Nikolaos van dam free pdf download

Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF. Islam and Democracy in Indonesia. Nikolaos Van Dam. A short summary of this paper. Download Download PDF. Translate PDF. We would probably react by thinking that it is so obvious that Christianity and democracy do go well together in Europe, that we do not need any academic discussion to prove it, let alone by non-European Muslim "outsiders".

Actually, we might in this case probably not even bring up the issue of religion, because we would think that it goes without saying that democracies are flourishing in the Western world, of which Europe is a part, irrespective of whether there are secular or religious inspired governments. But is it really that obvious if we look at European history?

After all, didn't we have the most ugly dictatorships in Europe in countries with populations that at the time could really be considered as having a majority of devote Christians?

Aren't the eras of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and General Franco in Spain clear examples that also Christianity or being a Christian and dictatorship can go well together? After all, these are examples in which big parts of Christian populations in Europe enthusiastically supported their dictatorial leaders, which led to millions of dead. If I would say on basis of these experiences that Christianity and democracy are actually incompatible, I would almost certainly be ridiculed, because it will, rightly, be considered as nonsense.

We would not need to study the Bible or other Christian texts to convince us of the thesis that democracy and Christianity or being a Christian are compatible.

Indonesia also happens to be the third largest democracy in the world, after the United States and India. To put it differently: there are various Islamic countries with a democratic political system, just as there are various predominantly Muslim countries that have a dictatorship. The same applies to non-Muslim countries: some are democracies; others are dictatorships, irrespective of the religions prevalent amongst its rulers or people. To me this just indicates that Islam and democracy, or being simultaneously a Muslim and democrat, can go very well together, just as the opposite may be the case.

The same applies to countries with people having another religion, such as Christianity. Therefore one might draw as a main conclusion that in practice there is no specific link here between religion and either democracy or dictatorship.

To take a different, related question: is the Christian West if we can call it Christian democratically inclined when it comes to Islam? We have seen various examples where Western countries have called upon the Palestinians to have free and democratic elections.

Their victory was rejected by the Algerian military, and this rejection was generally supported in the West. From previous experiences the conclusion can be drawn that politicians in the West generally do indeed want to see democracy and democratic elections in the Islamic world, albeit that when the victorious parties happen to be predominantly Islamic oriented, they are not only not enthusiastic about the outcome but they sometimes even tend to reject the results, because that is not something they generally expected or wanted.

One of the reasons for this rejection is the expectation that the Islamic forces that come to power through a democratic system, may turn out to misuse the same system so as to later impose their rule undemocratically.

This, in turn, is based on the presumption that Islam and democracy are not really compatible. In some cases the expectations of misusing the democratic system may be quite justified, like recently in Egypt, but in other cases, like Indonesia, they are unfounded. It just depends on which Islamic oriented group one takes as an example and to which period of time one refers.

Some Islamic groups are at present clearly democratically oriented, like for instance the biggest Muslim organizations in Indonesia like the Muhammadiyah and the Nahdhatul Ulema that represent a very large part of the Indonesian Muslim population, whereas other, much smaller movements like the Jemaah Islamiyah or the Hizb al-Tahrir are undemocratically oriented.

They want to use or misuse the democratic system to achieve their undemocratic aims, or they even reject democratic politics and the nation state. The Muhammadiyah and the Nahdhatul Ulema are unique in the sense that nowhere else in the Islamic world can we find such big Islamic organizations.

They are at present a stabilizing force helping the further democratic transformation of the country. These parties today represent what in the past has been called "the smiling face of Indonesian Islam", albeit that this expression also hides less pleasant factors, such as the mass killings of alleged communists during that were orchestrated by Suharto's military and were largely carried out by killing squads recruited from the main Muslim organizations.

Change, however, is not always going into one direction. There have been shifts within the Muhammadiyah and Nahdhatal Ulema from liberal and progressive to more fundamentally conservative, and it is only natural that such large organizations are not homogeneous, but contain a variety of opinion. I consider it a good phenomenon that we want to know much more about Indonesia and the Indonesians, while welcoming at the same time if Indonesians would want to know much more about the Netherlands and Europe.

Actually, one should have expected the Dutch to be already well informed about Indonesia and Islam. Unfortunately, however, we are not that well informed at all, not to say that bigger parts of the Dutch population are quite ignorant of Indonesia, its people and its rich cultures, just as they are generally not that well informed about Islam.

This is because education about Indonesia and Islam is quite minimal, if not to say inadequate. People are, unfortunately, not born with knowledge, like some bird species are, but have to obtain it during their lives through study, education, experience and their surroundings.

Public education unfortunately does not really provide it. Following the Arab Spring, Syria descended into civil and sectarian conflict. It has since become a fractured warzone which operates as a breeding ground for new terrorist movements including ISIS as well as the root cause of the greatest refugee crisis in modern history.

In this important book, former Special Envoy of the Netherlands to Syria, Nikolaos van Dam, explains the recent history of Syria, covering the growing disenchantment with the Asad regime, the chaos of civil war and the fractures which led to an immense amount of destruction in the refined social fabric of what used to be the Syrian nation. Through an in-depth examination, van Dam traces political developments within the Asad regime and the various opposition groups from the Arab Spring to the present day, and provides a deeper insight into the conflict and the possibilities and obstacles for reaching a political solution.

Markedets laveste priser. To browse Academia. Skip to main content. By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. Log In Sign Up. Download Free PDF. Lesch has noted, for instance, that the power accumulated over the years by the Syrian Mukhabarat intelligence services has led to systematic recklessness, which backfired against the regime. For instance, he writes about how he once came to Damascus to interview the president but was stopped and interrogated for three hours.

The intelligence services were acting on their own initiative, and this, according to Lesch, meant that there developed a disconnect that is both dangerous and an abdication of authority. It means the president does not always have full control over them. But what I pointed out in my book is that Bashar al-Assad does not like to give in when he is in a position of strength either.

As we can tell from the title of his previous book, he had high hopes for Bashar. He got to know Assad quite well and even tried to send him messages with policy suggestions at the beginning of the revolution. Later on, David Lesch accepted that in order to stay in power, Bashar al-Assad had to play according to the Syrian rules.

He notes that the regime cannot reform, because then it would undermine itself. Lesch is actually going to publish another book next year , entitled Syria: A Modern History. I have read the manuscript. His forthcoming book is much more general, starting from early times, through Roman and Ottoman times up till now. It is an excellent and balanced analysis of Syrian contemporary history, enabling readers to access and understand the wide- ranging complexities of Syria today. But in your book, you point out that he only spent 18 months in the UK.

In general people have tended to look at the Syrian revolution mainly from the perspective of the opposition and neglected the realities of the regime, except for its cruel dictatorial aspects. That is what is also missing in various books. They take the regime for granted. People would have done better to know more about the regime, because if you want to defeat your adversary, you must know it.

That is what you will find in both the book by Lesch and the one by Fabrice Balanche. We are now talking about books published after Last time we spoke about books from a different era, about the hidden treasures of Damascus and a novel.

But of the books which have been published after , many side either with the opposition or with the regime. It is very important to look at books that do not side with either, but observe in a neutral manner. If you look at the Syrian war as a war by proxy, this is, I would say, the best book. This influenced all kinds of other politicians, because they simply echoed what Obama had said. But the US ambassador in Damascus at the time advised that you should only demand Assad step down if you could also impose it.

This is another element in the war: politicians making demands they cannot implement. This book by Christopher Phillips I found to be one of the best books I have read on this period, particularly the international factor. It is very multifaceted. Since we spoke all those years ago, I know a little bit more about Syria because my husband and I have had Syrian refugees living with us. You would agree with them, then, that foreign involvement has made this war worse? Also, it means that for a solution you will need an agreement between the countries that have been involved in Syria.

Some—like the Americans and the Israelis—want the Iranians out. What Phillips writes—and myself also, by the way—is that their interference has put fuel on the fire. They intensified the fire of war through their actions and not even in a coordinated way!

They would not have got anywhere near as far as they did. Fewer people talk about the Syrians themselves. Whatever side you are on, the Syrian people have been the victim of all of this. If this was just debates, it would be different. But , people are dead. There are so many victims, there is so much destruction.

But, as I said, even if Assad wins back Idlib, there will still be huge problems because America and various other countries will be looking out for their own perceived interests. He even predicts that they will play a role for decades to come. For that reason alone it is an important book. There are often discussions about who are the moderates and who are the radicals. Lister argues that in the past, there were still a lot of moderate people and groups, but that by now, behind the scenes, many of those moderate groups have begun to adopt many of the same political positions as their Syrian Islamist compatriots.

The problem is that in a war that has lasted seven years and may last even longer, people cannot remain fully moderate. And, of course, moderation is a relative concept. You can have moderation in political thought, you can have moderation in the way you fight, and so on. In the West, in general, the Islamists are seen as radicals, which they are.

But if you asked Robert Fisk about moderates and radicals he would completely disagree with Charles Lister on this point. Still, this book is a very good way of getting a better idea of how the Islamic State came up—first as Al Qaeda in Iraq, then as the Islamic State in Iraq and then as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and then the Islamic State without any additions. They now consider themselves a movement which has no geographic restrictions.

Lister also deals with the issue that Western countries supported these so- called moderate groups. But in their battles against al-Assad and IS these moderates would sometimes have to work together with Islamists purely for opportunistic or strategic reasons. This happened, for instance, if there was an attack by the regime or IS on a certain area where both Islamist radical organizations and the generally more moderate Free Syrian Army happened to be located together.

In such cases the moderates involved faced a military choice: either they could die while refusing to cooperate with the Islamic radical organizations, or they could survive, but would then be accused of collaborating with the extremists. So temporarily and purely for non- ideological reasons they worked together. So that is one of the issues Lister discusses. This book is also a historically important survey.

I found it a very useful book when I was working on my most recent book. That is true of all these books I am recommending, they are the books I considered the most useful in getting a richer understanding of the situation in Syria, in addition to my own experiences with the country over many years, most recently as the Dutch Special Envoy for Syria. The extremists get a lot of press coverage because the stuff they do is so horrific. In your view are they actually a very important component in the civil war, these jihadists?

Yes, they are a very important component. They started to overshadow the other, more moderate groups, already early on, from the start of the Syrian revolution. The most powerful groups that remain are the more radical Islamist groups. Another strong Islamist movement is Ahrar al-Sham. And then there is Jaysh al-Islam, part of whose fighters were deported to Idlib Province after their defeat east of Damascus. Then there are many other smaller Islamist opposition groups.

According to Lister, in at least , insurgents within as many as 1, operationally distinct armed groups were involved in differing levels of fighting across Syria. Some were within broader umbellas and fronts and others existed entirely independently. That declaration was an important and moderate compromise saying that Syria was to be a pluralist country where religious and ethnic groups would not be discriminated against and everyone would be equal.

But the more radical Islamic groups do not really consider non-Sunni Muslims and Christians as equals. That is a completely different thing. Charles Lister worked at the Brookings Institution in Qatar and was dealing with a lot of Track II meetings of the Syrian opposition, which ran in parallel with the intra-Syrian peace talks. In that context he met very many representatives of these military groups.

I did as well, in my function as Special Envoy for Syria. I not only met people from these armed opposition groups, but I would also find out what they really thought. They may have signed the Riyadh Declaration but what they said in those Track II meetings gave a clearer picture of their real thinking. And what did they really think and want? In Riyadh, the central identity and aim was to be Syrian.

No other identity was to be more important than being Syrian. The revolution cannot achieve its aim if the Islamic element is not there. If you say you belong to the Arab nation, then I must say that we belong to the Kurdish nation of 50 plus million people. That is how some of these meetings went. Here some of them said rather different things than what their leaders had agreed upon in Riyadh and showed that, in practice, they would not fully subscribe to these principles.

Because if ever the regime had been toppled it would have been toppled by the military and not by civilians. So you have the world on paper and the world as it really is. Have any Syrians you know joined these groups? Within Syria, what kind of people are attracted to joining Islamist groups? Syria already had enormous economic problems, and the war has made things much worse.

To survive, many had to join armed forces, and join the group that paid the most. There is continuous movement. The first wanted to incorporate the other. They refused. Many changed groups not for ideological reasons, but for practical reasons, to keep their families alive. Because after seven years of destruction and war, they hardly have anything to live on. This is a phenomenon that has continuously generated shifting alliances.