Egypt: The Next India or the Next Pakistan? | Hacker News Reader

Egypt: The Next India or the Next Pakistan?

nytimes.com

44 pointsyati39 comments

I wonder if something else can be said.

Egyptians are almost twice as wealthy as Pakistani's or Indians. Either of these directions would terrify the Egyptian people who are not used to that level poverty. Egypt's own fiscal cliff is worrying many residents. I think the winner will be the person who can promise stability - and stability is not possible without concessions to secular forces within Egypt.

I see something like Mubarak reappearing, it is not unreasonable to say that Egyptians aren't ready for western democracy - especially considering the grievous financial condition of their government.

A successful politician in Egypt will unite stabilizing and not revolutionary forces to solve the economic discontent.

Iam afraid,d It is also likely that economic discontent will grow with increased population and similarly competing neighbors. All those countries will find equilibrium at a steady destabilized state.

That is an example of delusional thinking aided by poor access to real media. Egypt is and has been almost entirely dependent on foreign aid. India has always been independent. And in per capita terms Egypt is not richer than India. However, like Pakistanis you can continue to dream of the days when your population was much smaller and people lived happily in poverty. Times have changed.

Well, this is crap.

I live in Tunisia and we have the equivalent political party in power (Renaissance party). It turns out they used religion to attract voters.

It's clear, a year later, that they are here for power and money. For instance, they are putting around $1bn in indemnity for former prisoners. I admit they should be compensated for their losses especially if it's caused by the former regime injustice, but I don't believe the economy can handle that much. So we might end up breaking the whole economy for a bunch of jerks.

What amazes me about the new gov. is how economically illiterate their members are. You can see them driving us straight into the wall. For instance, you can't find milk or potatoes in the stores. And also, there are no available new cars in the market. Next availability is 6 months later.

Author has no clue about what is Democracy and what is secularism. A country can be democratic but not a secularism. Democracy means people chose their own govt(Pakistan is also same). Secularism means religion does not matter for the jobs.

"For India to appoint a Muslim to be the chief of the country’s intelligence service is a big, big deal." - This is not true. 6 years back Indian president was a Muslim. So in India all it matters is talent not religion.

So please explain this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Mumbai_bombings ?

Indian intelligence failed to stop them. This is nothing to do with being democracy or not. There is 9/11 in USA too.

What democracy has to do with that sentence at all? We are speaking about religious tension in countries and how it is handled in India and other countries. As well noting that India is doing better here.

Exactly my point. It is nothing to do with democracy or secularism, what is your point in mentioning bomb blasts. Entire world is suffering with islam terrorism, unless they are muslim states.

My point is that author is correct pointing that while Muslim has chances to take important positions in government in India that's not common and naturally accepted thing. I found article reasonably weighted and thought out and found strange to see that first comments to be completely not-insightful and not-contributing anything valuable.

I know you meant it as an illustrative example, but India has been a liberal democracy ever since it won its independence.

We had a Muslim head of state in 1967 (Zakir Hussain).

APJ Abdul Kalam - the President you refer to- was one of India's most beloved Presidents because he holds a double Ph. D. At the time he was elected, I think the Indian cabinet had the highest number of Ph. Ds in the world, for political (non-appointed) positions.

Can country with two big religions be secular democracy?

As long as nobody gets the brilliant idea to start questioning Dharmasastra (Hindu) or Sharia (Muslim), things will probably keep working fine. The day that anybody thinks that they should start democratically re-inventing these things, all bets will be off. I seriously suspect that you would not have to wait too long before hell breaks loose ...

It depends more on how much religious nuts gain weight on either side. I still have to see a single Hindu preacher asking for a Hindu laws in place while it's not uncommon for Muslim preachers to try to preach sharia down the throats. Muslims are therefore considered uneducated and easily lead to violence. They have their own ghettos (much like Europe) and try to run a state within a state.

Although, number of Muslims educating their children are rising, specially in cities. And such people have no hatred towards anyone on religious lines.

Biggest achievement of India would be to ensure that every child goes to a proper school and get modern education and not some religious BS in early years

On the long term, it is the religious "nuts" who seem to make approximately all the children. It is the same in Israel with the Haredim, I have noticed. Their progeny is growing exponentially. The meek will apparently again inherit the earth ;-)

In western cultures, "Democracy" really means "Liberal democracy" [1]. Separation of church and State is a pillar of Liberal democracy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy

So the UK isn't a “democracy” in the western sense then?

Perhaps we should ask the next Lord Defender of the Faith if he agrees to separations in his church and his state. I wouldn't mind a choicy piece of Wales and Scotland for myselves ;-)

I'm from Denmark, which like UK has a hereditary head of state as well as an official state church. Neither are really consistent with our democratic ideals, and not something we try to encourage when engaging in state building.

In practice, the legislative, executive and judiciary powers are separated from the church there too. But formally, yes, that could be a subject of debate.

This article seems calculated to cause maximum distress on HN.

1) Involves both religion and specifically both India and Muslims, and Arabs 2) Written by an abject moron (Thomas Friedman) 3) Speculates vacuously about the future, with no actual facts, inviting arbitrary speculation and axe-grinding. 4) Includes references to both terrorism and politics.

He should have worked in a Python vs. Rails vs. Haskell vs. PHP thing, and a bootstrapped vs. VC funded argument, though.

I am an Indian woman and have actually lived in Cairo for 3 years. Lovely people, lovely time. However let us face it, neither Pakistanis nor Egyptians would like to be compared to India because a) belief in their racial superiority (Egyptians"we are white") (Pakistanis -they are darker than us). B. the news about India;s growth has not trickled into these countries, with a very repressed media. Once we take this away, it boils down to the question: will the Egyptian revolutions end up in dictatorship and religious fundamentalism like Pakistan or will it strive towards democracy for the next 100 years and so on...Remember the democratic movement in the UK started 600 years ago. And by the way, the poverty and lack of opportunity I have seen in Egypt was worse than India, because there was practically no mobility. The districts were no go zones. Cairo was a show case as were the tourist areas, other than that, people are trapped economically.

Egypt has oil, very thin water supply and enormous population growth rate. Corruption is massive. It is similar to Arab countries not to India and Pakistan. Go and see for yourself.

> It is similar to Arab countries

Egypt is an Arab country - the biggest and most influential Arab country, located in the center of the Arab world. Saying Egypt is similar to Arab countries is like saying France is similar to European countries.

I think what he meant is, Egypt is going to become muslim state like other arab countries, instead of Pakistan. It does not make sense to compare it with India since India is mix of lot of religions(Hindu, Xstianity, Budhism, Sikh, Islam, Jain) and has high tolerance for religion freedom.

India has ~0.83 billion Hindus (~1.2 billion total population), the rest of the ~0.4 billion people are Muslims, Christians, Jains, Parsis, etc. As such we have always had people of different faiths (not just Islam) in various positions of power and responsibility. I don't see (from the article) what democracy in India has anything to us electing a person of Hindu/Muslim/any other religion faith into a position of power.

Egypt has one of the most educated populations on the planet, thanks to an old and large education system. I'm very optimistic of their future as a country.

This article reads like someone transcribed talk radio.

Judgemental comments are not very well received on HN, still there's just one thing I've to say about this article - "the author has no idea wheat he is talking about".

He seems to be ignorant of India[1] has a democracy, a republic and he also seems to be a regular reader at those forums which often churns out hate comments and incorrect and whimsical outbursts.

[1]I cannot say the same about Pakistan as I do not live there.

I'm not sure how you have made such conclusion about author. Actually it looks like you have read up to the sentence ending with "big, big deal" and have not bother to read further. Or I should pretend that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Mumbai_bombings has not happened?

I'm not sure how you are contributing to discussion.

Why are you saying this? The author looked very appreciative of Indian democracy.

>>Hope this clarifies your query.

No, it's not. This can only result from proxy or shallow journalism.

>>It would be like Egypt appointing a Coptic Christian to be its army chief of staff.

Really?

>>We will know that Egypt went the route of Pakistan and not India.

As far as I can see socio-political and socio-religious situation in my country and whatever I can gather the one in Egypt from a distance and through news media &c, I would say that the comparison is absurd, if not worse. The two countries are so different in these aspects that I don't really think Egypt ever started this way.

I never said he didn't appreciate India's democracy. That's not even the point. I've nothing personal against the author. His son never ate my lunch in school. It's just the incoherent nature of article that annoyed me and the fact that NYT published it.

I agree that at the grass root level, things are not as pleasant in India as they are portrayed in the article. But at least we have a way to challenge the government(which has been happening quite a lot these days). But imagine living in a country where a extremist clan decides what you wear and how you live. Most of us do not appreciate what we've had since birth.

In response to everyone who has responded (or will respond) to you, Thomas Friedman is an idiot[1]. The only logical conclusion I can come to about why he is still a regular op-ed columnist for the NYT is that he has some blackmailable material on a member of the Sulzberger family[2].

[1] "he displays a stunning lack of basic cognitive function" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/an-idiots-guide-t...

"You wonder why people have stopped thinking for themselves? Maybe because verbose gasbags like Thomas L. Friedman will do all their thinking for them, no matter what the subject." http://bradfordschmidt.com/bitf/thomas-friedmans-brain-is-ho...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times

I don’t understand, but what exactly is your problem with the article? I couldn’t find anything where he so much as indicated that India isn’t a democracy or a republic. He speaks very highly of India.

I didn't question whether he question that. It's the way he describes India as a "democracy" and a "republic".

Please note italicized phrases. Those are my peeves. You can go through my comments again, of course.

I think it is the British who deserve credit for the 1937 The Muslim Personal Law Application Act which simply confirms existing Islamic/Koranic traditions, while they also insisted that the Hindus would finally agree to unambiguously codifying the Dharmasastra. Even though I am definitely not a fan of colonization, I must admit that the British administration did a superb job in preemptively demining the situation well in advance.

I think it was because the Hindus preferred "church-state" separation, meaning not to codify Dharmashastra. Muslims didn't want a secular law, so a Muslim-specific law was created for them.

Well, the Brits seemed to have been smarter than to create a new law. The Brits just confirmed the existing law. Of course, the Brits were interested in peace, quiet, order, and efficient exploitation, so I understand their motivations too ;-)

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