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Analysis of Rhetorical Strategies - Benazir Bhutto


            In "Islam and Democracy," Benazir Bhutto argues that the religion of Islam and Democratic values aren't inherently at opposite ends of the governmental spectrum, they just haven't been given a fair chance to coexist. Bhutto believes the western notion of incompatibility between Islam and democracy is used to divert attention from the involvement of western imperialist powers. Western political intervention in the affairs of the Muslim countries remains to be the biggest impediment in their evolution and growth as democratic institutions. Bhutto grew up in Pakistan, where Islam is not just a religion, but a set of rules on how to live your life. She then went on to study abroad at Harvard University, giving her the experience of freedom of speech, elected representatives, and minority rights, which is what defines a full-fledged western democracy. This influences her idea of what a perfect government for Pakistan could be. She starts off this chapter of her book with a prolepsis: an immediate rebuttal of the commonly held western belief that Islam and Democracy cannot go hand in hand. She then reasserts that Muslim countries are still fundamentally different than that of western states in the practice of democracy due to the core role that Islamic law plays in public affairs and government. This antithesis that she promotes outlines that either a Muslim government is a "secular" (means atheist in Urdu) Islamic state, or a religiously ideological one. This helps her argue how Islam can be just a religion or a set of laws that define a whole government. Making the west worry that Afghanistan's Islamic extremism has spilled over in Pakistan is a great use of a slippery slope by Bhutto. She does this by playing on her western audience's underlying fear of fundamentalists' extremist agendas, like the Afghani Mujahedeen wreaking havoc on the Russians, the United States, and even other Afghanis to set her precedent.


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