Ayatollah Khamenei said, “Today, the logic of liberal democracy – the logic and the intellectual system on the basis of which Western countries are ruled and controlled – does not benefit from the slightest moral value. There is not any moral value and humane feeling in it. In fact, they are disgracing themselves. They are disgracing themselves in the critical eyes of nations throughout the world, whether those who live in the present or those who will live in the future.”
These days, as almost ten years have passed since those words of the Supreme Leader, most of the social, political, and economic indicators show the downward trend of liberal democracy in the Western world, the most obvious of which is the support for Israel’s recent crimes in Gaza. What happened in Palestine last month showed that the United States and the profit-seeking European countries such as the UK, France, and Germany, who falsely consider themselves to be advocates of human rights, are the main partners in the inhumane crimes of Israel and in the massacre of the defenseless people of Gaza and the West Bank. In fact, Gaza and Palestine became the scene of a scandal for the West and created a crack in Western liberal democracy which is still widening.
Although in the last two decades, the effects of the decline of liberal democracy appeared in theoretical and behavioral dimensions, today, the American and European governments are on the path of degradation from a civilized system to a barbaric system by supporting the crimes of Israel.
One of the values of liberal democracy was that attention was paid to the majority of people’s votes and opinions. These days, however, most of the people of the world, even in the US and Europe, have come out to condemn the crimes of Israel and support the liberation of Palestine, and by organizing marches and demonstrations, they have mobilized the so-called liberal democratic governments to establish a ceasefire in Gaza. But these countries, which consider themselves subject to the votes of the majority of the people, support the biggest and most heinous crimes against human beings in the occupied territories.
In most opinion polls in Western Europe and the US, more than 50% of people are against the sales of arms to Israel and more than 70% are in favor of humanitarian aid to Gaza, but in practice, Western governments act just the opposite of the majority, and with their actions, they have shaken the foundations and claims of several hundred years of liberal democracy.
One of the reasons for the weakening of liberal democracy is the existence of double standards in the behavior of Western countries. From the point of view of these countries, crimes, and child killings, if carried out by Israel, are no problem and count as self-defense, but the legitimate defense to end the occupation of Palestine is considered a terrorist act.
What the Western secular-liberal civilization is facing today is the conflict with international standards that they themselves have built by adhering to the teachings of liberal democracy. Many international institutions have been established by the US and Europe for allegedly defending peace. But now they are being misused to support war and crime. For example, when the crimes of Israel, especially the killing of children and women and the attack on schools and hospitals in Gaza, have been repeatedly protested by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the United States and the European Troika support Israel’s crimes, disregarding international standards.
The proposed resolutions against the Zionist regime are vetoed by the United States, and several Western countries are indifferent to the votes of one hundred and twenty countries in the UN General Assembly to establish a ceasefire in occupied Palestine. It seems that liberal democracy has created a phenomenon called “American Global Dictatorship”.
Today, Israel’s crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, which are reminiscent of the brutality of Nazism and fascism in World War II, have disgraced the US and Europe in the Islamic world, and just as socialism and communism in the east declined, Gaza will be also a liberal graveyard.
At this juncture, when the Islamic world and the Western world are in a serious civilizational challenge, without a doubt, exposing the theoretical shortcomings and behavioral ugliness of liberal democracy is a very good opportunity for the Islamic world and religious thinkers to present the legal values of Islam to the world.
Introducing justice, freedom, democracy, and Islamic human rights from the perspective of Islam, which will lead to human dignity, can make the people of the world familiar with the prophetic life and teachings of the Qur’an as a humanistic and justice-enhancing thought for the future of the world.
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