Are Islam and democracy compatible really

Strategos and Prsn4life, drawing the same conclusion of my example as other forumers did is not so difficult.
Christianity existed in 1600's and Christianity exist today in 2006. If you are living in 1600's and you said that "look at those Christian autocratic and crusading states, Christianity is not compatible with democracy" it will be as plain igorant, naiive, and simple-vision as saying today and standing with many non-democratic Muslim countries that Islam is not compitable with democracy.  Understand now?

Wither they have an excuse or not, it does not give you or anyone here the right to push the blame to religion and it is clear that doing so is definitely a twisted presentation as I explained in my example.

Now, you talk about it as if the Middle East is isolated from the outside world. You seem unknowledgable about the fact that the delimma of democracy in the middle east is also a by-product of the "democratic " West!!

Was Shah of Iran a democracy? No. But he was supported by the United States. Who supported Saddam too before 1990 invasin of kuwait? Who helped Qadafi to take control except the American base in Tripoli. Even if you want to talk about Saudi Arabia, who supported King Abdul Aziz except Britain?

You seem to be living abroad and away from the Middle East. So I guess you can watch the new movie Syriana. Though it is not a documentary movie, but you will get the idea. This is not an idea produced here in the Middle East to throw the blame out. It is an accepted fact even by Westerners themselves.

Well, there was a constitution, political parties, free press, and a parliment in the Kingdom of Hijaz after the WWI.  Britian decided to support King Abdul Aziz just to serve its interest. So it gives signals to all citizens in that region and till now that Western powers don't mind supporting a non-democratic choice if it means securing their interest.

After the 1990 Gulf War, Bush the father came on TV encouraging Iraqis to revolt against Saddam and promised them support. Guess what? they revolted and the United States, the winning side in the war, was just watching the failed revolt against the tyranny and the butcher of Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north and finally they put the no-fly zone areas.

 Of course, this argument if it is expanded to include the rest of the world, it will become inevitable to observe many examples were actually democratic choices were removed and dictatorships were installed as in Greece coup and Chili.

We have all pointed out that neither west nor muslim world are perfect, but I believe the west is headed in the better direction

Ok. Then Im glad you saw the big difference between "Islam" and "Muslims". Having said that, I guess then your second observation that Muslims are behind the West. Well not all, but most and truly behind the West. Reasons? we can discuss that in any form.

However, my previous objection was to blame Islam in a general statement as you made earlier. Christianity and Islam existed before and exist today.  Christian world went from advancement to decline to advancement again.  Civiliazation raise and fall. As it is not fair to blame Christianity for the decline in medival ages of Europe and the massacres done by its name, it is also unfair to point in the same direction to Islam.

I think you are right on this. Christianity practices in Europe went against science at the begining. Something that most early Muslims did not face regarding science. Therefore, a lot of Muslims wont' know that religion can stand against science sometimes.

Well, that is the precise point I was talking about. Most Westerners will fail to understand that for Muslims, religion (Quran and Sunnah) has not posed a conflict to science.

Now most Muslims know that early centruries of Islam are characterized by religious awakening and religious conservatism. However, science flourished much better during those centuries than later centuries. Therefore, there is no correlation between religious conservatism and science acceptance, at least in the Muslim world.

The change that occured is people reaction to science later where they decided to involve religion in matter that should not be in conflict to it. For instance, Fatwas in the Ottoman time of prohibiting printing machines that were discovered in Europe pointing toward fears of Quran manupilation. While Quran is silent about that, those scholars have done a great mistake in their analysis. They used religion for that decision, however, definitely they are not more or less conservative than previous Muslim scientists.

islam is a system of life to many muslims and it encourage science and learning and knowledge.

dont see how its dangerouse to science !

also the printing  or painting or drawing part is only for living things except plants trees ..etc. and for the sake of learning and knowledge it is i think allowed by many modern scholars. note in the past it was allowed too many scientific works had drawings in them. so painting a living thing for the sake of beautiy and decoration is forbiden in islam.

but anyway there are many muslims in the past which are doing the drawing things for the sake of decoration only. its a sin which is considered one of the (minor) sins. while making pictures of God and the prophet is higher (major) sins since it comes under insulting the religion.

but drawing some living things or not drawing them at all is just a matter how religious a person is. doing so wont change the fact that he/she is still a muslim beliving in the main pillars of Islam ( the 5 pillars) .

I think it is a myth that religion has always been detrimental to science and cultural advancement. No doubt the Catholic church halted such advancement but it was more due to ignorance than conspiracy.

The Muslims actually mapped the circular system of the human body. They correctly measured the distance between the Earth and Moon. I also hear they invented Algebra but I also heard the Chinese did. The Muslims also theorized that if an atom was split the energy would destroy a city the size of Baghdad.

The Christians advanced in different areas, in culture. They developed the music language and developed it to what you see today. IN fact, I once read that Islamic music hasn�t advanced in hundreds of years but western music has advanced quite well. Before the Renaissance in Italy, there was the Chargolonian renaissance which saw advancement in metalwork and I think it should be said that the Christians were masters at developing beautiful manuscripts. Then we heave a renaissance and I don�t think I need to elaborate on that.

Don�t get me wrong, Christian religion played a counter productive role in the advancement of science but it was the dark middle ages. In the dark ages especially people were ignorant and still developing a post Romantic world. It isn�t as bad as people make it out to be (especially anti religious people).