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Fukuyama in Tel Aviv

(Weekly Standard) Peter Berkowitz - In the late summer of 1989 Prof. Francis Fukuyama maintained that evidence had reached a critical threshold suggesting liberal democracy was establishing itself around the world as the regime most consistent with the desires for freedom and equal recognition built into human nature. Almost before the ink had dried on his article, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union silently disintegrated. The key question thus far posed by the 21st century, Fukuyama observed at a Tel Aviv University conference, is whether there is a Muslim exception to the end of history. Fukuyama doubts it. He pointed out that the real democracy deficit is not in Muslim or predominantly Muslim countries but in Muslim Arab countries of the Middle East. And there the problem, he suggested, was not Islam, though he indicated it still awaits its Luther, but bad government and dismal economic prospects that produce an angry alienation on which purveyors of radical Islam prey. What is necessary on the part of the liberal democracies of the world, according to Fukuyama, is the right kind of politics, one that knows that individual freedom is the long-term goal but which takes careful account of, and learns to work with, the distinctive culture of Arab and Muslim societies.
2004-03-19 00:00:00
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