Readers Write: Democracy the right answer for Mid East

The Island Now

In last week’s Manhasset Times, Tom Coffey took issue with my assertion (the prior week) that true democracy can only flourish in a secular nation. I also contended that organized religions, all of them without exception, are at least mildly autocratic. 

True, some of the organized religions have over recent centuries updated some of their more offensive practices such as no more burning at the stake for asserting that the sun, not the Earth, is at the center of the solar system. Still today most organized religions are not very democratic and certainly anti female. 

He speculates as to whether democracy is always the best solution, that it has only been around for a few hundred years (in its present form) and that at least some of the Muslim nations are beginning to institute some bits of democracy such as letting women own property and drive cars. 

Well just recently a Norwegian women working in the Gulf coast nation of Dubai was raped. She reported it to the police. Result: the judge gave her an eighteen month prison sentence for having sex outside of marriage. 

According to Sharia Law unless she could provide four men (get that, four men) who could confirm the rape she was just plain guilty of having sex outside of marriage. 

Need I say more in favor of democracy?

Regarding Tom Coffey’s contention that Islam was not Kemal Ataturk’s “target,” I don’t know what you call it when Ataturk outlaws Sharia law so that democracy could flourish in Turkey.

Theodore Theodorsen

Manhasset

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