Democracy wins in Muslim lands

Given a chance, Muslims, like any other people, opt for democracy. That's not what we are often told - by America, which prefers autocratic puppets in Muslim lands and by racists who equate terrorism with Islam and all Muslims.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has just held a fair and peaceful election in which the incumbent president was toppled.

In the same week that the leadership of the world's most populous nation, China, was transferred, by decree, from military leader Jiang Zemin to his hand-picked successor Hu Jinta, the leader of the world's fourth most populous nation was chosen by an electorate of 153 million.

In nearby Malaysia, which held its own elections some months ago, in which Islamists also lost badly, an emerging independent judiciary has just freed a former deputy prime minister after six years in jail.

Moderation has triumphed in both places, as it has wherever Muslims have been given a choice: Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, etc.

In Indonesia, Islamic militancy has been trounced at the ballot box, even as a suicide bomber was hitting the Australian embassy in Jakarta - the third terrorist attack in that country in two years, after Bali in 2002 and a hotel in the capital last year.

Those calling for the establishment of an Islamic state couldn't gather enough popular support to qualify for the nation's first direct presidential election. Of the five who did, none called for diluting the secular nature of the state.

The two Islamist candidates got trounced in the first round in July. And the third, Gen. Wiranto - like many Indonesians, he goes by one name - had a vice-presidential running mate from the country's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlat-ul Ulama, with 40 million members.

Nahdlat suffered another setback. Its second vice-presidential candidate, the running mate of President Megawati Sukarnoputri, lost with her. But voters did not reject Islam. Indonesians, like most Muslims, are more Islamic than ever.

What the voters spurned was the mixing of politics and religion. They did so in the wake of terrorist incidents carried out on their soil in the name of religion. They, like people anywhere, opted for security.

The lesson is clear: It is foolish to think that terrorism runs in Muslim blood.

Indonesian voters rejected more than militancy. In tossing out Wiranto, they passed judgment on a former chief of the army and defence minister who was accused of crimes against humanity in East Timor and under whose watch 10,000 Muslims and Christians were killed in sectarian clashes on the Molluccan Islands.

Wiranto had run on the Golkar ticket, the traditional ruling party that, not unlike the vehicles of ruling autocracies elsewhere, was for decades a highly organized political, financial and social force. But it could do little for him.

The voters also showed remarkable independence in ignoring the dictates of village elders and other traditional authority figures.

Not bad for a people who have been free only six years since toppling autocrat President Suharto through a popular uprising.

The country itself has done well in that period, despite two turbulent presidencies before Megawati took over. She had won the office by default, as the daughter of independence leader and first president, Sukarno. But as dull and inarticulate as she was, she did steady the ship.

She stabilized the $208 billion economy by slashing the deficit and ushering in political calm, even while authorizing a military drive against separatists in the Aceh province. But she failed to curb corruption, create jobs or root out the Jemaah Islamiya, said to be linked to Al Qaeda and blamed for all three terrorist bombings.

President-elect Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is a former security minister who cracked down on terrorism suspects. He is seen as a better bet for security and an economic turnaround. He is also a former general. But he has not been associated with any of the army's excesses.

In another show of electoral maturity, voters did not seem overly bothered either by his past association with America (he studied at American military academies), or by Washington's current preference for him, even though Indonesians remain angry at America over Iraq.

In Malaysia, the release of Anwar Ibrahim also augurs well for both Muslims and the West.

An U.S.-educated intellectual, he was among the first to challenge Muslims to confront modernity in an Islamic context. Equally, he warned the West of its narrow-minded view of Islam.

He was axed by strongman Mohammed Mahathir in 1998 and later convicted of sodomy. His trial was seen as a trap to end his career.

Mahathir's successor as prime minister, Abdullah Badawi, has since won his own sweeping mandate and has been introducing democratic reforms. The judiciary now felt independent enough to overturn Ibrahim's earlier conviction.

As he prepares to either re-enter Malaysian politics or play some international role, Ibrahim has reasserted the twin challenges of the age: engaging Muslims, especially the marginalized ones, in a dialogue, to pull them out of the breeding grounds of extremism while at the same time exposing the major "flaw of the American foreign policy, namely, engaging only with the so-called 'moderate leaders,' who are dictators or have authoritarian policies."