The threat of secular society

In their recent book "The Case for Democracy, "Natan Sharansky and Ron
Dermer argue that democracy can find a place in the Arab Middle East and
that only when it does will peace be possible between the Arab states and
Israel. They base this prediction, mainly on the fact that other
totalitarian societies, such as Japan, Germany, Russia, and so on, made the
transition to stable democracies and became peaceful partners to the West.
But, this happened only after major wars with them, including the Cold War
and the "containment policy" with the USSR. This is like the current war
against terrorism and the war in Iraq.
They argue that all people prefer to live in free rather than totalitarian
"fear" societies, and that such societies carry the seeds of their own
destruction. In order to continue to exist they must suppress their own
people, and in order to do this they need an external enemy and this makes
them incapable of coexisting peacefully with democracies. Thus, Sharansky
argues convincingly that Arafat could never have make peace with Israel, for
if he did he would have lost his control over all aspects of Palestinian
society.
Neither can totalitarian societies compete with open, free, democratic
societies because they spend so much time, effort and money on suppressing
the freedom of their own people as well as engaging in external conflicts,
that they never have enough for development. And this is apart from the
systemic corruption of totalitarian societies, as found in the PA.
But, the absence of any Arab democracies is why many people are skeptical
about Sharansky's argument. Why are they all authoritarian and/or
dictatorships? There must be something about the Arab world that makes it
so backward and so lacking in human rights and democracy. I have argued in
an earlier piece that this is because Arab societies are essentially tribal,
and adopt a hierarchical system of government in which the individual will
is subservient to the group. The totalitarian tendency in Germanic and
Russian societies was similar, but of course different in certain respects.
One characteristic aspect of the reversion from totalitarian to democratic
societies is the development of secular society in the West. The reason it
developed in the West is because of the original separation of Church and
State, i.e. of religious and secular power. This was not true of Judaism
nor of Islam. It was the renaissance followed by the reformation, as well
as the suppression of Catholicism in Britain that led to the evolution of
secular power in the West (Henry VIII is one of my heroes).
Secular culture has been spreading around the world, as can be seen in the
common dress (jeans), music, appliances and reduction in religious
belief/adherence in the West. This is mainly what frightens the
Arabs/Muslims. Their leaders see the religious hierarchy that has given
them control and stability being swept away by a secular society in which
competition is expected and people are free to choose for themselves how
they want to live. This is the great "evil" that Muslims fear, and this is
why they call the US the great Satan and Israel the little Satan, because
they fear the spread of our secular culture. This has been behind their
antagonism to Israel from the start. They will do almost anything to
subvert this process, but at the same time they are totally dependent on the
West, for example for selling their oil. This is akin to the situation of
the Soviet Union when it wanted to suppress its dissidents, but needed
Western trade to survive, and in the end could not have both. By giving up
repression the USSR signed its own death warrant. Let's hope the
Arab/Muslim countries will do the same.