to kick things off: an international poll

Last week at work during one of my daily BBC perusals, I stumbled upon one of those polls that seem both obvious and important- like "exercise promotes heart health" or "people don't like having their homes bombed," this headline is common-sense but should be heeded: Most muslims "desire democracy."

What I found interesting was not so much the information in the headline but this bit:

"Muslims want self-determination, but not an American-imposed and defined democracy. They don't want secularism or theocracy," said the professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

"What the majority wants is democracy with religious values."

When I read this, I felt like doing a little Lloyd Dobbler-like bowing in the middle of the street, if only to myself. It encapsulates what I suspected in Cairo- that most Egyptians want both democratic representation in a just government, and to publicly celebrate their religions (which, to me, felt like part of the very air).

From what I could tell, Egyptians want a say in their government, are unhappy with human rights abuses and a poor economy and government corruption, but also resent American military action, do not want an Americanized culture (I also suspect that an importation of American individualism would overwhelm and depress many of them), and do not want their very public, open, religion to become more private or less all-encompassing. I think what I saw and what that finding points at is a kind of "third way" not really present in the way Americans tend to talk about "democracy." There's little acknowledgment that it might be possible for people to desire both democratic, humane government, and committed, communal, public religious lives and institutions. (At least, if that religion is Islam.) But I think such an acknowledgment is vitally important- I will be keeping my ears to the ground to understand both how religious cultures are different from mine, and how the governments in those cultures might embody many of those good old "American" values- human rights, equality, democracy- without requiring increased cultural secularization.