Quote:Actually I would prefer a more direct form of democracy, but not at any cost:
Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted to clarify.
You believe in direct democracy, ie. that form of government which encourages or requires citizens to decide, by sheer numbers what policies should/shouldn't be implemented. So if the majority of people want homosexuality or incest or prostitution legalised, then it's legalised. If the majority of the people want to ban the call to prayer from mosques, then it's banned, if the majority of the people want to ban the Qur'an then it's banned etc. Right? This is what you ultimately believe democracy is about?
Rather than just the people deciding which candidate wins an election and rules the country.
Quote:but you are welcome to make that distinction in answering it.
I won't answer it, as it's clearly directed at the new Muslim members. You already know my view anyway I think.
I don't think the distinction needs to be made between option 2 that I specified and direct democracy, as they are just two different levels of the same thing. But option 1 which I specified is something completely different, as I've mentioned to you before, it's more correctly known as a republic, not a democracy.
Quote:Freedom of speech is usually necessary for democracy to function properly.
Really freedom of speech is a very relative term. For instance, in Islam, it's permissible to correct your leader, if he strays, and I'd consider that freeedom of speech, but blasphemy is not permitted, as neither is public slander, yet in the West they are mostly fine. Likewise, we see some people on here claiming that believing in and speaking in favour of Islam shouldn't be allowed, inidicating they don't think that speech should be that 'free''.
Quote:Freedom of sexuality is not necessary for democracy to function.
I really can't see any country that has capital punishment for homosexuality and adultery being considered Democratic... can you?