WASHINGTON – As Iraq moves toward elections in a few weeks, it’s time to explode the insolent myth that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

The myth is just that. It has never been true. And it won’t be true even if Iraq eventually is ruled again by a dictator like Saddam Hussein. Yet the myth refuses to die. Just this month, in fact, Islamic scholars gathered in Jakarta, Indonesia, to combat the calumny and discuss its implications.

The Jakarta Post quoted Muhammad Khalid Masud, a Pakistani scholar, this way: “Democracy is compatible with Islam because according to the Qur’an all men are created equal.”

I attended a recent seminar here in Washington on America’s role in the world, and I asked various scholars about the Islam/democracy myth. No matter their political leanings, they denounced it and expressed support for President Bush’s general vision (while arguing with many of his tactics) of standing up for democratic reform throughout the world, including in many Islamic countries that today are ruled by oppressive regimes.

“I completely reject the idea that Islam and democracy are incompatible,” said Peter Brookes, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

“That’s just ridiculous. All you have to do is take a trip to Indonesia,” he said of the world’s most populous Islamic nation, which has had a democratically elected government for decades. “Democracy and freedom is not an Eastern or Western value. It’s a universal value.”

Robert O. Boorstin, a senior vice president at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, agreed: “I don’t buy that democracy and Islam don’t fit together in some way. But it’s important to get Americans to recognize that it won’t be our way.”

Brookes described the Islam/democracy myth as “a bunch of nonsense, and we shouldn’t give any quarter to it at all.” He pointed out that after World War II people also said the Germans and Japanese could never live under democratically elected governments.

Peter Khalil, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, also agreed with Brookes: “I don’t think Islam is incompatible with democracy. I think that’s quite insulting.”

The Shiites of Iraq, who constitute a majority of the population, are “committed to an equal representation of all the people of Iraq,” said Khalil, an Australian who served for nine months in Iraq last year as director of national security policy for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Bathsheba Crocker, who helps direct an Iraqi reconstruction study at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that millions of Iraqis are registered to vote, and “most Iraqis think elections can and should happen” in January. However, she said Iraq’s minority Sunnis “are marginalized and have been from the beginning.”

But why the continuing debate over the idea that Islam and democracy are in fatal tension? One reason is what some leaders of Islamic nations have said – often to protect their own hides.

For instance, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who runs one of the most oppressive regimes in the Arab world, has gone out of his way to insist that any reforms of Saudi political life are not moves “toward Western-style democracy, much less an imitation of Western-style democratic reform” – as if that would be poisonous.

The reality is that most of the 22 nations in the Arab League are run by autocratic regimes that have oppressed their own people in disastrous ways. They criticize democratic reform because it may lead to their own political demise, not because democracy can’t live comfortably with Islam.

The scholars in Jakarta pointed to other factors that have slowed progress toward democratic reform in the Islamic world. Masud, for instance, said the ruling elite in such countries often believes the masses aren’t qualified to govern themselves.

In addition, he said, “since only experts in Islamic tradition can properly interpret sharia (Islamic law), they alone can represent the sovereignty of God.” That, he said, falsely gives rise to a rejection of popular participation in politics. Other scholars noted that tribal affinity and other cultural traditions have made it difficult to introduce democracy into Islamic lands.

But to say the religion of Muslims is inherently hostile to self-governance is a lie that must be defeated.

Bill Tammeus is a columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to him at: The Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64108-1413. Or e-mail him at tammeuskcstar.com.