Democracy

By Naguib Mahfouz

---

What upsets me most of all is the claim made by some that we are not qualified for democracy. The truth is that the history of humanity has never known peoples that were naturally qualified for democracy; peoples, as it were, created democratic. The peoples of the world now identified as democratic are only so because they chose to tread that path.

If we are ever to achieve democracy, we must throw ourselves into it; we must fight for it, battling with the various waves it throws at us.

This, in the end, is the only route to the democratic shore. If we shy away from democracy, on the other hand, letting our peoples grow up under totalitarian regimes until they are qualified for democracy, we will only perpetuate totalitarianism.

In this respect we are like a person with a small child, who fears that, if his child should try to walk, it would fall over. Instead this person keeps carrying its child long after it is capable of walking. The end result will be that the child will end up crippled, never learning to walk for as long as it lives. The way to learn to walk is to throw oneself into the activity, to practice it. And the same is true of democracy. We must not fear; we must not hesitate. Only then will we be democratic.

Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy