Abstract
Democracy and freedom are valuable principles and main constituents of the American “way of life” which many countries aspire to. This may be true, but when such a freeing democracy is exported in a standardized western style and imposed on other nations, it becomes oppressive, debilitating, and uninspiring. This paper examines the double standards used in relation to issues of democracy and veiling within US rhetoric and hegemonic discourses. It also highlights what US democracy means to nations like Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iraq. It aims to underline the impact of the rhetoric of freedom and democracy on the Muslim world. This argument has important implications for theory and practice directed at disturbing dominant discourses of democracy and veiling.
Highlights
Introduction“All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors
Democracy and freedom are valuable principles and main constituents of the American “way of life” which many countries aspire to
This paper examines the double standards used in relation to issues of democracy and veiling within US rhetoric and hegemonic discourses
Summary
“All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. Hobsbawm (2005) rejected the idea that democracy can be exported or imposed on states in order to remake the world He believed that the 20th century had already demonstrated that states cannot bring about social change by “transferring institutions across borders.” Hobsbawm (2005) commented on Bush’s second inaugural address in which he does not find him putting much stress on Iraq, Afghanistan, or the war on terror but still believes that: The rhetoric implies that democracy is applicable in a standardised (western) form, that it can succeed everywhere, that it can remedy today's transnational dilemmas, and that it can bring peace, rather than sow disorder. To impose a western democracy on a non-western country does not make it a noble cause, on the contrary, it is another type of oppression and silencing of its natives
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