U.S. Outreach to Muslims on Women's Issues
Lorne Cramer, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Remarks to the Center for the
Study of Islam and Democracy Washington, DC June 6, 2003
Let me state plainly at the outset the perspective of the United States regarding democracy in the Muslim world. The
U.S. Government has turned an important corner in our thinking. From the President on down, support for democratic
reform in the Muslim world has moved to the very top of our agenda.
This approach is not solely a result of September 11. There have been voices who understood the need for such a policy
for years -- Bill Burns and Colin Powell among them -- and our numbers were increasing even before that awful day.
But September 11 catalyzed the process and moved the doubters in our government to their proper place. The same old
three-decade long approach to the Middle East specifically, and the Muslim world in general, is no longer tenable. There
is no longer a Middle East exception.
You are looking at some of the underlying issues that must be resolved for democracy to flourish alongside Islam. The
recurring question is whether Islam is compatible with democracy. I believe it is, but we need to discover not just how
the two can be compatible, but rather how democracy and Islam can thrive from each other. Most importantly, your Muslim
brethren must understand that democracy does not threaten their religion, but improves their lives.
So if you remember only one thing from my talk tonight, remember this: the U.S., for many reasons, has made the
commitment to freedom in the region and we will stick to it. I know that many people think that, even if the U.S. is
committed, it may be impossible to achieve the goal. We all know many skeptics -- Americans, Europeans and Muslims, who
simply believe that democracy can t be built in the Muslim world. The skeptics point to history or religion or other
factors to justify their point of view.
Now as I noted before, I have been in the business of promoting democracy for a long time, well before I took on my
current job. We all know how complex and difficult our task in the Middle East is going to be. It takes enormous
commitment to build democracy, and there are many obstacles and there will certainly be many setbacks before we reach
our goal.
But the skeptics are wrong here, as they ve been wrong before. I know, because I ve met their type, the first time half
a world away and 20 years ago, in Latin America in the early 1980s. Then, as Carl Gershman, Steve Steiner, and others
remember, the skeptics, the experts , noted how few Latin countries were democracies. They said that, for a variety of
reasons, the situation could never improve.
The reason most often noted by the expert skeptics was that the Spanish-inspired hacienda system -- essentially
plantations -- had ingrained servitude into the minds of Latins, and that they could therefore only understand rule by
big men -- generals and caudillos. Today, that sounds ridiculous, not to mention condescending. Today, all but one or
two of the almost three dozen nations in Latin America are democracies -- not perfect and not without imperfections, but
democracies nonetheless. And the generals and caudillos are gone. With them went the skeptics of democracy in Latin
America.
I met the skeptics again, in the late 1980s, in East Asia. The experts said the people of East Asia were not ready for
democracy, again for a variety of reasons. The most prominent and patronizing was that the Asian Way -- a communal way
of thinking that we were told came from growing rice -- was incompatible with the individual rights on which democracy
is based. Over the last 15 years, the people of Philippines, Mongolia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the world s
most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, proved that there is no bar to democracy in Asia. Today, the only skeptics about
democracy in Asia are the region s aging authoritarians.
I could go on and on with stories of the skeptics I ve met in other regions -- the Balkans, Africa, on and on. Anyone
who supports building democracy in the Muslim world will be operating for sometime in the space -- which is growing --
between such skeptics here and abroad. We need to overcome these new skeptics, the ones who say it may have worked
elsewhere but it can t work here because. We need to show them that people in the Muslim world, as elsewhere, want what
people around the world now have -- more control over their own lives.
The shortest way to make my point is to note that just 25 years ago, there were perhaps 30 democracies in the world.
And with the exception of a few countries like India and Japan, democracy was essentially a Western phenomenon. Last
fall, I attended the ministerial of the ministerial meeting of the Community of Democracies in Seoul, attended by 107
countries considered either fully democratic or well on the road to democracy.
If we d had the meeting in 1975, as I noted before, it would have been largely a white boys club. Not now. Participants
included African, Asian, Arab, Latin American and South Asian men and women. But even more interesting than the
diversity of the attendees was the diversity of democratic systems represented. Each nation had crafted a unique system
of democracy that allowed people in their countries, their culture, to control who ruled their country. Seoul
illustrated not only that democracy is no longer a western phenomenon, but that it is sustainable and indigenous to
every corner of the world precisely because it is homegrown.
That is why when I hear people accusing the U.S. of wanting to impose our model of democracy on Iraq or other
countries, I laugh. We know that such an approach is doomed to failure. The United States cannot impose democracy on a
country. Our model is suitable only for our own country. We can only help those who want to bring democracy to their own
country. Democracy must come from within.
That is why we need to and will listen as you tell us what you need to craft and implement a democratic model that is
compatible with your culture, your religion, your society. And indeed, across the Muslim world, people are doing exactly
that. As the President noted last week, about half of all the Muslim people live under democratic rule in nations from
Turkey to Indonesia. The governments of Bahrain and Morocco have recently held free elections. Jordan will hold
elections next month. The people of Qatar have approved a new constitution guaranteeing basic freedoms. And Crown Prince
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has proposed a new Arab charter calling for internal reform and enhanced political
participation in nations of that region.
As we learn what you need, we are helping diplomatically. We are also putting our money where our mouth is, helping
materially. Last fall, Secretary Powell unveiled the Middle East Partnership Initiative, designed to support economic,
education and political reform. The budget of this initiative was nearly quadrupled this year. My Bureau s Human Rights
and Democracy Fund is increasing its focus on the Muslim world, more than doubling our programming there.
This is a monumental task, but the moment has never been more conducive to democracy-building in the Middle East. So I
wish you the best in this conference and with this historic task. The United States stands with you in words and deed.
And you will see our actions speak for our sincerity. Thank you.
[End]
Released on June 6, 2003