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Democracy

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY

Although, as Steven R. Hofmann suggests, some Western scholars dismiss the mutual exclusiveness of Islam and democracy, the pervasive scholarly view of the Islam-democracy relationship in the West assumes, according to Mustapha K. Pasha, that democracy is ultimately a estern ideal type, which uniquely can provide a universally plausible form for the organization of political life. Asserting that Islam is merely the continuation of oriental despotism, this modernist view rejects the possibility of compromise between Islam and democratic values and practices. Fareed Zakaria argues that this dominant view among Western scholars during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be traced back to their perception of the former Ottoman Empire as epitomizing autocratic rule — although other parts of the world, such as Russia, Japan and China, were ruled at that time by governments no less autocratic.
This Western scholarly view of the irreconcilability of Islam and democracy is so radical as to assume not only that Islam has failed to promote democratic values and ideals, together with the demo¬cratic form of government, but also that there is a deep antagonism between Islam and Western democracies. For instance, putting Islam and Marxism in one camp and condemning the rejection of political freedom by Islam, Seymour M. Lipset predicts that the development of democracy in Islamic countries is highly improb¬able in the near future. In similar vein Francis Fukuyama affirms not only that 'Islam constitutes a systematic and coherent ideology, just like liberalism and communism, with its own code of morality and doctrine of political and social justice', but also that 'Islam has indeed defeated liberal democracy in many parts of the Islamic world, posing a grave threat to liberal practices even in countries where it has not achieved political power directly'. In identifying this alleged antagonism between Islam and democracy,...