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Estudios Políticos
Print version ISSN 0121-5167
On-line version ISSN 2462-8433
Estud. Polit. no.38 Medellín Jan./June 2011
Myths and Realities on Islam and Democracy in the Middle East*
Mitos y realidades sobre el Islam y la democracia en el Medio Oriente
Salim Cevik**
** B.A. International Relations Department, Bilkent University, Turkey. Ph.D.: Political Science Department, Bilkent University, Turkey (still continuing). Lecturer at Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
There is a strong body of literature that claims that Islam and democracy are essentially incompatible. However, Islam like all other religions is multivocal and it has strong theorethical elements that can also work for a basis of a democratic polity. Throughout the Muslim world there are certain countries that achieved a considerable level of democratization. It is only the Arab world, not the Muslim world, that so far represents a complete failure in terms of democratic transition. The failure of Arab world should be attributed to more political reasons, such as oil economy and the rentier state model than to Islam. Lack of international support for pro-democracy movements in the region, under the fear that they might move towards an Islamist political system is also an important factor in the democratic failures in the region. However, democratic record of Turkeys pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party challenges these fears. With the international attention it attracts, particularly from the Arab world, Turkish experience provides a strong case for the compatibility of democracy and Islam.
Keywords: Islam; Democracy; Secularization Thesis; Justice and Development Party, Turkey, Middle East.
Existe un gran cuerpo de literatura secundaria según la cual el islam y la democracia son incompatibles por definición. Sin embargo, el islam, al igual que otras religiones, tiene múltiples sentidos así como fuertes elementos teóricos que pueden servir como base para políticas democráticas. A lo largo y ancho del mundo musulmán existen algunos países que han logrado un nivel considerable de democratización. Solamente el mundo árabe, no el musulmán, representa hasta ahora el completo fracaso en términos de transición democrática. El fracaso del mundo árabe debería ser atribuido más a razones políticas, tales como la economía petrolera y el estado rentista, que al islam. La falta de soporte internacional para con los movimientos prodemocráticos en la región, bajo el miedo de que estos puedan inclinarse hacia sistemas políticos islamistas constituye también un factor importante en los fracasos democráticos de la región. No obstante, el éxito democrático en Turquía del Partido Proislámico de la Justicia y el Desarrollo pone en entredicho tales miedos. Con la atención internacional suscitada por el caso de este partido, particularmente en el mundo árabe, la experiencia de Turquía provee un ejemplo claro para establecer la compatibilidad entre la democracia y el islam.
Palabras clave: Islam; Democracia; Secularización; Partido de la Justicia y el Desarrollo; Turquía; Medio Oriente.
Orthodox secularization theory assumes that as societies progress, particularly through modernization and rationalization, religion loses its authority in all aspects of social life and governance (See Norris and Inglehart, 2004). This is a deterministic and teleological understanding of history which considers religion as belonging to the early stages of human development. It should also be noted that this is not only an empirical prescription but also a normative definition. Adherents of secularization thesis believed that religion will lose its importance as modernity evolves, but also they believed that this secularization process is a pre-requisite for democratization. Yet, in the early 80s the whole world witnessed to "the resurgence of religion," an empirical reality that challenged the core of secularization thesis. The same years also witnessed to a "wave of democratization" throughout the globe. The almost simultaneous rise of both religion and democratization did not only challenge the orthodox modernization and secularization thesis empirically, it also brought a more nuanced theoretical discussions for the compatibility of religious discourse with democratization. Many scholars pointed to the fact that a whole scale secularization of societies is not necessary for democratization and religions may continue to play a public role without essentially harming the democratization experience. Moreover, some scholars pointed to the fact that "public religions"[1] may be an inductive instrument of democratic transition (See Casanova, 1994). This was most supported by the crucial role Catholic Church has played throughout the third wave of democratization. Indeed, the third wave is also labeled a "Catholic wave" (See Huntington, 1991; Philpot, 2004).
However, the Islamic world seems to constitute an exception to the convergence of religion and democratization as the third wave of democratization had largely missed the Islamic world. This reality, further highlightened with the 9/11 attacks, raised a whole scale suspicion towards Islam as an essentially anti-democratic and anti-modern religion. The eminent figures in the Western academia had pointed to Islams incompatibility with democracy both in theory and in practice. This paper will analyze the debates on the compatibility of Islam and democracy. It will, first, discuss different aspects of Islamic theory that can be relevant with discussions on democratization. Then, it will take a look at the empirical picture in the Islamic world in general and the Middle East in particular. After pointing to the actual situation of Islamic countries with regard to their degrees of democratization, it will finally analyze a current phenomenon in Turkey, Justice and Development Party (JDP). JDP will be analyzed within the discussions of Islam-democracy compatibility and the wider implications of the JDP movement will be brought into attention.
1. Theoretical Aspects of Islam
The idea of a confrontation between a particular religion and modernity/ democratization is not novel. Indeed, it was Catholicism that attracted attention to this confrontation up until 1980s as the key problem in the modernist paradigm. Characterized in a binary opposition with Protestantism, which is considered not only in relation with democracy but almost the source of everything related with modernity such as capitalism and nation state, Catholicism was demonized by the Western scholars, as the other of the Protestant world. Following the transformation of Catholicism as a pro-democratic force in the third wave of democracy, and in the post-cold war era, dominated by the self fulfilling prophecies of a clash between civilizations (See Huntington, 1996), Islam emerged as the new actor of Western demonology. Thus, all the problems once associated with Catholicism, including but not limited to authoritarianism such as the absences of capitalism, nationalism, secularism, are now associated with Islam.
In such an environment, the study of Islam as a religion had been covered by a dust of biases, prejudices and misperceptions which had been exacerbated by the recent portrayal of Islam as a religion of suppression and autocracy through the main stream media. The most important and common of such misperceptions is associating Islam with theocracy. As Robert Hefner (See 2005) points out, Islam, through its long and diverse history and its many different forms in contemporary world (with the single exception of Iran and possibly the brief period of Afghanistan under the Taliban rule), has never created theocracies. Moreover, the idea of theocracy is quite alien to the Islamic world as there is no equivalent of clergy in Islam.[2] This is not to deny that Islam had developed its own scholars and that religious scholars throughout the Islamic history had pioneered (and to a certain extent still does) as prominent figures both in the societal and the state level. They also enjoy the exclusive capacity to understand and interpret religion. However, there is neither a universal organization that nestles them nor is there any hierarchy among these scholars. This would also mean that people are completely free in choosing any of the interpretations of any religious scholars they wish. Indeed, this lack of an authority itself can become a problem at certain times, as the question of "Who speaks for Islam" rises.
Non-existence of a "church" in Islamic theology concludes to the fact that Islam is like any other major religion, or indeed even more than any other major religion, is multi-vocal. This means there are multiple understandings of Islam and multiple interpretations, all of them which prioritize certain aspects of the religion. This means that throughout its long history Islam had been both a source of oppression and authoritarianism as well as a source of freedom and resistance to tyranny. Indeed, the most important historical legacy of Islamic law (shariah) had been to limit the powers of political leaders. Thus, one can easily understand the historical role of shariah as enabling "limited government." The Quranic verse that states "there shall be no compulsion in religion" is also a powerful base for religious tolerance and pluralism. Aside from such negative freedoms, there are certain aspects of Islam that can be a source of positive freedoms. The most important of them are ijtihad (interpretation), ijma (consensus), qiyas (analogical reasoning) and shura (consultation).[3] As already mentioned, ijtihad is a source for different interpretations and there is no hierarchy among different ijtihads. İjma literally meaning consensus considers a consensus among the Islamic scholars as the third source of Islamic law after Quran and Sunnah (practices and teachings of the prophet). Moreover, the more liberal interpretations of Islam understand ijma as the consensus of the community, thus, brings the community in the process of legislation. The final and, possibly the most important aspect with regard to democratic theory is the importance and indeed binding of consultation on Muslims. There are two verses in Quran which refers to shura. In one of them (38/42), shura is considered as a praiseworthy act;[4] while in the second verse (159/3) it is also a mandate for the true Muslim.[5] Moreover, there is also a historical base for this culture as the four successors of the prophet, who are also labeled by the majority Sunni Islam as the "rightful successors,"[6] were chosen by the Muslim community through a process of shura and election. All of these concepts and practices in Islamic theology and history provide an important dimension for building a democratic culture among the Muslim societies. This is particularly important as many democratic theorists have recently pointed to the importance of the vernacularization of the "democratic discourse." These are the crucial elements that would prevent portrayal of democracy as somewhat an alien concept among the Muslims.[7]
2. The Incompatibility Thesis and the "Twin Tolerations"
However, the prevalent discourse not only in main stream media but also amongprominentacademicslikeErnestGellner,SamuelHuntingtonandBernard Lewis continue to portray a contradiction between Islam and democracy. The core of this "incompatibility theory" is based on the assumption that Islam is inherently a political religion which does not leave any space for the open discussion and, thus, prevents burgeoning of democracy. First proposed by the famous historian Bernard Lewis, the thesis of incompatibility between Islam and democracy is based upon the "secularism resistant" nature of Islam (See Gellner, 1996). Arguing that Islam is the only "secularism-resistant" religion and it retains most of its power against the forces of modernization, Gellner (See 1996) concludes that the modernity produced in the Islamic world is essentially non-liberal and authoritarian.[8] This perception is based on a worldview that perceives secularization and modernization as an inseparable couple. The recent resurgence of religion in the modern world seems insufficient to convince the adherence of the orthodox version of secularization theory. Samuel Huntington (See 1996) declares this resistance to secularism as the major reason of democratic failure. Moreover, he widens the scope of his argument and declares all major world religions except from Western Christianity[9] and, paradoxically, Judaism as essentially non-secular and consecutively non-democratic. "In Islam, God is Caesar; in Confucianism, Caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is Caesars junior partner" (Huntington p. 70, also quoted in Stepan, 2001). The essentialism in his argument leads him to declare that "It is not Islamic fundamentalists who are the problem, it is Islam" (Huntington p. 217, also quoted in Stepan, 2001). The source of the problem, according to Huntington, is the non-existence of state-religion separation in Islam and in other major world religions/civilizations. He claims that state-religion separation is a unique success of Western Christianity, and no other religion has managed (or will manage) this separation. The pessimist result of his analysis is that democratization is and will remain a unique feature of Western Christian civilization.
The core of Huntington/Gellner/Lewis argument can be classified as a) secularism (understood as a rigid separation between religion and the state apparatus) is essential for democracy; b) Western world is secular; c) non-Western world, and particularly the Islamic world, is not secular. Finally, as a result of these three premises we can conclude that non existence of secularism is the major source of the failure of democratization in the non-Western world. All of these claims are open to challenge. Indeed, in a very influential article, Alfred Stepan (See 2001) challenged all the three core arguments of the secularization school from the perspective of democratic theory. His response can be divided in two components: a theoretical rebuttal of the secularization school, and an empirical demonstration that challenges their basic assumption. Stepan starts first by questioning the necessity of secularism for democratization. The primary problem with the Lewis/Huntington/Gellner thesis is the assumption that statechurch separation is a necessity for democratization, and, thus, this separation exists in every democracy on the world. Stepan reminds us that none of the main theorists of democratization (like Arendt Lijphart, Robert Dahl, Juan Linz and Stepan himself) considered secularism as a precondition for democratization. Moreover, he points that a strict state/church separation does not exist in most of the highly qualified democracies of the world. Moreover, he also maintains that such a strict separation might violate certain freedoms and be an impediment to democratization. He argues that a pre requisite for democracy is "twin tolerations that is the minimal boundaries of freedom of action that must somehow be crafted for political institutions vis-à-vis religious authorities, and for religious individuals and groups vis-à-vis political institutions" (Stepan 2001, p. 213). As he demonstrates throughout his article, there are multiple ways of crafting twin tolerations ranging from friendly separation of state and church to officially recognized and established churches. With that formulation Stepan also points to the fact that, in certain cases, secular regimes that take a hostile attitude towards religion and violate religious rights are in itself an obstacle to democracy. This would mean that secularism co-exists both with democracies and authoritarianisms. The main problem with the secularization thesis is the reduction of political regimes into a secularist-theocratic dichotomy. As Ahmet Kuru (2008) explains in his comparative work on multiple secularisms, this dichotomy is not helpful as secular regimes have great variations in terms of their policies towards religion from being openly hostile to being friendly separated.
On the other hand, many democracies, including many of the core European Union members, are not secular in the sense of having a strict separation between religion and state. Indeed, many of these regimes have an officially established religion or an official church. From this point of view, Ahmet Kurus analysis shows that there is no variation between secular regimes and regimes with an established religion in terms of being democratic or authoritarian.
The secularization thesis also assumes the incompatibility of a separation between state and religion due to the overly political nature of Islam. This brings us to the crucial problem of defining the appropriate level of the discussion of Islam and democracy. We should start questioning the phrase "Islamdemocracy relation." As Gudrun Kramer has pointed out "it is not possible to talk about Islam and democracy in general, but only about Muslims living and theorizing under specific historical circumstances. This may sound evident enough, and yet it is all too often ignored" (1993, p. 4). Particularly, when the political scientists discuss the relationship between Islam and democracy they are actually discussing the attitudes of Muslims as distinct individuals and communities towards democracy. In contrast, it is theologians who would be more concerned with the arguments of Islam as a religion towards democracy. Although this assertion might seem quite obvious at the outset, it would be surprising to notice that most of the scholarly works produced on the Islamic world are still engaged with the religious indoctrination of Islam as either essentially anti-democratic or, on the contrary, essentially pro-democratic. All religions, as Stepan (See 2001) noted, are multivocal, they may have prodemocratic and anti-democratic as well as pro-secular and anti-secular interpretations. These interpretations are largely shaped by socio-political and economic contexts. In that sense, Islam is no exception. Although one can easily find authoritarian elements within it (just as one can find within any religion), Islam also maintains strong theoretical instruments mentioned above such as ijtihad (interpretation), ijma (consensus) and shura (consultation) that can work as basis for democratic regimes. Not surprisingly, throughout its 1,400 years of history, Islamic belief had been both a source of authoritarianism and a source of resistance to authoritarianism, and had been also a venue for public participation.
My aim in pointing to the multivocality of this religion is not to prove (or disprove) that Islam is compatible with democracy. On the contrary, I am pointing to the fact that this is not the relevant topic for the discussion. There is no singular Islam that had been clearly delineated which can be either democratic or anti-democratic. Any of such arguments would fall into the trap of considering Islam in an essentialist manner. Thus, study of Islam by political scientists should be based on historical realities rather than theological claims. As Ira Lapidus (See 1975, quoted in Kuru 2008), one of the most important expert of Islamic history, maintains despite the theoretical claims state-religion separation has been a consistent aspect of Islamic world since the first century of Islam.[10] Throughout its long history, Muslim societies had experienced so many forms of alternative political regime that any such generalization to define the nature of political regimes in the Muslim world is bound to fail. The idea that state-religion separation does not exist in the Muslim world can also be disproved by looking at the current state-religion regimes in Muslim majority countries. Once again if we look at Ahmet Kurus (2008) four type regimes, we would see that only 11 of the 46 Muslim majority states are Islamic states where law making and judicial processes are regulated according to religious rules. There are 15 states in which Islam is the official religion (but without religious supervision on the legal system) and 20 secular states (among which 8 of them are electoral democracies, while 12 of them are secular autocracies). These numbers are important as they refute the myths on the secularism-resistant nature of Islam, and also prove that secularism can go hand in hand with both democracy and authoritarianism, and it also pushes us to look for alternative approaches to understand the relationship between Islam and democratization.
3. Who Represents the Islamic World?
Would the defenders of the incompatibility thesis be justified in their claimsbuilt on an interpretation of the Muslim worlds democratic record if analyses were focused on praxis in the Muslim world, and not on Islamic theology? The answer is partly yes and partly no depending on where the analyst is looking in the Muslim world. This brings us to another problem of identifying the Islamic world. Islam is a religion of more than a billion adherents and it is the majoritys religion among the 46 Muslim countries throughout the world.[11] Contrary to the common perception, neither the Middle East[12] in general nor the Arab world in particular constitute the majority of the Islamic world. Only slightly more than a quarter of the worlds Muslim population lives in the Middle East, and Arabs in whole constitutes 20% of the world Islamic community. This means that when conducting a discussion on the compatibility of Islam (read as the Muslims) with democracy, we need to have a wider perception that take into account the whole Islamic world. As it will be more apparent in the following pages, this should be kept in mind when looking at the empirical reality of the Islamic world with regard to democratization.
Let us first look at the overall picture in the Islamic world. Despite the points I made above on the multivocal interpretations of Islam, the cold empirical reality is that only 9 out of the 46 Muslim majority countries throughout the world can be considered as free countries. Although this is one of the lowest ratios in the world, as Daniel Brumberg and Larry Diamond points out (See 2003), the number is not trivial and the existence of electoral democracies throughout the Muslim world is itself a testimony to the multivocality thesis, and disproves the incompatibility thesis. Given the Muslim populations scattered around the globe, Alfred Stepan estimates that more than half of the Muslim world population is living under electoral democracies.[13] Yet, the more striking feature of the list of electoral democracies throughout the Muslim world is that there is only one electoral democracy in the Middle East, Turkey, and none in the Arab world. Only 16 of the 46 Muslim majority states are Arab states, and currently none of them is an electoral democracy. Moreover, in a very interesting article published in Journal of Democracy, Alfred Stepan and and Robertson Graeme (2003) has noted that compared with the economic level of development non-Arab Muslim world is exceptionally successful. They define these states as "electoral overachievers". Their analysis is based upon one of the most established arguments of the democratization literature that there is a strong correlation between level of democracy and the level of economic development, and there exists a minimal level of economic level necessary to sustain democracy. Accordingly, Stepan and Graeme point that non-Arab Muslim majority states in the overall perform better than their level of economic development would make us expect and they experienced considerable electoral competition where as non of the Arab countries had, with the only exception of Lebanon for a brief period before the civil warbrokeoutin1970s. Moreover, some Arab states perform below the level of their respective level of economic development would. This led Stepan and Graeme to conclude that there is an Arab electoral gap rather than a Muslim electoral gap, and there is an Arab exceptionalism rather than a Muslim exceptionalism with regard to democratization.
It is evident that Middle East as a whole is the most anti-democratic part of the Muslim world. Two countries with the highest rankings of Freedom House and Polity surveys are outside Middle East, and a third country with the highest scores, Turkey, is a non Arab Middle Eastern country. Thus, the contrast between the rest of the Muslim world and the Middle East is striking and needs an explanation. The persistence of authoritarianism is the most striking feature of Middle Eastern politics. This "success" of authoritarian regimes can be attributed either to the strength of the autocrats or to the weakness of their opponents, and in most of the cases in Middle East we are faced with both. Again, there are multiple ways to explain the strength of autocrats and the weakness of the opponents by referring to cultural, ideological, and economic structures. Once again, Islam is portrayed as the main explanatory tool. The limited success of Islamic world outside Middle East is explained by contingency, and the complete failure of Middle Eastwith the single exception of Turkey, which is an assertively secular state is considered as a result of essential incompatibility of Islam with democracy. Moreover, the assertive secularism of Turkey is considered as a proof of the essential incompatibility of Islam and democracy (See Lakoff, 2004). Enough has already been said for the arguments of this incompatibility thesis and the Turkish case will be considered in more detail below. Let us first look at the roots of authoritarianism in Middle East.
4. Alternative Explanations for Middle Eastern Autocracy
There are multiple possible explanations that come up to explain the continuity of authoritarianism in the Middle East, namely, economic, structural, cultural, and political approaches. The economic dimension of Middle Eastern autocracy is related with the rentier state model. As Fareed Zakaria (See 2004, p. 10) has pointed, the problem in the Arab world is wealth not poverty. Most of the Middle Eastern countries are damned by the "oil curse". In these countries the famous statement of American democracy "no taxation without representation" works in the opposite direction. In the oil rich countries of Middle East, there is no representation, partly, because there is no taxation. States that get most of their income from natural resources tend never to look for the legitimacy from their citizens. Moreover, the state control on economics is not limited to the oil income. In the non-oil producing countries too, the state elites firm grip on whatever economic resources they can acquire gives them an incentive to continue an autocratic social pact. Rulers collecting all the available economic resources in their hands provide jobs and subsidies, and fund a huge patronage system that transforms the middle class, professionals, businessman, and intellectuals, into dependents (See Brumberg and Diamond, 2003, p. xii). Thus, the representatives of the middle class who is usually expected to lead the pro-democratic opposition do not play the same role in the Arab world. At this point, the contrast between Turkey and the Arab world is meaningful. While the state in Turkey also controls remarkable economic resources, compared with the Arab world, there are more "opportunity spaces" open for the newly emerging bourgeoisie from the inner Anatolian landscape. It is indeed this Anatolian bourgeoisie the source of democratization in the country, and recently they constituted the backbone of the JDP government (See Yavuz, 2006, pp. 1-19).
While combination of economic and political power leads to the strength of authoritarianism, other side of the coin point to the weakness of opposition both institutionally and economically. Such a disproportionate power balance between the rulers and opponents prevent the emergence of pacts that had paved the way for the Latin American democratization (See Brumberg and Diamond, 2003, p. xii). A cultural explanation for the weakness of the opposition is the alleged absence of civil society in the region (See Abootalebi , 1998). Once again, normative assumptions on Islams incompatibility with civil society dominate the relevant studies. Referring to the origins of the concept, for instance, Serif Mardin (See 1995) declares civil society as a Western dream that would not translate into Islamic terms. According to Mardin, in the Muslim world, society waits for the "just prince" to initiate reforms and take control of societal development rather than mobilizing itself independently. In accordance with traditional Orientalism[14] that conflates the East with passivism and fatalism, the Middle Eastern societies are understood to be constituted of "people [who] as a whole tend to consider life as a game of chance" (Sariolghalam, 1997, p. 59). In this view, "One has no alternative but to suffer the inevitable and basically negative vicissitudes of life" (Sariolghalam, 1997, p. 59).
A seminal two volume study, conducted by Richard Norton and his collaborators, empirically showed the opposite. Nortons study (1995, 1996) concluded that Middle Eastern societies were far from being passive and fatalist, they were indeed quite active, especially given the authoritarian political settings they operate in. This study became quickly conventional wisdom on the studies on Middle Eastern civil society, but left the question of the strength of authoritarianism still unanswered. Ernest Gellner, who long ago pointed to the strength of Muslim society (1981), claimed that the problem is not the weakness of society, but its disinterest in freedom. Comparing the pro-democracy attempts at Eastern Europe, that mark an important edge of the third wave, with the Islamic (should better be Middle East) world, Gellner (1996) claims that there is feeble if any yearning for freedom throughout the Muslim world. The validity of such statements had largely collapsed through the recent demonstrations in the Arab world.
The recent events that started in Tunisia during the first month of 2011, and then spread to Egypt and from there to the rest of the Arab world, show that there are more than a "feeble yearning" for democracy through the Arabic world. Yet, these demonstrations brought into attention another and often overlooked aspect ofauthoritarianism in Middle East: the international political context.At the time of the writing of this article, Tunisian demonstrators had been successful in forcing the authoritarian leader Ben Ali to leave the power, the turbulences were still continuing in Egypt, and the results of the uprisings were still inconclusive. Thus, it is almost impossible to predict whether these demonstrations will evolve to the kind of demonstrations that had started in Poland two decades ago and swiped all the authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe. Therefore, at this stage we need to refrain from declaring these events as the fourth wave, though it has the potential to turn into a wave of democratization, it is also highly possible that authoritarian regimes will overcome this unrest and continue to enjoy their stay in power.
However, one thing is clear; the Arab people who filled the streets with the demand of freedom and who showed the necessary determination to pay the blood tax, lack the international support Polish syndicate workers had enjoyed. Neither the American government nor the European states made an open declaration of support for the millions in the Arab streets who want to get rid of their authoritarian regimes. At least they did not until the time of writing of this article. That means a lack of support during the whole period of uprisings in Tunisia, and during the first week of demonstrations in Egypt; the most crucial stage of the uprising. Moreover, the main stream media coverage also lacks the enthusiasm of the reports on 1989 East European demonstrations. Instead, both the media and the government seem to be more concerned on the state of (authoritarian) secularism in these countries and the strategic effects of these revolutions to Israel.[15] In their seminal study of democratic transition, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996) point to the importance of international environment and to the diffusion effect of democratization. Indeed, despite the strength of antisystem demonstrations and public demands for more political freedom, the collapse of the authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe would never materialize if Mikhail Gorbachev had not made it painfully clear to the autocrats of Eastern Europe that Soviet Union is no more willing (or indeed no more able to) support their illegitimate governments (See Westad, 2005 and Leffler, 2007).
Thus, an important feature of authoritarian regimes, especially of the non-oil producing states, is their authoritarian secularism. Unlike the common perceptions, the most brutal autocrats of Middle East are not Islamic fundamentalists but secular military backed autocrats. As we have already mentioned, these regimes also enjoy international support. In an apologetic defense of secular autocrats, Fareed Zakaria claimed that "autocratic, corrupt, and heavy-handed [Arab rulers are] still more liberal, tolerant, and pluralitisc than those who would likely replace them" (2004, p. 9). Thus, Muslim World had two make a choice between an evil and a lesser evil.
An analogy between the discourse on anti-democratic Catholicism and the experience of Latin America as bedrock of authoritarianism with anti-democratic Islam and the persistence of authoritarianism in Middle East is inspiring. As part of the Monroe Doctrine, Latin America had always been a strategic place for American foreign policy. In that sense, Americans preferred pro-American dictators in this strategic region to democratically elected leaders who were inevitably more independent vis-à-vis American policy preferences.[16] A series of events starting with the 1974 oil crises, and peaked up after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, increased the strategic importance of Middle East in the American foreign policy marked by the declaration of the Carter Doctrine. At least since Carter doctrine, the West prioritizes security over democracy in the region[17] and prefers pro-West autocrats. In this case, these autocrats are considered as the barrier against the Islamic movements. One is forced hard not to make the analogy with the military dictators of Latin America who were considered as bulwark against leftist extremism during the Cold War, and the Middle Eastern autocrats who are considered as a set against Islamic extremism in the age of the "Clash of Civilizations".
We have already mentioned that Islamic groups are not in power in most of the authoritarian regimes. However, this is not to deny the fact that some, but definitely not all, of the Islamic opposition groups in these regimes also have authoritarian tendencies. Esposito and Voll (See 1996) gives us some important criteria to evaluate the diverse experiences of Muslim groups in these regions: whether the Islamic groups are legal or not, whether they are allowed to participate in the political system as legitimate actors, or whether they are pressed by the political rulers to remain as an underground organization. The vast range of experiences show that the more chances to participate in the system the more pluralistic and democratic the Islamic groups they are. The country with the largest possible ways to participate in the system is Turkey, as the country has institutionalized a tradition of power change through election box. Despite all the major shortcomings of the democratic regime in turkey, it still enables to keep the Islamic groups in the system, and the country witnessed the emergence of JDP in the last decade as the major symbol of Muslim democracy through the region.
From this point on I will look at the government experience of JDP in Turkey, its significance for the debates on the compatibility of Islam and democracy, for the democratization experience of Turkey, and for the attempts of democratization in the Middle Eastern region.
5. Turkey: A Testimony to the Secularization Thesis?
I believe there are many factors that make Turkey an interesting empirical case aside from its long and complicated democratic transition period. Turkey is a paradigmatic case in many respects. First of all, Turkish state ideology is based on the emulation of secular French nation state model, and, in many aspects, Turkish secularism is even more radical than the French case. Being a Muslim majority country (almost 99 %of the population is Muslim), with a very assertive secularism and a long history of democratic transition, makes Turkey a uniquely interesting case. Also, contributing to Turkeys uniqueness as a case study is the fact that many scholars who insist on the authoritarian nature of Muslim societies like Ernest Gellner and Bernard Lewis consider Turkey an exceptional success story in the Muslim World. Ernest Gellner argues that although Muslim World is an exception in general, Turkey is the exception to the exception, and he says that he was always "fascinated" by the Turkish experience of secularization and nation building (See Gellner, 1994). They praise Turkey as a considerably democratic country, which achieved its status partially as a result of its strict policies on secularism. This line of thought is based on the conviction that in Muslim countries achieving democratization is possible only through radical measures against any kind of religious freedom. Gellner, who considers that democracy has no chance in the Muslim World, argues that Turkish state is an exception, since historically powerful state tradition enabled the state to eliminate Islam and to nationalize its population. This point is more eloquently described by Lewis in his classical Emergence of Modern Turkey. Lewis argues that "God had to be replaced twice: as the source of sovereignty, by the people, and as the object of worship by the nation" (1961, p. 479). Transition to democracy in Turkey had been possible only because of this elimination of Islam, and because of the nationalization of the population. Thus, Turkey appears an empirical case that proves the necessity of secularization as a pre-requisite of democratization and normatively more important than democratization.
Followers of this view defend that if Turkey succeeded any democratization as unsatisfactory as it may seem this had been possible due to its achievement in creating a religiously hostile secular nation state. The power of this argument is so strong that it affects even the most careful observes. For example Binnaz Toprak, normally an astute observer of statereligion relations in Turkey, claims that "As the history of the Republican Turkey demonstrates, however, a Muslim nation can establish, sustain and begin to consolidate a democratic form of government and a liberal conception of public life as long as its state distinguishes between religion and public sphere" (2006, p. 169. Emphasis added). Note the extremely radical conception of distinguishing between religion and public sphere. This is obviously a much more radical understanding of secularism than a separation between state and religion, not to mention twin tolerations. This view has wider implications for the whole Muslim World, as once Alfred Stepan and Robertson Graeme (See 2003) pointed to Turkish democracy as a support for the compatibility of Islam and democracy, Sanford Lakoff (See 2004) responded that that Turkey could not be counted as an example because it was a strictly secular country. On the contrary, Lakoff continued, Turkeys relatively high level of democratization should be considered as an example for the incompatibility of democracy and Islam. "The more relevant implication of the Turkish experience is that Islamic beliefs may have to be overridden" (Lakoff, 2004, p. 134) in order to achieve democratization. The extension of this line of argument to the rest of the Muslim world, and particularly to the Arab world, is the hijacking of democracy by authoritarian secularists and the above mentioned unconditional support given the Arab secular autocrats by the Western democracies.
This glorification of Turkish success with modernization comes from a popular myth of Turkey being both the only secular and democratic country in the Muslim world. However, as it became apparent from the previous discussions, Turkey is neither the single secular state nor the most democratic state in the Muslim world. Two countries, Indonesia and Senegal, rank higher both in the Freedom House survey and in the Polity surveys. Moreover, the country still maintains to be a very interesting case to investigate the relation between Islam and democracy as this assertively secular state is being ruled by an Islamic oriented party since 2002. Since 2002, JDP enjoys a secure majority in the parliament (and this will likely to continue in the forthcoming 2011 elections), and rules the country with a strong government. Thus, a comparison of the democratic record of JDP with its more secular predecessors will likely to tell us much about the relation of Islam and democracy. Again, we can turn to the reliable Freedom House surveys for this comparison. Turkeys ranking in the Freedom House survey in year 2002 was 5 out of a scale of 7. Throughout the eight years of single party government of JDP, Turkeys trend had continuously been upwards. Turkeys rank in the most recent 2009 report raised to 3 (1 in Freedom House rankings represents the perfect democracy, while 7 represents the most oppressive authoritarian regime). These rankings would mean that Turkish democracy is still far from being perfect. However, they also mean that Turkish democracy had continuously developed throughout the JDP rule.
Despite the fact that Turkish democracy is far from being a consolidated democracy, Turkey has a long record of democratization. Indeed, as Ergun Özbudun (See 1996, p.125) has noted, technically, Turkey is a second wave democracy, and transition to democracy dates back to 1950. Since the start of multi party life in 1946, three problems stayed at the center of Turkish politics: the role of Islam in the public life, Kurdish demands for various levels of political recognition, and the continued military interference to daily politics in relation to the first two issues. As part of the demands for EU accession, JDP had to face all of these three problems.
JDP led Turkeys EU bid, and, under JDP rule, Turkey had finally achieved the status of an accession country. Obviously, this was a continuation of a long and constantly interrupted process of liberalization. Yet, in March 2004, the Council of Europe determined that "Turkey had liberalized more in the first two years of JDP rule than in the previous ten years" (See Smith 2005, p. 450) As a series of reforms in order to meet Copenhagen criteria, the legal regulations were made to address both the civil military relations and the Kurdish problem.[18] Despite all these attempts, the true litmus test for the Islamic oriented JDP will be its attitude against religious minorities, be it the non-Muslims but also the Muslim minority Alevis sect.[19]
6. JDP Policies on Religion
Exclusions based on religious criteriaaccompanied by a very hostile separation of religion and state that eventually turned into a control of religion by the stateled to a very unique case of secularism in Turkey, in which virtually all religious groups feel alienated and suppressed. We can map the religious affiliation of Turkey as falling into three essential groups: non-Muslims, Muslim minority sectsAlevis being the most important one, and Muslims belonging to the majority Sunni sect. JDP appears as the representative of the majority Sunni sect and its policies in order to increase the freedom of Sunni groups, necessary for democratization, is not unexpected.
However, an analysis of the JDPs policies towards other religious groups and particularly the non-Muslims is very informative on the debate of Islam and democracy in Turkey. Turkeys non-Muslim minorities still suffer a lot, but there has been a considerable amelioration in the recent years under the Islamic rooted JDP government. JDP has been able to diminish the anti-Christian discourse embedded in the official ideology and took various steps in order to increase the harmony between Muslim and non-Muslim populations. This appeasement policy involves more symbolic gestures as putting ethnic Armenians on the JDP ticket in the local elections, as well as many legal changes related to the restrictions that non-Muslims face. On the legal bases, there has been important improvements, the most important being the passing of a new law on Religious Foundations in spring 2006. The limitations on the property rights of non-Muslim foundations were abolished, and some limited steps were taken to compensate for the previous confiscations.[20] The ban on the construction of churches and other worship places were also abolished. Hate speech towards non-Muslims were declared violations of the law. Another significant change was the abolition of the ban on giving Christian names.[21] These improvements are reflected in the voting patterns during the most recent elections. Non-Muslims voted considerably for the allegedly Islamist party as opposed to harshly Kemalist secular Republican Peoples Party (RPP) (See "HÜrriyet," 2007, December 7 and "HÜrriyet," 2007, May 6), an indication that they have much more freedom under the JDP government as opposed to the previous strictly secular Kemalist establishment.
The ruling JDP also took some steps for embracing the Alevi minority. JDP offered positions to prominent Alevis in the party organs, and also nominated them in the parliamentary elections.[22] In the Ramadan of 2007, Prime Minister Erdogan invited Alevi organizations to a public fast breaking, and became the first Turkish prime minister who legitimately recognized Alevis as a distinct group. Since last year, the government is conducting a series of workshops with the Alevi community that aims to address the problems of this religious minority in the country. The topics that these workshops aim to handle include the core issues such as rewriting books on religion (which is announced to be accomplished the following year) and the financing of religious Alevi institutions. Although no concrete policy improvements have been accomplished yet, it appears that the allegedly Islamist JDP is again much more understanding towards Alevis compared to its secular rivals.
Although JDP is frequently criticized by the old guard for having a hidden Islamist agenda and accused of trying to convert the country into a fundamentalist Islamist state, no serious observers of Turkish politics share this concern. There are also influential policy circles that insist that JDP is not so different from Taliban in terms of its actual policies (See Pipes, 2003, quoted in Yavuz, 2006). Considering the JDP policies on non-Muslims, in a country where xenophobia has dominated the political culture for decades, the only explanation for conducting parallels between Taliban and JDP would be an outright discontent not for Islamic fundamentalism, but any source of Islamic visibility. Such a vision that asks for the exclusion of religious people from the political system in Muslim majority countries transforms the democracy to an "impossible game" (See Casanova 2001, p.1064). Although limited, the overall success of JDP in democratic politics, compared to its secularist predecessors, not only points that Islamic oriented groups can adapt to electoral democracy; it also shows that they can also contribute to advance pluralist democracy. By showing that religious piety and democratic politics do not conflict, and indeed might be complimentary, as Ihsan Dagi rightly points out "The JDPs popular language of democracy and human rights had contributed to the legitimization for democracy among the more conservative Turkish people" (2006, p. 105). Thus, it had long time effects for the deepening of democratic values and an increase in the quality of democracy. Moreover, such a legitimization of democracy is not limited to the conservative Turks. More importantly, Islamic groups under the authoritarian Arab regimes are also influenced by the JDP model. After his arrival to his home from exile in London, Tunisian Islamic leader Rachid Gannoucchi stated that they are inspired by the JDP experience (See "Todays Zaman," 2011, March 7). The continuous betterment of democratization in countries like Indonesia and Turkey under the Islamic oriented governments, and the effects of these Muslim democracies on the people of autocratic regimes, leading to a series of revolts throughout the Arab world, remind us that despite the overall low level of democratization of the Islamic world there are reasons to be optimistic.
* This research is part of the project "The Future of Islam and Democracy" developed at the Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey.
[1] As opposed to the common assumption of the secularization theory that religions will and should privatize for the functioning of a modern society.
[2] Here comes the source for the Iranian exceptionality. As one of the most evident examples of the multivocality of Islam, there are certain distinctions between two major sects; the majority Sunnis and the minority Shias. Unlike the dominant Sunni Islam, in Shia version of Islam, there is a strong class of clergy, with a strict hierarchy among them. However, the idea that the clergy should be ruling the country is a quite novel interpretation for the centuries old Shia theology. Known as the "wilayat al faqih" theory (Guardianship of the Jurist), this was formulated by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1970s. Even then, it was not accepted by the highest authorities of Shia Islam. At the time of the Iranian revolution, among a dozen Grand Ayatollahs (the highest level in the hierarchy of Shia clergy) only one other than Khomeini approved this theory.
[3] For a more detailed account of these concepts and how they had worked throughout the Muslim history see Esposito and Voll, 1996, pp.11-53).
[4] Those who hearken to their Lord, and establish regular Prayer; who (conduct) their affairs by mutual consultation; who spend out of what We bestow on them for Sustenance are praised.
[5] Thus, it is due Gods mercy that you deal with them gently, and had you been rough, and hard hearted, they would certainly have dispersed from around you; pardon them therefore and ask pardon from them, and take counsel with them in the affair; so when you have decided, then place your trust in God; surely God loves those who trust.
[6] The major reason for the Sunni-Shia division came as a result of the question of succession. The Shia school considers only one of the four caliphs (successors) as legitimate.
[7] As Esposito and Voll had rightly pointed (See 1996, p. 7), certain reservations against the term democracy among some Muslims do not reflect an attitude against democracy, but reflect a desire to formulate political freedoms in more authentic terms. Thus, their objection to democracy is more rhetorical rather than substantial. In the past, many Islamic movements that consider free and fair elections as the only way of coming to power did not stick to the democratization discourse. However, this started to be shifted in line with the discussions on "multiple modernities" (See Eisenstadt, 2000) as it became apparent that insisting on the western dimension of democracy means to force Muslims to make a choice among westernization/democracy and their authentic values/religion. As a response to this insistence, a new attempt to formulate Muslim modernity and attempts of Muslims democracy had come to forefront. JDP of Tukey represents a striking example. What is novel for the JDP cadres is not their leaning for political freedoms (which they had started to do that long ago), but formulating these demands for freedoms through democratization discourse is novel. For this distinction between political freedom and democratization see Hefner, 2005. For a detailed analysis of JDP in this regard see Heper and Toktas 2003.
[8] The Islamic version of modernity is not incompatible only with secularism and political liberalism. According to this view, Islam is incompatible with a series of concepts all of them which are considered to be a whole scale package coined in the Western experience of modernization. The list of concepts alien to the Islamic world includes: capitalism, civil society, and nationalism.
[9] He defines Western Christianity as Catholicism and Protestantism, but excludes Orthodox Christianity. This worthy of note insofar as Catholicism was perceived as an obstacle to democratization only a few decades ago. It would be an interesting exercise to check the texts written on the relationship of Catholicism and modernity, democratization, nationalism, capitalism etc. If one looks today at the texts written a few decades ago on the relation between Catholicism and democracy, and replaces the word Catholicism with Islam, one would see that almost same sentences are written today on the relationship of Islam and democracy.
[10] Indeed, the recent literature on political Islam emphasizes the novelty of the concept of a union between religion and state. As Talal Asad (2003) has maintained, Islamic movements interest to grasp the state power is the result of the dominance of modern state even in the most private sphere of life, rather than an overly political nature of the religion itself. In that sense, it is interesting to see that Huntington, Gellner, and Lewis share the same approach to Islam with the fundamentalists.
[11] I rely on Freedom House reports in this section. However, the number 46 is open to debate and this number shows slight changes throughout various reports prepared at different times due to the existence of some borderline cases such as Nigeria, Sierra Leona, Burkina Faso and Eritrea.
[12] Middle East throughout this article is understood as the region that includes all of the Arabic speaking states, plus Iran, Turkey and the Jewish state of Israel.
[13] Among the nine electoral democracies in the Muslim world are the more populous states, such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Bangladesh. The total population of these three states makes 400 millions. Aside from other smaller electoral democracies in the Muslim world, like Senegal, Bosnia, and Albania, Stepan also includes the 150 million Indian Muslims who, though constituting a minority in India, had contributed immensely to the democratic system of the country.
[14] Richard Norton (1993, p. 212) rightly argues that this orientalist analysis can be traced back to Karl Wittfogels influential work Oriental Society. According to Wittfogel (1957, quoted in Norton, 1993), absence of a civil society to counterbalance despotic power was a marker of oriental society, and it is this lacuna that lies at the heart of the orientalist analysis.
[15] This is even so for the more liberal media, (See "Freedland," 2011, February 1 and "Kirkpaatrick," 2011, January15).
[16] A retrospective analysis on Cold war maintains that forces that United States deemed as dangerous were not necessarily Marxists. Indeed, most of these movements are better called "nativists" (See Westad, 2005) Thus, one wonders how we would label the so called fundamentalists in the Muslim world after a few decades from now on. It is highly possible that in retrospective analyses it will be maintained that these religious groups were conservative/nationalist/nativist rather than fundamentalist.
[17] This statement came almost word by word by Condoleeza Rice as a confession for the failure of American foreign policy towards the region (See "BBC News", 2005, June 20).
[18] These regulations include the re-organization of the military dominated National Security Council, a body that enabled the military to intervene in politics. JDP had maintained civilian supremacy over military; a definite criteria for any democracy. The government also dealt with the Kurdish problem. In 2005, Prime Minister Erdogan paid a controversial visit to the Kurdish town Diyarbakir where he declared that he recognized the existence of the Kurdish problem, a brave statement, as the official discourse in Turkey for decades denied not only the existence of a Kurdish problem but also the existence of Kurds as a distinct people. Since then, government took a series of attempts (though far from being sufficient) for the peaceful solution of the Kurdish problem. The most significant of them was the start of a new TV channel that will broadcast in Kurdish by the state owned Turkish Radio-Television Corporation (TRT).
[19] Alevis are an important minority among the Turkish Muslims. Alevi Islam diverges from Sunni Islam for its tendency for heterodoxy.
[20] This change had been vetoed by the harshly Kemalist, then president of Turkey, Ahmet Necdet Sezer on the grounds that it violates secularism. The parliament had to re-accept the amendment in order to overrule the veto.
[21] This change is also related with Muslim ethnic minorities, especially the Kurds. Until this amendment, Kurdish names were also illegal, and it was obligatory for the parents to name their children in Turkish. Now, there is no official restriction on either ethnic or religious minorities.
[22] The most important among these nominees was Reha Camuroglu, a very influential Alevi intellectual.
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Fecha de recepción: enero de 2011
Fecha de aprobación: abril de 2011
How to quote this article
Cevik, Salim. (2011, enero-junio). Myths and Realities on Islam and Democracy in the Middle East. Estudios Políticos, 38, Instituto de Estudios Políticos, Universidad de Antioquia, (pp. 121-144)


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Albertina Kerr operates a total of 19 neighborhood group homes for youth that offer 24-hour support and life skills training for children and teens ages 7 to 18 with developmental disabilities and mental health challenges that require specialized care and treatment.
For the kids and teens, our homes create a solid, safe and nurturing environment. Children are comforted knowing they have a place to call home and enjoy the privacy of their own bedroom.
The goal is to provide these youth with the skills they need to live as independently as possible when they reach adulthood. The focus of our services is on life skill development, education, behavior management and appropriate socialization. The staff at each group home work as a team with family members, psychiatrists, therapists and behavior support specialists to develop each child's individual support plan to optimally meet their support needs and honor their goals and preferences.
While the youth in all the group homes have many opportunities to interact at special events throughout the year, the most popular activity has become The Kerr Games. Held twice a year, The Games provides a chance for the youth in our services to participate in a day filled with camaraderie and competition, sports, activities and a talent show. Staff and youth work together, and everyone is a winner.

subset: commoncrawl


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Definition from Nolo's Plain-English Law Dictionary
A commercial real estate lease in which the tenant regularly pays not only for the space (as he does with a gross lease) but for a portion of the landlords operating costs as well. When all three of the usual costs--taxes, maintenance, and insurance--are passed on, the arrangement is known as a "triple net lease." Because these costs are variable and almost never decrease, a net lease favors the landlord. Accordingly, it may be possible for a tenant to bargain for a net lease with caps or ceilings, which limit the amount of rent the tenant must pay. For example, a net lease with caps may specify that an increase in taxes beyond a certain point (or any new taxes) will be paid by the landlord. The same kind of protection can be designed to cover increased insurance premiums and maintenance expenses.


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The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine is engaged in clinically applied, translational and experimental basic research in diverse areas of disease; these endeavors occur within pathology and in collaboration with other departments at Cedars-Sinai. Clinical and translational research programs encompass molecular changes in cancer, molecular diagnostics in inherited diseases, coagulation abnormalities, heart disease, and kidney transplant rejection among many others. The Division of Experimental Pathology is supported by NIH funding, and has a focus on basic research in proteins important in blood pressure control, heart disease and renal disease, and manipulating this system as a means of increasing immune resistance to cancer. The Division of Translational Medicine includes the Biobank, a collection of quality specimens which can be used for research. Additionally, pathologists in training participate in these research endeavors, learning to become productive clinical scientists. The goals of pathology research studies are to understand disease mechanisms and improve diagnosis, prognostic information and identification of therapeutic targets, thus optimizing personalized medicine.
Academic Productivity 2013-2014
Experimental Pathology 2013-2014


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i seem to have picked this up from somewhere :/
Nortons knows it's there but cannot delete it.
it tells me either it cannot delete/fix the file or it does not have permission to access the file.
i have booted 3 times since it has been detected and each time it is in a different place.
the above link gives advaice etc on how to remove and says:
"5. Deleting the value from the registry
CAUTION: Symantec strongly recommends that you back up the registry before making any changes to it. Incorrect changes to the registry can result in permanent data loss or corrupted files. Modify the specified keys only. Read the document, "How to make a backup of the Windows registry," for instructions.
Click Start, and then click Run. (The Run dialog box appears.)
Type regedit
Then click OK. (The Registry Editor opens.)
Navigate to the key:
In the right pane, delete the value:
Exit the Registry Editor."
but that registry entry is not there.
any ideas as to why Nortons doesn't delete the file?
and also ideas on how i can delete this virus?
ty in advance


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Iron Maiden Unveil 'Blood Brothers' Performance From 'En Vivo!' Concert Film
Iron Maiden have just released the first tease of their upcoming 'En Vivo!' concert DVD. Taken from their April 2011 show in Santiago, Chile, the band performed 'Blood Brothers' from their 'Brave New World' album in front of over 50,000 screaming fans.
Coming off the heels of the massive 'Flight 666′ documentary, Iron Maiden will release 'En Vivo!' on March 27. The upcoming Blu-Ray / DVD boasts the high production value and riveting visuals that helped make 'Flight 666′ such a success. Iron Maiden is one of the best live bands on the planet, and this performance of 'Blood Brothers' is as close to the Maiden experience you can have outside of a stadium.
'Blood Brothers' is a heart-wrenching song written about the death of bassist Steve Harris' father. Watch Harris closely in this live clip. The bassist puts his entire heart into the track evident by the intensity in Harris' backing vocals. As if that isn't depressing enough, Iron Maiden used 'Blood Brothers' in tribute to Ronnie James Dio shortly after his passing from cancer.
Check out Iron Maiden's epic performance of 'Blood Brothers' and look out for 'En Vivo!' in stores on March 27.


text: Launched in 2005, the American footwear label Vince Camuto has evolved into a worldwide brand offering 30 categories of sportswear and lifestyle including handbags, apparel, menswear and fragrance. With his roots in a passion for high-quality footwear, Vince Camuto's eponymous brand has become known for its bold and elegant designs. Our range of Vince Camuto tote bags brings to life the designer's passion for quality accessorising. From bold, adventurous colour shocks to classic, neutral shoppers, each bag combines quality leather and fabrics with immaculate gold and silver-toned detail. For the office, shopping or holiday, the Vince Camuto range celebrates a love of colour blocking, clean design lines and contemporary print.


text:
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Being an NFL head coach is a demanding job, one that's filled with plenty of scrutiny.
But it is one of the most coveted jobs in all of sports, and there are only so many head coaching opportunities available in the NFL each year.
There are seven head coaching openings (Miami Dolphins, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans and the Cleveland Browns) this year, but not all of them are ideal situations.
Some have ownership problems, others feature mediocre quarterbacks. All of them have talent issues.
The Sun Sentinel takes a look at each job opening based on four factors — location, organizational structure,...


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The "privacy leak" was spotted by Symantec, which said that the latest version of Norton Mobile Security, which includes a new Mobile Insight tool that dynamically assesses Android apps for potential security or privacy violations, had flagged Facebook's Android app.
"The first time you launch the Facebook application, even before logging in, your phone number will be sent over the Internet to Facebook servers," according to a Symantec blog post. "You do not need to provide your phone number, log in, initiate a specific action, or even need a Facebook account for this to happen."
According to Google Play, Facebook's Android app has been installed on between 100 million and 500 million devices. Symantec said that "a significant portion of those devices are likely affected."
[ More comes to light about whistleblower's job description. Read Snowden's Real Job: Government Hacker. ]
Numerous Android apps slurp excessive data for various reasons -- perhaps owing to developers' coding errors, to support "find my friend" features, or to allow developers or advertising networks to better track individual users.
But Facebook spokesman Derick Mains, confirming Symantec's bug report, said it had resulted from an inadvertent coding error. "The Android beta we released last week includes the fix," he said via email. "We did not use or process these numbers in any way, and have already deleted them from our servers."


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Exchanges trading LAToken
Markets, or exchanges, are where you can buy or sell (i.e. trade) crypto coins, either against other crypto coins or against fiat currencies (e.g. USD, EUR). Below you can find popular markets and you can click on their names to go to their websites.
Enjoying our data? We have spent over 4000 hours on Platform Development and Coin Research. Donations are welcome!


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A Reflection of Disco History Goes on the Auction Block
Memorabilia from the 1970 famed New York Studio 54 nightclub will be hitting the auction block in Florida on Saturday.
The private collection of co-founder Steve Rubell is being sold Saturday in West Palm Beach.
Rubell died in 1989 and aside from a legacy as a nightlife impresario, he left behind hordes of photographs, letters and other memories that his onetime companion has decided to part with.
The items give a glimpse of Studio 54 and its parade of A-list guests. Aside from a trove of photographs, there are original works by Andy Warhol, tickets, invitations, posters and Rubell's personal address book. Also up for grabs is the front-door guest book from 54, full of famous names and notations on whether their tabs were being footed by the club.


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Example: Optimistic Iteration
Now consider the following loop that uses an enumerator/iterator style to visit each item in a collection:
// Example 2, common calling code void f( WidgetCollection wc ) { using( i = wc.GetEnumerator() ) { while( i.MoveNext() ) { // fetch next element // … some work … // and process it DoSomethingWith( i.Current ); // … more work … } } }
Imagine the enumerator is implemented something like this:
// Example 2(a), synchronous enumerator (sketch) class WidgetEnumerator { // … // Construct WidgetEnumerator() { // set up any necessary resources } // Destroy (C++ destructor, Java/C# disposer) void Dispose() { // release any resources we got } bool MoveNext() { if( AtEnd() ) { return false; } // note: this may be an expensive operation NavigateToNextItem(); return true; } Widget Current() { lock( myWidgetQueue ) { return myWidgetQueue.First; } }
Each time the caller asks for the next element, we go look for it, then return and let the caller process it. So in this sequential version of the code, the fetching and processing work is interleaved, as in Figure 1.
What if NavigateToNextItem (and therefore MoveNext) is an expensive operation? What if it has to perform an expensive computation, or take another round trip to a disk or database or web service? Then it's quite likely that we can do significantly better even for this simple common iteration pattern by applying concurrency.
Everyone who has implemented or used an enumeration API like this knows that, if the caller is asking for one item, he's likely to soon come back, hat in hand, and ask for the next one too, and then the next one after that. If getting the next element takes nontrivial time for any of a variety of reasons, and we have resources to spare, we may want to be more proactive about generating the results so that we can deliver them faster once the caller actually requests them. And, if we guess wrong, we want a way to throw away the results we didn't need after all. Even if the cost to find and prepare the next item is less than the time for the caller to complete a loop iteration and ask for the next item, as in Figure 1, we can gain a useful speedup by running the enumerator's fetching concurrently with the caller's processing.
So consider performing the iteration concurrently (and speculatively, because if the caller doesn't end up traversing the whole range we may end up throwing some work away):
// Example 2(b), concurrent enumerator (sketch) class WidgetEnumerator { // … // Construct WidgetEnumerator() { // set up any necessary resources  // and launch a traversal worker thread done = false; pleaseStop = false; myWidgetQueue.Append( /* dummy */ ); myWorker = new thread( () => { while( !pleaseStop && !AtEnd() ) { // note: this may be an expensive operation NavigateToNextItem(); lock( myWidgetQueue ) { myWidgetQueue.Append( /* current item */ ); } newItem.Notify(); // notify consumer } lock( myWidgetQueue ) { myWidgetQueue.Append( /* sentinel */ ); } newItem.Notify(); // notify one last time } ); } // Destroy (C++ destructor, Java/C# disposer) void Dispose() {  // stop and join the background worker pleaseStop = true; myWorker.join(); // release any resources we got } bool MoveNext() {  if( !done ) { lock( myWidgetQueue ) { myWidgetQueue.PopFirst(); } newItem.Wait(); } lock( myWidgetQueue ) { if( myWidgetQueue.First == /* sentinel */ ) { done = true; return false; } return true; } } Widget Current() { lock( myWidgetQueue ) { return myWidgetQueue.First; } }
Now we can perform the fetching and processing concurrently, as in Figure 2. We can further improve this code by doing things like bounding the size of the queue, so that in general fewer resources are in use at once and in particular less work is wasted if the caller should happen to throw away the enumerator before reaching the end, but this is enough to sketch the basic strategy.
You may have noticed that what we've really done is create a two-stage pipeline, and we'll look at the general strategy of pipelining in more depth in a future article. For now, the key point to notice here is that the caller's code has no idea that it's participating as a pipeline stage, but remains happily oblivious to the concurrency because we've once again managed to hide it under the covers behind a synchronous-looking API.
The less code has to be upgraded to know about concurrency and nondeterminism, the better. Prefer to keep knowledge of concurrent work compartmentalized: Where possible, hide it behind a "synchronous" API to limit its effect and let callers remain insulated from the concurrency. This is an excellent strategy to reach for first when migrating an existing code base to take advantage of concurrent execution or scale on parallel hardware.
Thanks to Terry Crowley for his insightful comments on drafts of this article.


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Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa, center, poses with the other members of Policy Board of the BOJ on the last day of their two-day meeting at its headquarters in Tokyo Tuesday morning, Jan. 22, 2013. Shirakawa vowed to achieve the inflation benchmark "as soon as possible," in cooperation with the government Tuesday. (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE
TOKYO (AP) — Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a "monetary regime change" Tuesday as the central bank bowed to government pressure, setting a 2 percent inflation target aimed at helping the country emerge from its prolonged bout of deflation.
"This opens a passageway toward bold monetary easing," Abe told reporters after the Bank of Japan and government jointly announced the inflation target and plans for "open-ended" central bank asset purchases similar to the strategy followed by the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep market interest rates low.
However, there was a caveat: The BOJ's new asset purchases won't start for a year. The yen strengthened against the dollar after the BOJ announcement though it is much weaker than it was before Abe's Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide election victory last month.
Abe began lobbying the central bank to ease monetary policy even before he took office in late December, saying more aggressive action was needed for the world's No. 3 economy to escape from years of falling prices that can dull consumer spending and business investment.
His campaign to influence the ostensibly independent central bank has met with criticism at home and abroad. Ahead of the BOJ's policy announcement, the president of Germany's strongly independent central bank, the Bundesbank, cited the Japanese government's pressure as an example of "alarming encroachments" on central banks' independence.
Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa vowed to achieve the inflation benchmark "as soon as possible," in cooperation with the government. Some economists believe a moderate amount of inflation is grease that can make the wheels of the economy spin faster.
Whether the effort will succeed remains to be seen: the central bank has not achieved even its 1 percent inflation target, with price increases hovering below 0.5 percent for the past two years despite surges in energy costs.
The higher inflation target "would also have to be backed up by substantial policy measures to achieve it, otherwise the Bank of Japan might simply end up missing an inflation target of 2 percent rather than, at present, missing one of 1 percent," Capital Economics said in a commentary Tuesday.
Abe wants fast results before an election for the upper house of Japan's parliament in July. His government is seeking to spur growth both through heavy government spending on public works and other projects and through monetary easing.
Still, popular magazines are already forecasting an "Abe bubble" in share and real estate prices, driven by the money being pumped into the economy through government spending and monetary easing.
Financial markets have rewarded Abe's campaign pledges with a rally in the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock index, which has gained nearly 22 percent in the past year, mostly in the past few months.
Meanwhile, the Japanese yen has weakened against other major currencies, relieving pressure on exporters whose competitiveness has been squeezed by a prolonged bout of "endaka," or strong yen, in the past few years.
As expected, the central bank pledged to expand its asset purchases. It said it would buy about 13 trillion yen ($145 billion) in assets per month from January 2014 including Japanese government bonds and treasury bills. Its current smaller asset purchase scheme will continue until the new plan comes into effect.
In an apparent acknowledgement of concerns over Japan's soaring public debt, which is more than twice its gross domestic product, the joint statement said that the government would "establish a sustainable fiscal structure ... to ensure the credibility of fiscal management."
It also promised reforms to improve the competitiveness and "growth potential" of the economy, such as investing more in research and development and adjusting tax policies.
The Bank of Japan said its "open-ended" easing will increase purchases of government bonds and other low-risk financial assets without setting a deadline.
Describing its inflation goal as a "price stability target," the central bank said it would watch for "any significant risk to the sustainability of economic growth, including from the accumulation of financial imbalances."
"Under the price stability target, the bank will pursue monetary easing and aim to achieve this target at the earliest possible time," it said.
At present, consumer prices are basically flat, the central bank said.
But while the economy remains "relatively weak," public spending and housing investment appear to be picking up, and recoveries in overseas markets will also help stimulate demand, it said.
The Abe government is expected to nominate as Bank of Japan governor an expert known to favor its policies when Shirakawa's term ends this spring.
Critics of the government's strategy of pushing for more inflation argue that it will do little to stimulate real demand in the economy if it pushes up prices without accompanying gains in purchasing power.
They also express concern that the government's campaign to influence monetary policy might undermine the central bank's independent status.
Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann said in a speech in Frankfurt on Monday night that one consequence of undermining central bank independence could be an "increasing politicization of exchange rates."
Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin and Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.


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Outside diameter: 5.8mm
Inside diameter: 3.5mm
Product Name: GOLOSSE Ceramic parts
Packaging & Shipping
Details: 100pcs/bag, 500pcs/box
Net Weight: 10KG
We always quote the best price for you and aim to establish win-win situation with customers.
We can produce according to the sample you provide.
Please feel free to contact us for any further detail information.
We are looking forward to cooperate with you in the near future.


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Edamame Dip
Where we grew up, peanuts boiled in their shells were a favorite snack. When we moved to New York, with its scads of Japanese restaurants, we learned to love edamame, or soybeans boiled in the pod. For cocktail parties, we turned them into this dip.
4 cups water
Bring water and salt to a boil, add edamame and cook 3 minutes; drain but reserve water.
From Cocktail Parties, Straight Up! Easy Hors D'oeuvres, Delicious Drinks and Inspired Ideas for Entertaining with Style by Lauren and Anne Purcell.


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Definitions of dees
n. pl. - Dice. 2
n. - A dais. 2
The word "dees" uses 4 letters: D E E S.
Direct anagrams of dees:
Words formed by adding one letter before or after dees (in bold), or to dees in any order:
a - aedes eased c - cedes d - deeds f - feeds g - edges sedge h - heeds k - dekes skeed l - deles m - deems demes meeds n - denes dense needs p - deeps pedes speed r - deers drees redes reeds seder sered s - seeds t - deets steed u - suede w - sewed swede weeds x - desex dexes sexed y - seedy
Shorter words found within dees:
de dee ed eds es see
List shorter words within dees, sorted by length
Words formed from any letters in dees, plus an optional blank or existing letter
List all words starting with dees, words containing dees or words ending with dees
All words formed from dees by changing one letter
Other words with the same letter pairs: de ee es
Browse words starting with dees by next letter
Previous word in list: deeryards
Next word in list: deescalate
Some random words: gawk naiad vanda udder ruin mho dhak
This is not a dictionary, it's a word game wordfinder.
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John U. Bacon
John U. Bacon has worked the better part of two decades as a writer, a public speaker, a radio, and TV commentator, and a college teacher.
Bacon earned an honors degree in history ("pre-unemployment") from the University of Michigan, and a Master's in Education. He also was awarded a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship in 2005-06, where he was the first recipient of the Benny Friedman Fellowship for Sports Journalism.
He started his journalism career covering high school sports for The Ann Arbor News, then wrote a light-hearted lifestyle column before becoming the Sunday sports feature writer for The Detroit News in 1995. There he wrote long features about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, bullfighting in Spain, and high school basketball on a Potawatomi reservation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, earning numerous state and national awards for his work.
John U. Bacon views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management, or its license holder, the University of Michigan.
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LAW Professors
Freshman Professor - Barb VanderPutten
Harmony Fusion Chorus
|Barbara Vander Putten, a Bay Area native, began her vocal music career in 1977 joining the West Valley Masterworks, with whom she sang diverse repertoire including Mozart & Verdi's Requiem (with a performance at Carnegie Hall), Bach B minor Mass, Rutter's Gloria, etc, as well as a variety of folk music, madrigals, show tunes and spirituals. She was the Assistant Director of the award-winning Mission Valley Chorus (Sweet Adelines Intl) for 12 yrs, serving as Interim Director in 2005. Barbara was named Director of the Harmony Fusion Chorus in March of 2006, proudly leading them to a fourth place medal in their regional contest a year later. In spring of 2011, Harmony Fusion snapped up another fourth place medal with their highest score to date.
Barbara is a Certified Director, a member of the SAI Region 12 coaching faculty, participated on the judging panel for the West Coast Regional Harmony Sweeps Semi-Finals in 2006 and is perhaps best known as The Duchess in the off-the-wall comedy quartet, The Aquanettas (1999-2006). She's currently sings Bass in her quartet, With a Twist. In addition to singing, Barbara uses her speaking voice as the enthusiastic host of The Human Voice Show, featuring a cappella harmony, on People's Radio KKUP - Cupertino 91.5fm.
Sophomore Professor - Cyndi Sharp
Cyndi Sharp is a Certified Director, and member of Region 12's Teaching and Coaching Faculty. She is the Young Women in Harmony Program Manager, Sophomore level instructor for L.A.W., chorus and quartet coach, as well as private voice instructor.
She has been a Sweet Adeline since 1986 and has served on the Regional Education Committee and been the coordinator for the Director Certification Program. Cyndi directed Diablo Vista Chorus for ten years,1999 – 2009, and has sung in several competing quartets. Her fondest Sweet Adeline project has been creating Region 12's Mountain Harmony Camp for girls.
Cyndi's musical education includes master classes in vocal production, choral theory, and theater arts. She has held many roles in theater, including light opera in the Mikado, and comedy in Ragtime. She loves her day job as an Interpreter for the Deaf for Mt. Diablo Unified School District, and spends after school hours directing Westwood Elementary's Show Choir and Musical Theater Group, offering theater arts to upper elementary students and producing two shows for the school community each year. She cherishes family time with her husband, two adult married children, and Schnauzer, Maggie.
She is passionate about providing the best education for our members and is especially proud to participate in our exceptional LAW program saying, "It's magical to experience the empowerment of both singers and future directors in just one day of education in this gentle setting!"
Junior Professor - Angela Suraci
In 2006, Mission Valley Chorus welcomed Angela Suraci as the new Mission Valley Chorus director. Angela joined Bay Area Showcase Chorus in 1998. She has served as an Assistant Director and Lead Section Leader since 1999. Her barbershop history started years before as her mother, Carol, had been an active member since 1965. Angela has always been active in music singing in high school, college and professional choirs as well as pursuing a career in opera. Angela received a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance and Pedagogy and a BA in Psychology from San Francisco State University. She is also a private voice instructor and coaches quartets and choruses in the area. Angela has achieved the level of Master Director. Angela was born in Castro Valley, CA, where her parents still reside.
Senior Professor - Julie Starr
Julie Starr has been directing the Bay Area Showcase Chorus since 2002, after 11 years as an assistant director and five years as director of the Diablo Vista Chorus in Walnut Creek. Bay Area Showcase Chorus is a consistent Regional champion and International competitor, with numerous top ten medals and a thriving membership from the San Francisco Bay area and beyond.
Julie is a Master Director and currently also serves as the Region 12 Education Coordinator. She believes strongly in the importance of educating, developing, and nurturing musical leaders, and has been a part of the L.A.W. program since its inception.
Recently retired from a career as a technical writer and project manager, Julie is an active coach and voice teacher, sings bass in The EclectiCats quartet, and arranges music for barbershop when she gets the time. Julie describes her involvement in the L.A.W. program as a highlight of her Sweet Adelines year, and she loves working with the eager, dedicated women who come to learn arm waving.
|Professor - Kathy Scheel
Kathy has been a member of Sweet Adelines since 1971, holding nearly every position of chorus and regional leadership. She served on three Regional Management Teams as Secretary, Education Coordinator, and Chaired many workshops; led the regional quartet champions group (Gold Country), chairing many quartet educational and performance events, and Region 24 honored her with the coveted Rose Award in 2011 for her many services to Sweet Adelines. Kathy sang lead in a two-time championship quartet (Columbia Connection), directed 2 championship choruses (City of Roses and Northwest Harmony), and is currently the Master Director of Oregon Spirit Chorus.
Kathy is excited to now be a part of Region 12 and is honored to be a LAW School Professor, a Certified Regional Faculty member, also serving on the Regional Education Steering Committee, and Program Chair for Summer Spectacular 2017.
Kathy "accidentally" started Oregon Spirit Chorus in October 2005, when a small group of ladies just wanted to sing for the holidays. The little group stayed together and Oregon Spirit was chartered in 2007 and went on to achieve 1st Place Division AA five times in a row, 2nd Place overall, and Audience Choice two times. Kathy says it was quite a thrill to come to Region 12 and win the 1st Place Division A in 2014, and now OSC is Harmony Classic-bound!
Kathy is the proud single mother of 28-year old Ken, is a Project Coordinator and Support Department Manager and Project Coordinator at Jacobs Engineering (26 years). She comes from a very musical family and formerly played first violin in symphony orchestras, fiddle in a bluegrass band, taught herself how to play piano, guitar, and bass (stand-up), and was a studio musician. But barbershop harmony is her passion and she loves sharing what she has learned through the many outstanding coaching and educational events she has experienced through her 43 years in Sweet Adelines.
Graduate Professor - Jan Gervais
Jan has been waving her arms for 30 years, six years as an assistant director and then as the proud director of Pacific Empire Chorus. She led her chorus on the International stage five times! Jan attained Master Director status "because of the dedication to excellent singing of the members of PEC!" She is a Certified Judge in the Expression Category. She has also been the Director Coordinator on the Regional Management Team. Jan has many other credits including serving on International committees, coaching choruses and quartets and spreading the word about LAW. Since the program began, she has been a LAW professor where she says she has "learned much from the students." Jan is looking forward to leading the Graduate level even though she has retired from directing PEC. We just couldn't let her wealth of knowledge leave the LAW program.