What the Middle East needs is liberalism. But it needs a proper definition

A letter series with Shadi Hamid, on liberalism, democracy, and illiberal democracy.

This is part 1 in a 6-part correspondence series between myself and Brookings Institute senior fellow

Shadi Hamid

. He will be writing letters 1, 3, and 5 on his Substack, and I will be writing letters 2, 4, and 6 here.

Links will be added as the letters get published: letter 1, letter 2, letter 3, letter 4, letter 5, and letter 6. We’d love to hear from you, so let us know what you think in the comments.

Dear Shadi,

Thanks for your kind letter. And congrats on your new book, The Problem of Democracy! As I expected, I found it very readable, interesting, thought provoking.

But I strongly disagree with your main argument, as you also would expect.

Here is why: You argue that “democracy” should be valued over “liberalism.” But I find your “liberalism” too ill-defined. The definitions reiterated in your book — “gender equality, sexual freedom, social progressivism” — may, at best, relate to some components of what I would really call liberalism: equality under the law and lack of coercion in moral matters. (But at worst, they can refer to illiberal progressivism that has become vocal in the United States lately, which aims to impose a certain view of the good life, including human sexuality, on everyone else.)

It would be more helpful to define liberalism by hearing its most prominent theorists. According to John Locke, it was about the protection of natural rights — “life, liberty, and property” — as well as lack of coercion in religion. According to Friedrich Hayek, it is mainly about “limiting the coercive powers of all government, whether democratic or not.” Chandran Kukathas, a contemporary liberal, puts it even more simply: “Liberalism is skepticism of power."

What about “liberal democracy”? Fareed Zakaria, who perceptively pointed to the problem of “illiberal democracy” back in the late ‘90s, also gave a good definition of what liberal means here:

“a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property.”

Now, in your book, I searched for the term “rule of law.” There was not a single mention of it. I also searched for “separation of powers” — a sine qua non of liberalism since Montesquieu. Again, I found nothing. Same is true property rights. What about religious freedom, the very “first liberty” on which the United States was founded? You mention it once in passing, without anything to say. These concepts just don’t seem to be on your radar.

To be fair, in your book, you do mention “freedom of association and assembly and, say, protection from arbitrary arrest” as important values, and classify them under “political liberalism.” But then you separate this from “social liberalism,” which is actually what you keep caricaturizing, repeatedly, as “liberalism.”

Meanwhile, even under your “social liberalism,” what you just wrote in your letter about “minority rights” is baffling. You throw these liberal rights under the bus of “democracy,” because, “you can’t force people to be free.” So, you can’t really force a majority not to oppress a minority? I would be curious to see you making that argument to, say, the Muslim minority in India, which is rightly afraid of the majoritarian Hindu supremacism, on whose side “we need to err,” if we follow your line of thinking.

By the way, what do you think about the hijab/niqab bans in France, which have all the “democracy” (popular support) behind them? Since, in your view, “rights are not freestanding, self-evident, or morally transcendent,” the will of the French people should reign, right? (For me, not, for I believe in something called religious freedom, which is indeed “freestanding, self-evident, morally transcendent.”)

Now, I kind of understand what you are actually trying to say with all this: Some Westerners fall in love too easily with “modernizing autocrats,” especially if they do a few cosmetic reforms on women’s rights and throw a few “interfaith dialogue” conferences. You have a point there. But I think you should not attribute “liberalism” to such dictators, even if people who don’t know better sometimes do.

Let me clarify my own position: Yes, I am a defender of liberalism. So, I want each and every country, in the Middle Eastern or elsewhere, to have limited governments that respect universal human rights. Because I do not want innocent people to rot in jail for what they believe in, what they think, what they say. I also want all people, from the most pious Muslims to the most vocal atheists, to live without fear, with equal justice under the law. I also want freer markets, so people can flourish economically, and corrupt bureaucracies don’t devour their wealth.

Moreover, as a native of Turkey — probably the most extremely illiberal democracy in the world today — I know what “democracy” can look like if it rejects liberalism: A popularly elected leader can gradually destroy rule of law, separation of powers, and freedom of the press. So, the judiciary can become his handmaiden, to prosecute whomever he dislikes. Almost all media can turn into his propaganda machine, singing the glories of his “democracy,” which is nothing but the tyranny of a hate-filled majority.

But isn’t Turkey a fashionable “model” now? One may ask that question, Shadi, because you write:

“Illiberal far-right parties have made considerable strides in Italy, Sweden, and France. Well, the list goes on. It is Westerners who are losing faith in liberalism as the end point of politics. So it seems like an odd time to double down on liberalism as the answer, when apparently liberals themselves (or those who used to be liberals) are losing faith.”

Well, there was widespread “loss of faith” in liberalism in the 1920s and 1930s, as well. Hence, fascism dominated Italy, Nazism took over Germany, and communism, which ruled Russia and all its colonies (also known as the Soviet Union), became quite popular even among Western intellectuals, who enjoyed living in liberal democracies but got enamored by authoritarian alternatives. Yet precisely because of all that, it was the perfect time to “double down on liberalism,” as Friedrich Hayek or Karl Popper rightly did, helping save the world from that dark wave of totalitarianism.

I am not suggesting that the “democratic” illiberals of today — the far-right, the far-left, Islamists, or Hindu supremacists— are evil as the Nazis. Nevertheless, in all of them I see threats to human dignity. So, I choose to defend liberalism against them — instead of defending them against liberalism.

Hope this helps. Looking forward to our next exchange.

Cordially,

Mustafa

PS: For more on what I mean by liberalism, and why I stand for it, see my recent book: “Why, As a Muslim, I Defend Liberty.” (With free PDF, thanks to the Cato Institute)