Struggling democracies

The comparison between the ongoing constitutional process in Arab countries and the European models highlights "a crucial aspect" in modern dynamics, namely "to find a balance between the will of the majority and non-negotiable values". This, in short, is the conclusion of Silvio Ferrari, professor of Law and Religion at the University of Milan and Leuven. In an article published by the latest issue of Oasis (www.oasiscenter.eu), semestral magazine of the International Foundation bearing the same name, with head offices in Venice, Ferrari analyzed Arab countries’ attempt to "build a Muslim-based democracy", while the attempt to create "a democracy void of religious connotations" is "gradually gaining grounds". Islam and democracy. The most remarkable difference in these two kind of countries, Ferrari said, consists in the "State’s self-definition and the legislative sources of reference". While in the Constitutions of Arab Countries "the State is often described as Islamic and the shari’a is a source of national legislation", in others "there never is neither the definition of a State in Christian terms, nor is there a reference to the right of a religion in national legislative sources". Islam and democracy "are not incompatible", the expert says. However, to be successful, "the attempt to build an Islamic democracy must encompass a reconsideration of the relations binding law, religion, and politics".The two pillars of the Western world. The citizens’ will and the respect of human rights are, according to Ferrari, the two pillars of Western democracies. "Not everything can be subjected to vote – he says – : there are rights of each man (and woman) due to the mere fact of being a human person". The scholar refers to those rights "enrooted in human nature", but he observes that "the concrete application" of the respect of human life "is sometimes the object of bitter discussion", for example as relates to the debate on embryos or capital punishment. And while "within certain limits this is still a sound debate", beyond these limits "disagreements risks detonating the two foundations of the democratic system" previously mentioned. According to the author of the article "this is most serious risk hovering on Europe’s horizon, where in the past decades ethical and religious pluralism has grown at an unprecedented rate", questioning "at the level of juridical systems, the old balance between the will of the associates and human rights". Jerusalem, Athens, Rome. Hence there is a twofold risk, entailing the "growing intolerance" of the latter, or conversely, their "rigid and definitive re-establishment". "Although in different ways the problem of European countries is not very distant from the problem of Muslim countries". For both "it is a question of reconciling positive law (stemming from citizens’ will) and meta-positive law, identified in one case in divine law and in the other in human rights". This debate was enriched with the message delivered by Benedict XVI at the Federal Parliament of Berlin (September 22 2011), on the foundation of the liberal rule of the law. For the Pope, underlined the author of the article, "it is necessary to recover the fundamental concepts of nature and reason inscribed within ‘Europe’s cultural patrimony’: culture ‘born of the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome’".Identity and culture. Civil society understood as a place where "different concepts and life experiences converge": according to Ferrari: "this is the point of departure for the recovery of the Christian tradition of natural law". Moreover, civil society is never completely free: it falls within a framework defined by the norms that protect a set of fundamental, non-negotiable values". It comprises "further rules whose foundations are rooted within the tradition and the culture of every single community". For this reason "even the State, every single State, is not without history or memory", rather, is consists of people with individual identities and culture. A heritage "whose ties can’t be broken", "representing the foundation of our future". Hence the final admonition, valid for Western democracies and for those in fieri in the Arab world: "history teaches that the balanced development of all societies requires the need to avoid equally dangerous paths: the revolutionary utopia of relinquishing our tradition and the conservative one of keeping it unaltered despite the changes" occurring in societal groups. The identity of a community "isn’t an unchangeable genetic code, but a heritage, bound to blossom in the relationship with other identities".