THE ROLE OF MODERATE RELIGION IN A POST-DICTATOR STATE

An interesting piece positing that much of the unrest is normal...and what moderate religion can do to fix it.

When countries like Afghanistan or Iraq are liberated from either a religious or a secular tyranny, or when regimes like the former Soviet Union implode, an enormous increase in antisocial behavior typically follows. As if someone had removed a heavy lid from a boiling pot, its contents spill over in an explosive increase in crime, drug abuse, AIDS, alcoholism, child abandonment, and much more.

The US and its allies are so dedicated to liberty that they tend to ignore the darker side of the early phases of democratization. Although it is rarely put this way, Western actions seem to be based on the assumption that this damaging behavior is the price that must be paid to learn to be free, and will subside on its own. But that's hardly the case, as experiences in countries as different as Russia and Iraq have shown...

Russia, because it has been liberated longer, is a good example. In the four years following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's overall crime rate increased 73 percent and murders 116 percent. An indication of how shredded the social fabric had become is that victims in 63 percent of major criminal-injury cases were relatives or friends of the offenders...

Advocates of liberty assume that people are good by nature, but corrupted by totalitarian regimes - and that once these regimes unravel, people will take to doing what is right. But being pro- social requires that people internalize a moral code. Communities must gently chide those who deviate from the straight and narrow and honor those who fulfill their social obligations.

In the long run, liberated societies can form new informal moral codes and social controls. In the short run, however, they must build on what is in place. And in many areas, this is religion. I refer not to the fundamentalist but to the moderate teachings that exist in all religions, Islam included. The line that separates the two is precisely what is at issue: Fundamentalism undergirds totalitarian regimes; moderate practices depend largely on moral suasion.