Elections in Egypt, and throughout the Arab Spring, pose a classic dilemma of political theory: Do you support democracy, even if it means sacrificing some civil rights? Or do you support rights, even if it means stifling democracy?
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The largest Islamic parties in the region insist that they stand for both democracy and rights, and these assurances have been sufficient to win a plurality of votes in Tunisia and Egypt, the first countries of the Arab Spring to hold free elections. But political opponents, and many foreign observers, worry that governments led by these parties will suppress the rights of women and minorities, restrict freedom of expression, and potentially abandon democratic accountability altogether.
Suppose that these concerns are valid. Should people have the right to vote against rights?
For more than two centuries, democracies have struggled to identify which rights are so important that voters should not be allowed to violate them. The list of protections has varied from country to country and from era to era, but democracy and rights have always been at odds. Democracy empowers the will of the majority; rights set limits on these powers.
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The founders of the United States of America obsessed over this problem. Just one year after the constitution was ratified, they went back and amended it to tweak the balance between democracy and rights. The first change they made was to protect freedom of religion, an issue as volatile in the 1780s as it is now. Even if a religion is unpopular, the First Amendment stipulates, the majority may not prohibit the free exercise thereof. That's why opponents of mosques in America appeal to traffic and parking regulations: Many voters and legislators may feel distressed by the religious implications of mosque construction, but they are constitutionally prohibited from blocking it on religious grounds.
The founders of the new democratic order in North Africa are also struggling with the balance between democracy and rights. Most Arab countries have had constitutions for more than a century, with increasing guarantees (at least on paper) for both popular sovereignty and a growing list of rights, including freedom of religion. Soon after the uprisings of early 2011, however, these constitutions were scrapped. Egypt's military junta drew up a constitutional declaration in March without waiting for new elections to be held, promising a robust set of rights. In Tunisia, elections were held first, and the provisional document recently approved by the country's constituent assembly offers only a vague reference to human rights and public freedoms.
Many of those calling for a more forceful defense of rights against the threat of majority rule are secularists. They are trying to shape the debate as the process of drafting permanent constitutions continues in both countries. Last summer Mohamed El Baradei, a presidential candidate in Egypt, proposed a bill of rights that was based in part on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights made a similar proposal on December 10, the day the country's "mini-constitution" was approved, which also happened to be International Human Rights Day (December 10).
Still, secularists are not the only ones demanding the protection of rights. Some Islamic organizations have sounded similar themes, albeit couched in religious language that makes some secularists nervous. Al-Azhar, Egypt's leading seminary, proposed a long list of protected constitutional rights, including a ban on religious discrimination and the exemption of non-Muslims from Islamic personal law, which it justified with reference to Quranic principles. Egypt's leading Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, issued an electoral platform that describes rights as a fundamental Islamic principle, including "non-discrimination among citizens in rights and duties on the basis of religion, sex, or color," and "freedoms of belief, commerce, property, opinion, expression, movement, assembly, the formation of parties and associations, and the publication of newspapers." Tunisia's main Islamic movement, the Renaissance Party, which won 40 percent of the vote in October's election, pledged "respect for human rights without discrimination on the basis of sex, color, belief or wealth, and the affirmation of women's rights to equality, education, employment and participation in public life."
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