advent of Western style liberal democracies and the end of the History of humanity’s socio-cultural evolution. Indeed, except for some cultural and historical differences, by 1989 western countries had adopted a system of market capitalism and democracy based on equality, the rule of law and a system of checks and balances to keep different branches of government in check with one another.

At the time of their publication, the essay and the book were praised and pretty much accepted by all political scientists. 25 years later the main challenges to the End of History’s argument came both from the Chinese example and the widening of income inequality in our democratic societies. I believe that China has not created a new form of totalitarian capitalism and will eventually be forced to democratize under the pressure of a growing and more affluent middle class. Cultural differences are also at play in China and the Singapore example, whose population is ethnically Chinese, likely shows that cultural aspects in these societies make it possible to instill capitalism and then move to democracy (as opposed to Europe and the US, which started with democracy instead). The other, very recent attack on Fukuyama’s assertion has been the widening of income gaps in democracies and the danger that it creates. Thomas Piketty argued in Capital in the Twenty-First Century that free markets have not only enlarged the gap between rich and poor, but have also reduced average incomes across the developed and developing countries. The decline of the middle class is an irrefutable fact, but I personally believe that we will eventually find answers to this important issue within the framework of liberal democracy. Fukuyama himself looked at the issue in his 2012 essay The Future of History that I recommend reading.

Thus I don’t believe that these two developments will eventually threaten the way humanity has chosen to organize itself. The recent terrorist attacks in Paris however, may trigger a debate on another challenge to our democracies. There is a threat that I find substantially more serious, it is the rise of radical Islam, or political Islam. This branch of Islam, financed by the energy-based wealth of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar, is committed to use the worst terrorism tactics in order to conquer all Muslim and non-Muslim lands, also called the House of War in the Quran (Dar El Harb), until the entire world has converted to Islam or submitted to strict sharia law. The ideology of these radicalized Muslims is based on Quran scriptures and fully anchored on transforming the so-called House of War into the House of Islam (Dar El Islam). Until the House of Islam is whole and the sharia law reigns over the entire world, the House of War will not cease to exist and the likes of Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS and Boko Haram will continue to carry their cowardly attacks on innocent people. The events in Paris this week are in fact just the continuation of a long chain of terrible events that started on September 11, 2001 in New York. So they were not unexpected unfortunately. But the rally we all saw on TV today may signal a tipping point. It may herald a new phase where liberal democracies around the world will recognize the issue by naming it correctly and doing away with political correctness when analyzing ways to solve it. That would be a good first step, but I am afraid that our chances of saving our way of life are by no means obvious.

Indeed, and this is my central point, the very democratic principles that we cherish and fight to keep alive, may actually limit and eventually prevent us to fight the evil in front of us. This may sound like an exaggeration, but think about it. How do you “legally” stop sleeper terrorists from striking? The Chouaki brothers and the Jewish market attacker, Amedy Coulibaly, were known by French police as potential sleeping terrorists and were under surveillance for a long time. Yet, they were not stopped. That’s because in a western country like France where the rule of law is in effect, the government cannot arrest someone without the evidence of a crime. The last Bush administration tried to do away with this by opening a prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where they could avoid any US or international prosecution but that approach has obviously been harshly criticized and is not replicated around the world. Similarly, the recent open debate about the use of torture on a “human ticking bomb” within the Obama administration shows that people are more committed to democratic methods than to stopping a terrorist at all cost. And they are right! If we compromise on our bedrock democratic principles, then we are ourselves opening the door to a return to totalitarianism and abandoning our system of liberal democracy. Even the Israeli people, which arguably has seen the most terrorist attacks per capita in modern history has rejected the “ticking bomb” argument, using a democratic legal process that culminated in the Israeli Supreme Court outlawing coercive interrogation methods in 1999.  In the words of Aharon Barak, the then Israeli chief justice, a “democratic, freedom-loving society does not accept that investigators may use any means for the purpose of uncovering the truth.”

To be clear, I am fully committed to liberal democracy and to the respect of its associated laws. Also, I am not arguing that we cannot do anything to fight this evil. There is plenty we can do socially, financially, legally and militarily and we must do it. My view however is that even if we did all this within the boundaries of democratic law and principles, we might eventually lose and History will revert back to Islamo-Fascism and Totalitarianism. So what else could we do then? I would argue hope. Yes, hope that secular Muslims, if there is such a group, fight back and reclaim their religion. Perhaps Muslims should read and get inspired by the words of one of their own, the 13th-century Persian poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”