Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy: Islam, Western Europe, and the Danish Cartoon Crisis

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-249
Author(s):  
Julie A. Pelton
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 466-467
Author(s):  
Rebekah Tromble

The 2005 Danish cartoon crisis has been the topic of much discussion among political science scholars. In September 2011 we ran a symposium on Jytte Klausen’s The Cartoons That Shook the World that centered on the tensions between multiculturalism, civility, and freedom of expression disclosed by the controversy. Paul M. Sniderman, Michael Bang Petersen, Rune Slothuus, and Rune Stubager’s Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy: Islam, Western Europe, and the Danish Cartoon Crisis (Princeton 2014) revisits the Danish crisis. Drawing on randomized experiments linked to broader survey research, the authors offer a nuanced account of Danish public opinion, and argue that the sensitivity of Danes to civil liberties concerns explains why the cartoon controversy did not result in an anti-Muslim backlash. The topic, the argument, and the methodology are important, and so we have invited a range of political science scholars to review the book. — Jeffrey C. Isaac


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1228-1256
Author(s):  
Malthe Hilal-Harvald

AbstractMultiple laws and regulations in Western Europe have been enacted on the premise that headscarves and face veils constitute an existential threat to the constitutional identity of the respective legal systems. Thus, the logic of militant democracy as a justification for restricting fundamental rights have been applied in order to restrict the freedom to manifest one’s religion. Yet, the politicymakers claiming to defend the constitutional identity through militant democracy have not been able to prove the existence of a concrete, imminent threat against the state from the women who wear headscarves or face veils. Nonetheless, the European judiciaries have taken the political claim at face value and allowed the restrictions without compelling the political decision-makers to provide substantive justifications. Thus, the cases of headscarves and face veils offer a prism, through which we can study fundamental paradoxes of liberal democracy and constitutionalism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-104
Author(s):  
Eva Novi Karina

Due to historical developments and the works of theorists such as Francis Fukuyama, predominant political-economic literature has claimed that the combination of a “free market economy” and “liberal democracy built on equal rights” results in the most developed form of human society. With economic and political liberalism, societies of Western Europe and North America “at the vanguard of civilization” considered have reached the endpoint of humankind’s ideological evolution hence Western liberal democracy has been perceived as the final form of human government. However, the current rising wave of right-wing populism along with the exercise of protectionist economic measures in the most developed democratic countries has shown that democracy has begun to malfunction. Depart from this point, this article aims to re-examine the relationship between free market and democracy, and analyses the real inequalities manifested in income and the ownership of the means of production, and the inequalities within capitals, and between capital and wage labor. It concludes that the logic of market mechanisms poses a threat to democracy, while the extension of democracy would inevitably limit the freedom of the market and curb capital accumulation.


2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Muslim Abdurrahman

<p class="Bodytext20">In this modem era, Islam, in fact, has a significant influence in politics and culture. Western people regard this as a symptom of the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism. It is a reaction of Islam to modernism and capitalism. Even though the term is not purely from Islamic terminology, for Western academicians it virtually represents Islam. Even, they relate it to terrorist movements. It takes us back to remarkable phenomena of secularism embedding that happened in Europe two decades ago. Modernism and capitalism have effects not only on Islam but also on other non-Islamic countries. Therefore, it is not surprising if then in this era of global capitalism Western academicians try to eliminate the thesis of secularism in their fundamentalism project. In the third millennium, after the fall of communism in Russia and Western Europe, Western is interested in studying Islam, if truth to be told, it is more intense. They are afraid of the influence of Islam for which the fundamentalists struggle to realize Islam as the grand narrative, a blue print of universal ideology that often impedes Western hegemony with its liberal democracy.</p><p> </p><p>Pada zaman modern ini, nyatanya Islam memiliki pengaruh signifikan dalam Politik dan budaya. Orang Barat menganggap ini sebagai pertanda kemunculan fundamentalis Islam. Hal itu adalah reaksi Islam terhadap modernisme dan kapitalisme. Meskipun begitu, istilah tersebut tidak berasal dari istilah Islam, hanya saja menurut akademis Barat, istilah tersebut merepresentasikan Islam secara virtual. Bahkan, mereka mengaitkannya dengan gerakan teroris. Hal ini membawa kita kembali pada fenomena dahsyat sekularisme yang terjadi di Eropa dua dekade lalu. Modernisme dan kapitalisme berefek tak hanya pada Islam tapi juga pada negara-negara non-Islam. Maka dari itum tidak mengejutkan jika dalam era kapitalisme global, akademisi Barat mencoba menyingkirkan hipotesis sekularisme dalam proyek fundamentalismenya. Pada milenium ketiga, pasca runtuhnya komunisme di Rusia dan Eropa Barat, negara Barat mulai tertarik mempelajari Islam. Karena jika kebenaran diungkapkan, maka akan lebih hebat. Mereka takut akan pengaruh Islam bagi para fundamentalis yang berjuang untuk menyadarkan Islam sebagai narasi besar, sebuah <em>blue print</em> ideologi universal yang sering mengahalangi hegemoni Barat dengan demokrasi liberalnya.</p>


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