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Islamism and Democracy: On theCompatibility of Institutional Islamismand the Political Culture of DemocracyBassam Tibi aa University of Goettingen and Cornell University,Published online: 17 Dec 2009.

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 10, No. 2, 135–164, June 2009

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/09/020135-30 © 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14690760903192073

Islamism and Democracy: On the Compatibility of Institutional Islamism and the Political Culture of Democracy

BASSAM TIBI

University of Goettingen and Cornell UniversityTaylor and FrancisFTMP_A_419380.sgm10.1080/14690760903192073Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & Francis1020000002009BassamTibiB.Tibi@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

ABSTRACT In the recent past there has been a very questionable shift in the West withrespect to the assessment of Islamism. This shift is based on unverified assumptions and isunderlain by a spirit of political correctness, combined with a drive towards a pragmaticembrace of what are termed ‘moderate Islamists’ in order to appease Islamism. With thismindset, policy makers and opinion leaders, as well as some scholars, have been engagingin a changed assessment of Islamism, shifting from an overall rejection of ‘radical Islam’to an overly positive sentiment towards those Islamists who forgo terrorism and pay lip-service to democracy. In this context, one sees in the West the view spreading that‘moderate’ Islamists represent a variety of political Islamism which is compatible with thelong-awaited agenda of democratisation in the world of Islam. The present study main-tains that these views are mistaken and instead operates on the opposite assumption thatthe core political thought of Islamism contradicts democracy. This study aims at falsifyingthese sorts of positive views about political Islam.

Introduction

Based on a positive assessment of Islamism,1 the questionable formula ‘Islamwithout fear’2 has been put forward. It refers to the Islamist movement of theMuslim Brothers in Egypt, which disposes today of global networks and has anoutreach that even encompasses the US. It is one of the four major transnationalmovements of Islamist internationalism.3 The above formula implies that Islam-ists, not only in Egypt but also in general, can be accommodated within a processof democratisation. Islamists are looked to to replace the current ruling autocratsand their authoritarian regimes. Another example that is often presented insupport of the democratic character of political Islam is the Adalet ve KalkinmaPartisi (AKP: Justice and Development Party), an Islamist party that has not onlybeen ruling Turkey since 2002, but also dividing it.4 The AKP is presented by somepundits in Washington, DC as a model for a ‘moderate Islamic republic’.5 Forexample, Stephen Larrabee of the Rand Corporation argues that ‘Under the AKP,Turkey has emerged as an important actor in the region … [the] banning of theparty could undercut efforts to promote reform and democracy’.6 If such abanning were to happen, according to Larrabee, then ‘the United States would losean important partner’. This statement is one blatant example of the unexamined

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assumptions that are nowadays wrongly presented as policy recommendationand are allegedly based on a solid analysis. In the present article I directly chal-lenge such views and join other liberal Muslims who have problems with this newWestern mindset, which has mistakenly been portrayed as an example of theopen-mindedness of the West, a West that is engaged in a process to better under-stand Islam. These people fail to distinguish between the faith and culture ofIslam, which is also a source of an Islamic ethics7 and can be made compatible withdemocracy, and Islamism. Of course, religious reforms are needed. In contrast, thepolitical ideology of Islamism is, despite its periodic pretentions, not open to thecore values and practices of democracy, namely pluralism and power-sharing.8

The present analysis begins with a quote by the Egyptian liberal Muslim Sa‘adal-Din Ibrahim, who was prosecuted in his own country and also jailed. At ameeting in Madrid in March 2005, Professor Ibrahim identified the dilemma inthis manner: ‘We are twisted between ruling autocrats and the theocrats opposingthem’.9 The implication is, as I previously suggested, that ‘Islamism is not thealternative to the rulers of the authoritarian and despotic regimes in the MiddleEast. Islamists would rather replace one malaise by another one’. This is thehypothesis underlying the present analysis.

Basically, I intend to challenge the unproven assumptions about the compatibil-ity of institutional Islamism with the political culture of democracy. Civic plural-ism is the core of any democracy. In order to unmask the pro-democracy claims ofIslamism, one must begin with an analytical inquiry that explains what Islamismis all about. Next, one needs to outline what democracy and democratisationmean, in terms of their substance rather than only their institutional forms. Incontrast to Stephen Larrabee, Raymond Baker and many other pundits who haveargued in favour of incorporating Islamism into the democratic process,I maintain that Islamist parties cannot be truly democratic.

In the stage-setting article completed for this special issue, I presented a generalanalysis of Islamism that does not need to be reiterated here. In that article onefinds a detailed differentiation between two prevailing orientations within thegeneral Islamist movement. One of them is institutional Islamism, the other isjihadism. While I am determined not to engage in any repetition, I must take theliberty of reemphasising two major facts that were outlined in more detail in thatintroductory article.

First, beginning with the Six Day War in 1967, political Islam, or Islamism, hasincreasingly become the major opposition current throughout the world of Islam.At issue is a huge movement with a considerable mobilising power that no onecan afford to overlook. Those who view Islamism as a fringe group and down-grade its followers as ‘radicals’, ‘fanatics’ or ‘extremists’ ignore the existing reali-ties on the ground. The label ‘radical Islam’ has now become well established,though in many ways it is wrong for the simple reason that it is based upon themisguided assessment that Islamism reflects the ‘radical Islam’ of a small minor-ity at the fringe. The reality is that Islamism is nowadays the most popular publicchoice in the world of Islam. True, active Islamists are still a minority, but anincreasingly powerful one.10 In a recent article, Bruce Hoffman repeated his well-known criticism of US strategy in the ‘war on terrorism’, which still fails to cometo terms with the general nature of Islamism. This failure is explained by Hoffmanas stemming from an incorrect assessment of jihadist Islamism as a grouping ofsuper-hawks on the margins of Muslim politics. US strategists believe that theycan win when they capture and kill these jihadists.11 In so doing, they ignore all of

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the political facts about the phenomenon and the roots of jihadism. Nevertheless,the power of Islamism derives from much more than the recruitment of jihadists.Political Islam is a mobilising religious ideology, represented by a transnationalmovement, that not only engages in a new form of irregular warfare but also, inother contexts, cynically plays and manipulates the game of democracy.

Second, Islamism is a general movement that is characterised both by unity andby diversity. All varieties of this Islamist movement pursue the same religionisedpolitical agenda for establishing al-nizam al-Islami, i.e. a shari‘a-based Islamic order.Such an order does not necessarily take the form of a global caliphate, as some notso well-informed pundits contend. It is rather an invention of tradition. Domesti-cally, this nizam (system) is the ‘Islamic state’, and in the world at large it is the‘Islamic world order’.12 Again, this nizam is not to be confused with the traditionalcaliphate. All Islamists also share the same worldview of a belief in the siyadat al-Islam (supermacy of Islam), based on a universal rabbaniyya (theocentrism) that hasbeen politicised to the point where it has become a religionised modern interna-tionalism. This mindset contradicts the very substance of democratic pluralism.

The common goal and worldview of the Islamists should not distract us fromthe fact that Islamists are not always in agreement among themselves, above allabout the way to achieve their goals. These disagreements account for the distinc-tion between the two aforementioned varieties of Islamism: institutional and jiha-dist Islamism. The first endorses the participation of Islamists in democraticinstitutions and processes in pursuit of seizing power, while the second continuesthe commitment to armed jihad, which has been reinvented as jihadism with anew meaning. This invention of tradition was first shaped by Hasan al-Banna,and was later refined and elaborated in the context of Qutb’s idea of ‘an Islamicworld revolution’. The expression of global jihad covers this new meaning. To besure, jihadists are also Islamists, i.e. members of a larger movement and notsimply ‘a crazed gang’, as Edward Said once argued. This transnational move-ment is bolstered by global links, both at home and throughout the Islamicdiaspora in Europe. To classify jihadists as the ‘bad guys of radical Islam’, incontrast to the good guys of institutional Islamism, who are then viewed as‘moderate Muslims’, is to miss the fundamental point. The result of this is a fail-ure to properly understand the full scope of Islamism.

Having outlined these basic features, it must be emphasised that the task ofthe present article is not to deal with Islamist jihadism, as this phenomenon hasbeen analysed in-depth elsewhere, including in TMPR (see issue 1, 2007). Thescope of the present analysis is exclusively limited to shedding light on institu-tional Islamism in the course of examining the unexamined assumptions ofthose Westerners who promote ‘moderate Islamism’ as a pro-democracy move-ment. I dispute this view and strongly doubt that Islamism could ever end upserving as a framework for what Larrabee described as promoting ‘reform anddemocracy’ in the world of Islam.

The present article reflects a long-standing reflection on the issue of democracyin the Arab world. A part of this background, which is pertinent to the presentanalysis, is the inner-Arab debate on two issues: first, the azmat al-demuqratiyya(crisis of democracy) in the Arab world, and second, ‘les Arabes face leurdestin’.13 I was lucky to be part of both debates, as well as of three projects run inthe US and Europe on Islam and democracy.14 This background has had a greatimpact on the findings of the present article, and in general on my thinking onthis theme.

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In the course of my research in the past three decades on Islam and democracy,I went beyond the Arab Middle East in an effort to free myself from the confinesof established Arabo-centrism. I lived, pursued research in a comparativemanner, and taught in several countries in west Africa and in southeast Asia.Recently, in July 2009 I was in Jakarta/Indonesia to participate in a project on‘Debating Progressive Islam’. All participants were in agreement that thisprogressive Islam contradicts Islamism. In addition, I looked at Islam throughoutwestern Europe. Based on this knowledge, I cannot support the unproven andwrong contention that Islam and democracy ‘meet in Europe’.15

Given all of the divergent faces of Islam, which reflect a great diversity, onecannot overlook the prevalence of Arab Sunni Islam. This prevalence cannotmerely be explained by reference16 to Saudi petro-dollars. The impact of Wahhabiinternationalism cannot be denied. It is, however, the fact that the Arab region hasbeen the cultural core of Islamic civilisation ever since the birth of Islam. Develop-ments within Arab-Sunni Islam have exerted a disproportionate influence on themaking of this civilisation, both in the past and in the present. Consequently,Muslim attitudes towards Islam, Islamism, and democracy are also often deter-mined by the Sunni Arab thinkers. Indeed, the flourishing of political Islam, beingone of the major repercussions of the defeat of Arab secular regimes in the 1967war, was a process that started in the Arab Middle East. Hereafter, it had rippleeffects throughout the world of Islam. Of course, there is also the ‘civil Islam’ ofIndonesia,17 which is much more favourable to democracy, but attitudes and prac-tices in this Southeast Asian country have never greatly affected the Arab world.Rather, it has been the other way around. I lived and worked in Indonesia, andhave seen Arab preachers there (some with US doctorates) teaching Indonesiansthat their tolerant ‘civil Islam’ is based on incorrect interpretations. This is indeeda form of cultural imperialism. In contrast, I have never met an Indonesian Muslimpreaching civil Islam in the Middle East. At al-Azhar University in Cairo, on thecontrary, I met Indonesians who were learning Salafi versions of Islam.

Today, and in particular since 9/11, the promotion of democracy and democra-tisation as well as ‘regime change’ have determined the policies of the US in Iraqand later in Palestine, in pursuit of ‘winds of change’ in the Arab world. This isenvisioned as a strategy for an overall democratisation process. Those effortshave utterly failed. Why?

In this article it is argued that the lack of proper knowledge about two coreissues has been consequential. These are, firstly, a clear understanding of democ-racy and democratisation in the Arab world, and secondly, a proper assessmentof Islamism. The present article aims to clarify both issues as a prerequisite foraccurately assessing the compatibility of institutional Islamism with democracy.

The Inquiry and its Assumptions

Institutional Islamism is today represented most prominently by the Justice andDevelopment Party (AKP) in the republic of secular Turkey. Make no mistake, theAKP is an Islamist party and not, as has often been alleged, a conservative Islamicpolitical entity analogous to the Christian Democratic parties of Western Europe.18

In November 2002 this Islamist party won a landslide electoral victory that enabledthe Islamists to dominate the Turkish parliament. This victory was reinforced inthe early elections of 2007, which not only upheld but also strengthened the powerof the AKP against the secular parties. Is this evidence for the shift of political Islam

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towards an acceptance of democracy? Is this a model for general emulation? Is thepolitical culture of democracy compatible with the political ideology of AKP-styleIslamism? In Turkey, the AKP monopolises all major state institutions: the parlia-ment, the presidency and the office of the Prime Minister. The AKP pays lip-serviceto democracy, but refuses to share power with the secularists who still control theuniversities, the juridical system and above all the army. Based on my work inTurkey I argue that the Islamist approach of the AKP is not promising, since it isdeceptive, contributes to a ‘divided Turkey’, and fails, through a process ofEuropeanisation, to open the door to Turkey’s entry into the EU.19

My assumptions herein are that pluralism and power-sharing are basic featuresof democracy, and that Islamists do not share this democratic culture and itsvalues. I also argue that the principal beneficiaries of the democratisation processthat has been promoted by the US and is currently limited to the ballot box havebeen the Islamists. It is my opinion that a process of democratisation that isrestricted to the procedure of voting is not a real democratisation process, andI will examine these hypotheses in my analysis of the compatibility of institutionalIslamism and democracy that follows.

As stated in the introductory section, the present inquiry examines an unexam-ined policy assumption regarding Islamists and democracy that has been takenfor granted and then implemented by political elites in the US and the EU. Theinclusion of the world of Islam in the EU project of ‘Democratization of theNeighborhood’20 is a part of this policy. No doubt, it is not wrong that the EU andthe US consider the Islamists in their efforts at ‘promoting democracy’, and itwould be wrong to quarantine them completely. It has already been made abun-dantly clear that Islamism is a power in the world of Islam that no one can affordto overlook. However, the politics of inclusion should not be equated with bring-ing Islamists to power. The problem is that Islamist movements at present notonly constitute a potent opposition to existing autocratic rulers, but also are theonly ones that are ready and may be able to replace them and take power. Despitethe acknowledgement of the popularity of Islamism, I fail to share the conclusionof the Fincancial Times that ‘the participation (of Islamists) in the political processremains the best hope of moderating their often radical views’.21 This view iswrong, even though it has become part of the established wisdom in the West inrecent years. It is self-defeating to upgrade Islamism, for whatever reason and forwhatever justification.

It is generally correct that one should avoid adopting a binary mindset whendealing with Islamism. When it comes to democracy, one needs to allow for theopening of new political spaces. However, both the stakes and the risks are veryhigh. Existing experiences with regard to the practices of Hezbollah, Hamas andthe Islamist parties of Iraq are not reassuring. Therefore, I argue that the inclu-sion of Islamists in the government, and the allocation of power to them, neversubstantially moderates them. In all three of these examples, one can observepolitical Islamist parties that are represented in the elected parliament and also inthe government, but that nevertheless maintain their terrorist militias and theirrelated non-state military networks. In many cases, these forces have been usedto intimidate any opposition to Islamism. In this peculiar combination of Islam-ism and democracy, one fails to find any evidence supporting the assessmentthat the electoral victories of the Islamists will contribute to transforming theminto moderate democratic parties. The pivotal question is this: is a democracybased on a culture of disagreement, pluralism, and power-sharing compatible

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with the ideology or the political rule of Islamism? To answer this question, oneneeds to look at Islamist ideology and also at the way in which Islamists embracedemocracy.

Before conducting such an inquiry, it is worthwhile to look at the relevant factsin the context of existing political realities. In Iraq, the Islamist Da‘wa partyrepresents an institutional variety of Islamism. It rules the country in coalitionwith two Shi‘i jihadist movements, namely, the Supreme Council for the IslamicRevolution in Iraq (SIIC), whose military wing is the Faylaq Badr (Badr Brigade),and the Bloc of Muqtada al-Sadr and his equally jihadist al-Mahdi army. Thelatter consists of irregular fighters. Members of the Badr Brigade entered in theranks of the Iraqi army and police after the ‘liberation’. In this Iraqi case, we havein reality a blurred line between institutional Islamism and jihadism. It can beargued that in Iraq the ‘US-led liberation’22 of the Shi‘i majority23 from thetyranny of the Sunni minority has simply been reversed. This is not yet democ-racy, since one tyranny has arguably been replaced by another one.

In the case of the Palestinian Hamas24 movement, which won an absolute major-ity in the February elections of 2006, the Islamists ousted the autocratic secularFath and its Palestinian National Authority (PNA) regime from power in Gaza.Since then, they have not been willing to share power with the PLO. Hamas wentto the ballots while continuing its terrorist assaults against civilians, regardless ofwhether the latter were Israelis or Palestinians. A year later, the free election ofHamas contributed to its full seizure of power, followed by a military coup inwhich its militias eliminated all opposition to the new regime. It is acknowledgedequally by the US and by the EU that Hamas is a ‘terrorist’ movement. How, then,can it be democratic? The free election did not transform it into a democratic party.The Gaza war of 2009, like the earlier war in Lebanon in 2006, turned out to be abig mistake by Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah, respectively, suffered military losses,but nonetheless emerged politically victorious from these wars, since they gainedfurther political prestige and influence, and also some popularity in Europe.

Unlike Hamas, the Islamist AKP in Turkey is free from bullets, but it was never-theless the first to receive a Hamas delegation, followed by Iran. None of the Arabstates did this. It has to be mentioned that the AKP is exerting a growing influenceover the police and secret services, or at least factions within those bodies, whichmay eventually serve as a substitute for its banned former militias. In fact, they arealready engaged in this task. One can safely state that during the past seven yearsthe AKP has been able to shift the balance of power in its own favour against coun-tervailing secular forces, including the army. In 2009 the AKP became bolder inpromoting an Islamist agenda in the sphere of foreign affairs, and furtherenhanced its outreach at home. In foreign policy it sided with Hamas againstIsrael, and made approaches to Iran as well. At home the AKP increasinglysuppressed the opposition and silenced its critics in the press. In this context,opposition secular newspapers were presented with tax bills that in some casesexceeded their own endowments. Moreover, in a reaction to alleged coups, thegovernment established a convenient pretext to arrest journalists, universityprofessors, and even powerful army officers. When the West cites the example ofthe AKP as a precedent for promoting the coming to power of the Muslim Brothersin Egypt, is it really referring to a democratic model worthy of emulation?

In Lebanon, Hezbollah25 has since May 2007 become a powerful party in parlia-ment and the government, but it also continues to maintain its own private irregulararmy, which received a great boost in the war with Israel in July–August 2006.26

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What conclusions can be drawn from these developments? To be sure, that dependson where one stands!

These facts seem not to affect many policy advisors and some pundits in theUS. For instance, the retired CIA and former RAND corporation analyst GrahamFuller argues in favour of a cooperation with political Islam, as represented byvarious movements.27 Also the fact that the Islamists agitate against the West,which they characterise as al-salibiyya al-jadida (the new crusaderism),28 seems notto discourage the promotion of Islamists by many in the West. In pursuit of thepromotion of a pattern of undefined democracy and unspecified democratisation,Islamists have increasingly been viewed as potential partners. In France, the twoleading experts on Islam, Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy, not only wrongly forecastthe alleged ‘decline of Islamism’ and falsely claimed that a new form of ‘post-Islamism’ existed,29 but also engaged in scandalous apologetics in favour ofIslamists. Today, this kind of work seems to be most popular in Islamic studies inthe US, but it is useless for the present inquiry. For this reason, I qualify my ownwork as Islamology and distance it from established Edward Said-influencedIslamic studies.

Egypt, the birthplace of political Islam, provides a textbook case for the well-organised Islamist opposition.30 It can be safely assumed that any election inEgypt without fraud would lead to the handing over of political power to Islamistsfrom the Muslim Brotherhood in that country. Under these conditions and in thiscontext, the question that must be asked is whether this long-awaited democrati-sation is nothing else than the opening up of space for the Islamists to come topower and rule.

The 2002 report of the United Nations Development program (UNDP)concluded that the present misery in the Middle East is best explained by the lackof democracy and individual human rights.31 Would Islamists alter these home-made conditions? Is it a sign of open-mindedness that, in a Financial Timescommentary, both the former Swedish Prime Minister and present Foreign AffairsMinister Carl Bildt and the former Spanish Foreign Minister Anna Palacio jointlyapproved of the electoral victory of Hamas in January 2006? Both approved ofHamas’s victory because they viewed it as democratic. Those who do not over-look all of the anti-Semitic statements included in Hamas’s charter,32 and whoagree with Hannah Arendt’s view that anti-Semitism is always an essential part ofany totalitarianism,33 can only question the mindset of those western Europeanpoliticians who view political Islam, as exemplified by Hamas, as being compati-ble with democracy.

No doubt, democracy and democratisation are the best promise for a betterfuture in the world of Islam. However, one must first clarify what is meant bydemocracy and then identify what political Islam is in order to determinewhether the two phenomena are compatible. At the outset, it is necessary toemphasise that democracy34 is not only a voting procedure using ballots, but alsoa political culture of civic values. From this point of view, one can generallyconclude that ideologies of religious fundamentalism,35 of which Islamism is avariety, are not compatible with democracy. The case of the Muslim Brothers inEgypt,36 who today avow their support for democracy, may appear at first glanceto contradict this statement. The fact, however, that they do not share the samepolitical values of democracy and insist on the application of the shari‘a37

supports the hypothesis of incompatibility. This is the core of the present analysisand of its assumptions.

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A Marriage of Convenience: Islamists and Democracy? What Kind of Democratisation?

It has already been established in this article that democracy cannot berestricted to a voting procedure. The ballot box is an instrument of democratisa-tion, but not its substance, which involves embracing the political culture ofdemocracy. Democracy is based on pluralism and power sharing, both withinthe state and throughout society. In contrast, voting is no more than a formalprocedure. Of course, no democracy can exist without voting, but it is equallytrue that no democracy can prevail if the political culture and the way of lifeassociated with it are not in place. No doubt, there exists diversity withindemocracies, but despite all of its variations, there is something universal aboutdemocracy that must be shared by all of humanity if democracy is to becomeglobal. The pending, pertinent and related questions are: is it democracy whenthe democratically elected Hamas abolishes the constitutional court set up bythe PNA? Is it democracy when the elected Hamas government puts all of itsfoes in jail without a trial? Is it democracy when the al-Mahdi Army in Iraqprohibits the posting of flyers of other candidates who are competing withMuqtada al-Sadr? Is the reluctance of the AKP in Turkey to constitutionallyestablish freedom of religious faith a sign of democracy? Is it democracy whenthe AKP forcibly replaces secular judges and university presidents by Islamistones from their own rank and file? Is the totalitarian ideology of hakimiyyatAllah (God’s rule) in a shari‘a state, as envisioned by the Muslim Brotherhood inEgypt, really consonant with democracy? There are many more related ques-tions that one could ask, but the ones above are illustrative and should thereforesuffice for our purposes.

All of these questions must be listed, and none of them ought to be avoided orsilenced. They are being asked precisely in order to shed light on the relationshipof Islamists to democracy and to clear up whether the institutional Islamists couldever deliver genuine democracy by launching a real democratisation process. Alot of nonsense is currently being promoted in the West about political Islam,much of it disseminated by so-called pundits who neither know the culture northe languages nor the literature produced by political Islam. Unfortunately, west-ern decision-makers often listen to these pundits and, after following their advice,mistakenly restrict their efforts to a policy of appeasement. Sadly, they have notyet learned one of the most rudimentary lessons from history – that totalitarian38

movements cannot be appeased.For a better understanding of Islamism in general as one variety of religious

fundamentalism in the world of Islam, I refer the reader to my introductory articlein this special issue of TMPR. All Islamists want to establish what they view as anizam Islami (Islamic system of government) based on the notion of hakimiyyat Allah(God’s rule or sovereignty), as opposed to the notion of popular sovereignty asso-ciated with secular democracy, which is considered to be derived from the ‘satanic’thinking of the infidels. The core issue in Islamist ideology is the contention thatonly God, not man, is entitled to rule the world. The Islamic state envisioned bythe Islamists is based on a constructed and politicised shari‘a (the term shari‘aoccurs only once in the Qur’an, in sure 45, verse 18, and with a very different mean-ing). In contrast to this ideology created by the Muslim Brothers from the momentthat their movement was established in 1928, today’s Muslim Brothers pay lip-service to democracy, present their version of Islamism as a moderate form of

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Islam, and argue for their other views within the context of multiple modernities.Is this simply being done for convenience and for tactical reasons, or does it repre-sent a fundamental shift in Islamist thinking? How could democracy truly growfrom people who are committed to the shari‘atisation of Islam? In their ideologicalbackground and historical development, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt have nocredentials whatsoever that could support claims concerning the compatibility oftheir ideology with the civic culture of democracy.

In terms of multiple ‘paths to democracy’ and the need for ‘authenticity’, onemay ask whether there is a specific Arab or Islamic form of democracy? A well-founded answer requires a general analysis of the interrelation between Islam,freedom, and democracy. It is acknowledged that Western patterns of democracymay not succeed, or be properly applied, in the world of Islam. Therefore, democ-racy, despite its universal roots, has to have some authentic features in the Arabworld and, more generally, in the world of Islam. Democracy and democratisa-tion are not recent issues in the civilisational interaction of Muslims with Europe.However, in the context of European expansion despite colonialism there was, inthe positive meaning of cultural borrowing, an adoption of democracy. Inmodern history this was always on the agenda of the Middle East.39 The adoptionof a kind of democracy adapted to the conditions of the Middle East was a majorconcern in the nineteenth and early twentieth Arab discussions about liberalism.40

During that period, Arab Muslim liberals who went to Europe were impressed byFrench democracy. Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi was the first of them; he lived in Paris andadvocated cultural borrowing from the West as long as it did not contradict theshari‘a.41 The Arab Muslims who followed were not only liberals, but also secu-larised individuals who recognised that democracy and the strict application ofthe shari‘a did not fit together. Hence they abandoned the shari‘a altogether. Afterthe failure of these liberal experiments, the populism of pan-Arab nationalism(the ideologies of Nasir and the Ba‘thist movement) took over. These authoritar-ian pan-Arabists abandoned democracy under the pretext that it was alien to theArabs. At present, the Islamists, though still in opposition, have largely replacedthese secular nationalists. On the top of their agenda is bringing back the shari‘a.which has often, but perhaps not surprisingly, been done instrumentally in thename of democratisation. This has been happening in Iraq and Palestine, as wellas elsewhere in the world of Islam.

The new Iraqi constitution does not mention the shari‘a, but contains thefollowing constitutional provision: ‘no laws may contradict the fixed principlesof Islam creating a supreme court composed of experts in Islamic law that willhave the power to strike laws down as unconstitutional’.42 According to the WallStreet Journal, this is one of the clauses of the new Iraqi constitution. A similarprovision exists in the new Afghan constitution. Both came into effect under theaegis of US democratisation efforts. Clearly, this is not a model for democratisa-tion, at least not within the context of constitutional democracy. Instead, it is amodel for the shari‘atisation of the state. This is the process that is happening inIraq, in Afghanistan and, in the future, will probably happen in many otherIslamic countries, above all Egypt. Since the intensification of the ‘Arab predica-ment’, as embedded in the repercussions of the 1967 war, political Islam is notonly on the rise, but also claims to be the one solution that represents an alterna-tive to all of the al-hulul al-mustawrada (imports from the West)’–a formula coinedby Qaradhawi. Secular democracy is placed at the top of the list of the institu-tions that Islamists reject. Is it not a contradiction, then, when Islamists make use

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of democracy? Not necessarily, if one recognises that they view democracymerely as a tactical method. In short, the Islamists resort to it – as is the case withTurkey’s AKP – because ‘democratic elections … (have) proven to be the easiestand most legitimate path to power’.43 They accept the formal procedures, i.e. theballot box, but reject the underlying pluralist culture of democracy.

Based on an unpleasant prior experience of defamation, I must again empha-sise that the problem is not an alleged ‘essentialized’ culture of Islam, butrather the political use of Islam44 for legitimating Islamist rule. In this under-standing, contemporary Islamism results from the politicisation of Islam duringa time of a crisis of legitimacy, combined with a structural crisis of society andthe state. The Islamists propagate the formula al-hall huwa al-Islam (‘Islam is thesolution’). For them, this solution is the Islamic shari‘a state. This state is basedon the principle of hakimiyyat Allah (God’s rule), which is clearly not in linewith democracy.

True, democracy has ancient Greek origins. This fact is used by the Islamiststo reject secular democracy by placing it among the hulul mustawrada (importedsolutions)45 – in other words, un-Islamic solutions that have been imported fromthe West. These Islamists overlook the historical fact that Islamic civilisation notonly had a positive civilisational encounter with Hellenism long before Europeitself, but also adopted its legacy, integrated it into the Islamic heritage, andacted as a mediator in passing aspects of this Greek legacy in an Islamic versionto the West. As the historian of civilisations Leslie Lipson notes in his seminalwork:

Aristotle crept back into Europe by the side door. His return was due tothe Arabs, who had become acquainted with Greek thinkers.46

The historical records reveal the fact that in the classical age of Islam, Greekphilosophy became an essential part of the classical Islamic falsafa (rationalistphilosophy), as opposed to fiqh (religio-legal orthodoxy). I establish the analogythat Muslims today could embrace the heritage of democracy as an outcome ofcultural modernity, as much as their ancestors were able to adopt the accomplish-ments of Hellenism. The claim of democracy to universality is generally accept-able to Muslims who subscribe to forms of civil Islam. Therefore, can there not bean alliance of civilisations, based on a shared commitment to democracy, againstall varieties of totalitarianism, including Islamism?

The compatibility of a reformed Islam with democracy, here understood as acomponent of modernity and its political culture, could hypothetically be thefoundation for general religious and cultural reforms in Islam.47 To be sure, thisis not the agenda of Islamism, which envisions a political order that is antitheticalto rather than consonant with democracy. As was argued in the introductorychapter, Islamism is a variety of religious fundamentalism. The concrete begin-ning of this process was the creation of the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood.All of its offspring and offshoots, including those in Palestine,48 are Islamistmovements. This branch of institutional Islam is often presented today as thealternative to al-Qa‘ida. According to the records of the Hudson Institute, theMuslim Brothers have also ensconced themselves within the US.49 On the top ofthe Muslim Brothers’ agenda is the establishment of a shari‘a-based nizamal-Islami, not a democracy. The lip-service paid to democracy by the Brothers isboth recent and instrumental; it does not reflect a basic shift of their mindset.

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The Pre-Islamist Record: Democracy and Democratisation in the Liberal Age of Islam

Hindsight is valuable, because the placing of a pending issue within a historicalcontext is highly useful for generating a better understanding. Secularism,democracy and cultural modernity entered the world of Islam in a civilisationalencounter with the West that was shaped by power and hegemony. Nevertheless,the Arab world – the core of Islamic civilisation – had, shortly after decolonisa-tion, undergone a period of democratic rule. Syria, Iraq, and Egypt are cases inpoint. The failure of the Arab and other Muslim liberals to deliver in their encoun-ter with modernity led first to the rise of the praetorian military (e.g. in Nasirism)and thereafter to the emergence of political Islam, which reflected the very samepredicament. The failure to introduce democracy at home in the modern sense ofthe term was also noted by the Arab authors of the UNDP report of 2002 on theArab world. Any notion of underdevelopment that is merely focused oneconomic structures is doomed to fail. It has to be enhanced and expanded tocover institutional development and also the concept of ‘developing cultures’.50

Why did Muslim liberals fail to establish democracy and individual humanrights? In this context, one should not engage in blame games by attributing theresponsibility for Muslim lack of development on outside powers, in a discourseof self-victimisation such as that of ‘Islam under siege’. One may well ask whyIndia – despite its colonial past – succeeded in becoming a democratic state and arising power, while the Arab and Muslim states which were never colonies (e.g.Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan) did not, and continue to be underachieversin democratisation. What is the satisfactory and convincing explanation for thisdivergence? Why did the introduction of democracy into the Arab world fail? Whyare the Muslim countries of the Middle East outside the so-called ‘third wave ofdemocratization’? Why did secularisation in the world of Islam fail?

Turkey, one of the most developed countries in the Islamic world, with anadmirable record of secularisation,51 has become a target of political Islam and isnow subjected to a ‘creeping Islamisation’.52 In the search for answers, I shallfocus on modern Arab history and offer the following three-phase periodisationscheme for patterns of rule in the Middle East.

First, Arab history, in the period of Arab liberal thought, was incorporated inthe civilisational orbit with Europe – positively in the form of responding to thechallenge posed by modernity and negatively given that this response occurred ina colonial context. In taking this situation into account, the earlier reference topost-colonial experiments with democratic rule (e.g. Egypt, Syria and Iraq) mustbe recalled. In these countries the system of parliamentary democracy wasaccepted and even partially implemented, until the rise of the military elementswho toppled those regimes and established an Arab variety of praetorian rule. Theonly remaining remnant of this tradition of Arab democracy is Lebanon, butdemocracy there is threatened the Shi‘i Islamists in Hezbollah, not by the military.

Second, as we have seen, the failure of democratic, multi-party rule smoothedthe way for the many coups d’état that resulted in the establishment of populistregimes by the military.53 The existing corruption and clientelism were identifiedwith and blamed on the democratic multi-party system, which was then replacedby the authoritarian one-party systems of Nasirism and Ba‘thism that claimed toengage in a program of political reform and purification. The related secular ideol-ogy of pan-Arab populism emphasised the unity of the nation against both political

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pluralism and multi-party democracy, which were portrayed derogatorily asdivisive phenomena that had produced a fragmentation of the ‘Arab nation’. Thosewho did not write off democracy altogether instead promoted a specific type ofArab democracy based on unity to replace pluralism. This ideology concealed thefact that praetorian dictatorships were deceptions committed in the name of Arab‘authenticity’.

Third, the defeat of the Arab secular populist regimes in the Six Day War of1967 intensified the Arab predicament and opened the way for a new kind of‘enlightenment’ that was launched by disillusioned Arab intellectuals whoengaged in a process of self-criticism hitherto alien to Arabs.54 However, thiseffort did not last long. The rise of what has been named al hall al-Islami (theIslamic solution) has become a truly populist mobilising ideology aimed at eradi-cating the seeds of a Muslim Enlightenment. Political Islam has its own ideologyand system of rule called hakimiyyat Allah. In the first volume of his aforemen-tioned trilogy, Al-Hall al-islami (The Islamic Solution), the most influential MuslimBrother of the present time, who is often addressed as ‘global mufti’, Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, was critical of what he called ‘imported solutions’. Therein thepattern of modern European ‘democratic rule’ was rejected as one of the manyfailed imported solutions from the West. Hence the allegedly authentic ‘Islamicsolution’ stood in direct contrast with democracy. This is the true face of politicalIslam that needs to be recognised, and it underlies all of the dishonest tacticalgames played by the Islamists. Most Westerners do not understand these gamesbecause they lack sufficient historical and cultural understanding, and for thisreason they often mistakenly take the pronouncements of the Islamists at facevalue, in particular when they claim disingenuously to subscribe to democracy.

At present, the experiment of democratisation in Iraq, which has so far beenboth tragic and unsuccessful, is pivotal for learning lessons and drawing conclu-sions about the proper path to a better future. At the end of the day, thisdemocratisation brought the suppressed Shi‘i Islamist opposition to power, andthus a form of majority rule. The Shi‘i are now in a position to turn the tables onthe previously hegemonic Sunnis. Two lessons are to be learned from the Iraqicase. The first is that democracy cannot be introduced from outside. The second isthat democratic values have to be culturally and institutionally rooted in orderfor a true democracy to be forged. Regime change is not tantamount to democrat-isation. Therefore, an accurate recognition of local realities and constraints, whichpresupposes the comprehension of cultural peculiarities, needs to be an essentialpart of any serious inquiry and of the reasoning derived therefrom. This does not,however, signify a repudiation of universality, since one needs to beware of fall-ing into the trap of legitimating particularism as an expression of Arab authentic-ity. The notion of asala (authenticity) has already been questioned, especiallysince it has become the cultural underpinning for both an Arab mentality of self-ghettoisation and an ideology for self-deception.55

In short, the liberal experiment of democracy in Islam failed for a variety ofreasons. The conclusion does not, however, necessitate an acceptance of culturalrelativism. The acknowledgement of diversity can go hand in hand with theestablishment of cross-cultural international standards. There are multiple pathsto democracy, but the reintroduction of the shari‘a in the name of democracy isnot one of them. The Islamist dawla Islamiyya (Islamic state)56 is only the mostrecent variety of totalitarianism. The ideology of Islamism is totalitarian, and istherefore not consonant with democracy and individual human rights. Islamism

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only came to the fore because the pre-Islamist ideological and political experi-ments failed to achieve their extravagant promises, but it is destined to be a non-achiever as well.

Islam and Islamism: A Return to an Important Distinction

The repeated experience of being accused of bashing Islam, since the open rejec-tion of Islamism is falsely equated with hostility towards Islam and denying it animportant role, compels me to state unequivocally that in order to establisha cultural underpinning for the establishment of democracy in the Arab world, areference to Islam is imperative. However, such a reference must be restricted to agenuine Islamic ethics of democracy. The reference to Islam must never beequated with consenting to the establishment of shari‘a-based political rule. It ismost unfortunate to see the approach to Islam adopted by academicians such asJohn Esposito and John Voll spreading like a cancer in Islamic studies, since suchan approach is not only questionable and perhaps even utterly incorrect, but alsovery damaging to genuine Muslim and non-Muslim efforts to oppose Islamism.

In contrast, there is a need to rethink Islam and promote a true Islamic reforma-tion that will ultimately have to be carried out by enlightened Muslims them-selves. In contrast to Esposito and Voll, I distinguish sharply between Islam andIslamism. In addition, I insist upon drawing a key distinction within politicalIslam between institutional Islamism and jihadist Islamism. Without taking thesesubstantial distinctions into consideration, no useful analysis of Islamism anddemocracy can be accomplished.

Viewed from a twenty-first-century perspective, and specifically after 9/11,the promotion of democracy in the world of Islam has become essential toworld peace. However, if one fails to distinguish between Islam, the religionand Islamism, a political ideology based upon a particular interpretation of thatreligion, then no pro-democracy politics can be successfully launched.

In this venture there are many considerations that need to be made. First, onehas to acknowledge the fact that democracy has been a cultural novelty in theIslamic world. The Islamic turath (cultural legacy) unfortunately does not includeit, and the traditional Arab shura norm is not equivalent to modern democracy butmany support it as ethics. Moreover, existing structural and cultural obstaclesthat still exist constitute serious impediments to democratisation.

Unlike those Westerners who write off culture on the pretext of criticisingsupposed ‘cultural essentialism’, many Arab opinion leaders publicly acknowl-edge that ‘culture matters’, both in general and particularly in the context ofdemocratisation. The alarming and previously cited 2002 UNDP report on ArabHuman Development that was prepared by Arab experts does not refer to a varietyof Arab-Muslim meetings that have also dealt with the intensifying misery of theregion, but nonetheless shares their view that these issues are not only home-grown but also determined in part by culture. Without overlooking the structuraland political impediments, both internal and external, one can argue that the lackof democracy is also related to cultural factors that act as constraints. This lack ofdemocracy and individual human rights is a part of Islam’s predicament, specifi-cally its exposure to cultural modernity, not simply an issue that has beenexploited instrumentally by Islamists in order to gain political support. Theculture of Islam has been reinvented by the Islamists, but not in a form that isconsonant with the political culture of democracy. Also, the Islamic shari‘a state,

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as envisioned by the Islamists and other Muslim cultural conservatives, lacks anyof the institutions for safeguarding a truly democratic culture.

It should again be emphasised that recognising the place of Islam is imperativefor any envisioned process of Muslim democratisation. That said, one mustconsider the following three aspects of the problem. The first is the level ofMuslim-Western political tensions, which undoubtedly has cultural underpin-nings that have intensified. The second are the tensions within the West itself inregard to the understanding of democracy, tensions which have deepened thetransatlantic rift between European and American opinion leaders. The third isthe increasing power of political Islam. On all of these levels, the pertinence of thedifferentiation between Islam and Islamism is clear. The compatibility of Islamismwith the civic culture of democracy is among these pivotal issues.

In short, any vision or politics for the democratisation in the world of Islammust confront Islamism and its ideology of an Islamic state based on the shari‘a.Democracy, as understood by the Islamists, is clearly something else altogether,and it would be silly to confound the two worldviews. Enlightened ArabMuslims acknowledge that there are different understandings of the concept ofdemocracy, but insist that there is a distinction between democracy and thatwhich is contrary to it.57 The Islamist opposition to existing autocratic regimesdoes not transform Islamist movements into ‘pro-democracy’ movements, asmany have naively claimed. The politicisation and ‘shari‘atization’ of Islam, aspursued by the Islamists, is not consonant or compatible with genuine democ-racy. Nevertheless, Islam – after a rethinking and religious reforms – can be putin harmony with democracy. At this point, the claim that Islamism is not anachiever in the field of democracy has been repeatedly verified.

The Ideology of Political Islam. The ‘Islamic State’ and Shari‘a as a Form of Constitutional Law?

The answer to the question of whether the Islamic shari‘a state fulfills internationalstandards of democratic constitutionalism (see notes 37 and 70) requires dealingwith the basic issue areas for making judgments about Islamism, both in terms ofideology and of political behaviour. In civil society, the rule of law is an essentialpart of any democracy. In this field, and in general, there are two factions opposedto one another: the universalists on the one hand, and the postmodern culturalrelativists on the other. However, both of these foes are Westerners. Ideologically,there are also civilisational differences in the understanding of law which also leadto a conflict on an international level. Of course, there are also tensions withinIslam between the Sunni and Shi‘i, who have different views about shari‘a law,differences that will be put aside here to maintain our primary focus.

On a scriptural level, the shari‘a in Islam is a moral code. In contrast, politicalIslamists view the shari‘a in an invention of tradition as the legal basis for theIslamic state. While acknowledging cultural differences, if one applies the univer-sality of democracy to Islam, one may ask whether the envisioned shari‘a-basedstate is simply an expression of cultural differences or whether it is a constructedcivilisational ideology that is incompatible with democracy.

There are surely Middle Eastern peculiarities, some of which are partly deter-mined by Islam. Some of them create real obstacles for the acceptance of theuniversality of democracy. One may argue that the acceptance of those particular-ities need to be limited, even though one has to take cultural difference seriously.

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But first, this difference has to be identified and discussed freely. The core questionis whether Islam is to be democratised, or whether democracy is to be Islamised.This is not a binary. Given the prevalence of Sunni Islam, the Arab debates on theseissues are highly influential and must therefore be taken seriously. The character-isation of the shari‘a as a form of constitutional law stems from these debates. Theprimary concern of Islamist ideology is to legitimate an Islamic state, whereas theconcern of the present study is to find out whether this is in line with democracy.

In going beyond ideological contentions and also beyond the accusations of theWest, one needs to understand the issues that underlie the lack of political free-dom in Arab societies themselves. In this venture, some Arab debates that tookplace more than a quarter of a century ago are worth reconsidering. For instance,in October 1980 Arab intellectuals who assembled in Tunis addressed the futureof their region by including the option for democracy. In this context, they easilyreached a consensus on that occasion: that there was no political freedom in themajority of Arab countries, and that there was a need to promote a cultural changein the context of ‘Les Arabes face leur destin’. Two decades later, in 2002, thisobservation was restated less rhetorically in the above cited UNDP report. Due tothis recognised lack of freedom, the debating Arab intellectuals expressed theirown commitment to the cause of liberty. Their problem was that they could not –and still cannot – act freely to try and establish an authentic framework for democ-racy in their own countries. They generally fear imprisonment if they reveal theirpro-democracy political commitments and, even if they are not imprisoned, theyare denied access to the means of cultural and political expression. Those means,like most other facilities for influencing opinion, are under the complete control ofthe state. Indeed, all of the means of articulation are under the surveillance of stateinstitutions, and are generally reserved for those mercenary intellectuals who arewilling to subject themselves to the existing systems of neo-patriarchy.58

Given the fact that at present Islamism is the only visible and viable oppositionto this type of repression, which is all too common in Arab countries, one mustask whether a shari‘a-inspired order for the future of Muslims, the Islamist option,really provides those hoped-for freedoms. The answer is that this option is by nomeans a promising one. To repeat the formula of Sa‘ad al-Din Ibrahim: thecurrent choice is between autocracy and theocracy.

In considering the agenda of Islamism in terms of ideology and related politicalpractices, it is apparent that the shari‘a in Islam is not the type of constitutionallaw that the Islamists claim it is in order to legitimate their drive for an Islamicstate. The political order they envision cannot be considered as a suitable demo-cratic alternative to the existing malaise. There is clearly a need for change, butthis notion has to be articulated more precisely. After all, ‘regime change’ is ahollow phrase that cannot ultimately provide satisfactory solutions for the prob-lem of Arab authoritarianism. The promotion of change first requires a clearexplanation of the sources of the existing social malady in order to determinewhere we are and where to go from here.

No doubt, Muslims and particularly Arabs are often viewed in the Westthrough the lenses of ‘Orientalist’ clichés. They are often regarded as ‘sons of thedesert’ who are not suited to a higher culture or to practice democracy. Incurrently reviving this sentiment with reference to the failure in Iraq, the allegedincompatibility between Islam and democracy serves as an explanation. In areversal of such prejudices, some put all the blame on ‘Orientalism’ or on theWest. This has become a fashion, even among many Arabs themselves, who have

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imported such notions directly from non-Arab left-wing intellectuals in the West.This is continuing the tradition of Edward Said, as has been described by SadiqJalal al-Azm in his critique of ‘Orientalism in Reverse’.59

The real issue, however, is to acknowledge the fact of a changed world underconditions of post-bipolarity, with a focus on culture, religion and ethnicity. Inthis context, there are different explanations for the lack of democracy in theMiddle East. Imperialism and other external factors (e.g. the colonial legacy) aregenerally presented as the factors that are primarily responsible for the lack offreedom in Arab societies. The blame games attributing causal significance toimagined mu‘amara (conspiracies), which are embedded in this thinking, leadnowhere.60 A prominent Arab, al-Azm, emphasised the need for a differentapproach to these questions, one that is committed to Enlightenment ideals andrationality. Earlier, in medieval Islam, this standard of reason-based knowledgewas accepted under Greek cultural impact in the context of Hellenisation, but nottoday. Political Islam contributes to the revival of ‘shari‘a reasoning’ in the newgarb of constitutional law, which is an invention of tradition. Instead, whatMuslims really need is Islamic rationalism. For establishing political freedom,Muslim societies need a structural and institutional foundation for democracy.The practice of human rights and freedom of expression and of assembly can onlyexist if they are guaranteed by safeguards. The compatibility of Islamism anddemocracy in a system in which everyone can participate freely on all levels willfalter, since Islamists aim to undermine the bedrock of the culture of democraticpluralism which is the core and substance of democracy. To be sure, the democ-racy that the US has introduced in Iraq is not the pattern that is needed. Thefuture of Iraq is not likely to be determined by democracy and democratic values,but rather to be marked by division and ethno-religious strife, viewed as an‘ethnicity of fear’. It is intriguing but depressing that in the West, both politiciansand scholars seem to have abandoned the long-standing view that civic pluralismis a fundamental criterion for determining what is democratic and what is not. AtCornell University, as an illustration, I was bashed in public by a professor as areverse takfiri. Why? Because I put forward the argument that Islamists are notdemocrats since they do not accept or tolerate pluralism.

The rejection of Western values – in the form of civic pluralism – by Islamists isrelated to identity politics in the context of the politicisation of Islam and thereligionisation of politics. At issue are claims about the authenticity of Islam. Thisis the same spirit embodied in ‘gated communities’, and is driven by a cultura-lised attitude that rejects democratisation as part of a process of learning fromothers. For Islamists democracy is not universal, since their vision of Islamicdemocracy is limited to the shura.

With reference to the origins of democracy in Europe, the Islamists close the doorto adoptions from other cultures. In contrast to this spirit, Islamic rationalistsengaged, in the course of the already mentioned Hellenisation of Islamic civilisa-tion, in cultural borrowing and in learning from others. The attitudes of Islamiststo democracy are completely different. In cases where they seem to embrace democ-racy, it is essentially tactical in nature. In the ideology of Islamism, there is a clashbetween two competing claims – the universality of democracy and the authenticityof the ‘Islamic solution’ that they proffer in their reinvented shari‘a reasoning.

There can be no democracy without the institutional safeguards that serve tounderpin it and that are guaranteed by democratic constitutionalism. In democra-cies, power is depersonalised and exercised in institutional terms. In contrast, in

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the Islamic tradition there is the Imam, who is in power and embodies a person-alised authority. In this context, Majid Khadduri published many books in whichArab politics were reduced to the study of biographies of Arab politicians.Though this approach is extremely flawed from a methodological perspective, Ibelieve that Khadduri indeed makes a valid point, namely that power in Arabpolitics is often personalised and not based in impartial institutions. This does notmean, of course, that there are no structures underlying personalised politics inArab societies. In my study of Islamic intellectual history, I always encounteredthe traditional question, “Who is the Imam fadil (the True Imam)?”61 Very rarelywas the presence of proper and just institutions a pending issue in this sort ofreasoning. There were, however, some exceptions. Among them one finds al-Farabi’s classical work on al-madina al-fadila62 in which he discussed the properorder, continuing the ancient Greek legacy, in an Islamic tradition of rationalism.This reference to Islamic intellectual history demonstrates the acceptance ofuniversal standards by peoples of different cultures. In short, institutions matterto democracy. With this in mind, it is helpful to consult the classic work byBarrington Moore on the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.63 Heprovides a comparative analysis of Western and non-Western historical types ofpolitical development, and shows that those European societies that were able todevelop a pattern of democracy had had some comparatively autonomous medi-eval institutions that prepared them for the take-off. Moore’s conclusion is thatthese institutions contributed to strengthening European civil society vis-à-vis thestate. A working democracy presupposes the existence of civilianised state institu-tions and a civil society, not merely a concept of the Imam ‘adil (just Imam).

Under the prevailing conditions, the asala (authenticy) debate64 is a mere ideo-logical construct promoted by political Islam to counter a democratisation thatgoes beyond the ballot box. Their argument is that Western patterns of democracysimply do not apply to Islam, i.e. they are not authentic.

Indeed, one of the conclusions of this section is that Islamists have ignored orsuppressed the true cultural heritage of Islam. Learning from others within theframework of cultural borrowing is not only not alien to the history of the Arab-Islamic heritage, but is also most pertinent to the present. The fact that democracyhas ancient Greek origins does not make democracy alien to Islam. It is a historicalfact that Hellenism was also a part of the Islamic legacy. I do not doubt the exist-ence of different varieties of democracy, since every form of democratic rule hasbeen adjusted to diverse local conditions. However, this local/global dualityshould never serve as an argument for rejecting universality itself. In short, democ-racy overrides civilisational differences in that it establishes commonalities thatcan be shared by all of humanity. Authenticity and identity politics, on the onehand, and the need for cross-cultural commonalities, on the other, can be put intoharmony and not be viewed as rivals to one another, thus forming insurmountabletrenches that one should avoid erecting in the first place. This, unfortunately, is notthe mindset of the Islamists. Therefore, the success of their political organisationssuch as Hamas (Palestine), SCIRI, renamed as SIIC (Iraq), Hizballah (Lebanon), theMuslim Brothers (sometimes disguised as the Hizb al-Wasat) (Egypt), al-Nahda(Tunisia), the Islamic Action Front (Jordan) and the FIS (Algeria), among others, isnot a sign of victorious democracy, nor even of a democratisation. It is rather theattempted seizure of power by Islamism with a democratic camouflage.

This critical assessment is not meant as a rebuke of the contemporary Islamicrevival, but simply is intended to emphasise that the adoption of real democracy

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requires different approaches than a revival of shari‘a reasoning in an Islamistinvention of tradition. Again, it is imperative to distinguish between Islam ingeneral and all of its cultural varieties, on one hand, and political Islam and itscall for a shari‘a-based state, on the other. Long before political Islam had becomea popular public choice, the Lebanese political scientist Hasan Sa‘b, one of thetrue proponents of liberal democracy in the Arab world, published his book on a‘pro-democracy Islam’ as opposed to an ‘Islam of despotism’. Saab argues for a‘comprehensive spiritual revolution in the soul of the man and in his life too’.65

This is a plea for an attitudinal cultural change that is required for achievinggenuine democracy in the Arab world, a view which supports the argument thatculture matters for the introduction of democratic traditions. In general, ReinhardBendix’s argument about the importance of moral mobilisation for democraticdevelopment is justified. Liberal Islamic thinkers such as Sa‘b, who are commit-ted to democracy in this ethical understanding, are unfortunately rare today.

One can state in a nutshell that Islamism, in relation to the process of the returnof the sacred, is not a sign of the renaissance of religion, but rather represents theexpression of a new form of totalitarianism.66 In those rare situations in whichparticular Islamists end up abandoning the idea of an Islamic order, the term‘Islamist’ would no longer be applicable to them. I remain skeptical of all of therampant talk about ‘post-Islamism’, because it has thus far been proven wrong.There is no such thing, except in some individual cases (e.g. Ed Hussain in the UK).The substance of political Islam is the belief in din wa dawla (the unity of state andreligion). This is the substance of what is labelled as ‘Islamic constitutionalism’.Only if this basic notion is abandoned can one claim that a real ‘post-Islamism’ hasemerged. In political Islam, as was argued earlier, there are only two directions –institutional Islamism and jihadism – and both share the very same ideologicalgoal of establishing an Islamic shari‘a state. It is true that institutional Islamists arewilling to play the game of participating in democratic institutions. They do this,however, merely for tactical reasons. They may dispense with jihadist violence asa preferred tactic, but they do not genuinely embrace the political culture of demo-cratic pluralism. In contrast, Islamist jihadists believe in waging a perpetual armedjihad in accordance with their new understanding of an Islamic world revolution.For them, this is the only acceptable means to restore a global siyadat al-Islam(Islamic supremacy).

From a pro-democracy standpoint that is committed to fostering a democraticattitude, the inclusion of institutional Islamists in democratic processes is impera-tive. However, watching out to ensure that no undermining of democratisation isgoing on in the name of democracy is imperative, too. When it comes to jihadists,a security approach seems to be the only reasonable way of dealing with theirviolence. For the jihadists it is only action directe (as per Georges Sorel), i.e.violence, that counts. What is required for this sort of double strategy? A dialoguewith peaceful Islam and a security approach vis-à-vis Islamism.67

In sum, the view of contemporary political Islam, as expressed by Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, which rejects democracy as a hall mustawrad (imported solution),does not reflect any democratic constitutionalism by international standards. Thisis urgently needed in the Arab core of Islamic civilisation. In the following sectionI shall discuss, in more detail, whether Islamists really accept democracy as apolitical culture.

In the remainder of this article I shall summarise the major thoughts based onmy reading of Islamism on all levels. The point of departure in regard to democracy

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and its political culture is the distinction between Islam and Islamism. I add to thisthe insight that the debate on Islam and democracy is not, and should not be, aconcern restricted to Muslims themselves. Due to Islam’s ’geo-civil war’,68 and inthe light of the increasing significance of Islam in post-bipolar politics (at home, indiaspora communities, and in the world at large), the pertinence of the vision of ademocratic world peace69 that requires the inclusion of the world of Islam into theinternational community matters to everyone. Despite its great significance, to datean ongoing discussion on this issue has either been lacking or has been greatlyflawed. First of all, there seems to be a conspicuous lack of knowledge, even amongso-called experts, about Islam and democracy. Second, the needed differentiationsbetween Islam and Islamism are not yet widely accepted. Hence there are only afew well-informed observers writing about these topics. One of them is ZeynoBaran, who addresses the issue, in relation to the AKP in Turkey, in both a criticalmanner and with the necessary degree of competence. But others, like Voll andEsposito, not only overlook important original sources in their book on Islam anddemocracy, but also confuse everything, including Islam and Islamism. In the end,they even water down the meaning of democracy itself. The result is a highlymisleading presentation based on outright misjudgments. To avoid such anoutcome in this debate, it is first of all imperative to distinguish between Islam andIslamism, as well as between the different components of democracy, whichinclude both a political culture and the ballot box. Based on this understanding ofthe issue, any serious inquiry into the compatibility between Islamism and democ-racy must begin by making clear terminological and conceptual distinctions,and then proceed by initiating an honest debate about the compatibility betweenIslamism – not Islam – and democracy. This would be the answer to the questionasked in the heading to this section: the Islamist shari‘a state is not consonant withdemocracy, and does not represent a democratic variety of constitutionalism.70

The Findings I: What are we Talking About when we Speak of Political Islam?

The need for an inclusion of Islamists is based on two facts: the growth of theIslamist movement and the increasing appeal of political Islam, or Islamism, as amobilising ideology. These facts compel people in the West, whether scholars orpractitioners, to argue for the inclusion of supposedly ‘moderate’ Islamists in thepolitical process, which has seemingly become a major trend in the politics of theMuslim world. Indonesia is an exception. The current deplorable trend ofpromoting oversimplifications in the assessment of Islamism is related to the useof imprecise terminology and also to unfortunate developments in the field ofIslamic studies. This has been consequential. On the basis of 30 years of researchon political Islam, I would argue that uncensored thinking on the compatibility ofboth Islam and Islamism with democracy is an absolute requirement. I believethat Islam as religious ethics and democracy are in fact compatible, provided thatthere is a commitment to religious reform. Muslims need to deliver democracyand not simply pay lip service to it. As a former student of Jürgen Habermas andthe Frankfurt School, I would argue that knowledge is always linked to humaninterest.71 And as an Arab-Muslim pro-democracy theorist and practitioner, Iadmit that my interest is to establish a secular democracy within Islamic civilisa-tion. Except with respect to ethics, I am sceptical about religious notions ofdemocracy. The foregoing inquiry makes use of secular notions and concepts inthe social sciences in order to establish a solid foundation for making five

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assumptions or distinctions that will hopefully enable us to avoid the usual steriledebates about Islam and democracy and Orientalism.

(1) One must begin by clarifying what democracy and Islamism are in terms oftheir substance. At issue is an academic as well as a political concern.Academic analysis is not carried out for no reason, but to provide some guid-ance in the political and social spheres. To date, Western practices vis-à-vispolitical Islam have been faulty, both because they were not founded on solidinformation and also because they were not underpinned by well-foundedassessments. Therefore, the first step in the present venture has been to try toclarify the complex issues being addressed.

(2) There is no such thing as a monolithic, essentialist Islam. On all levels Islam,in its capacity as a faith, a local culture and a cross-cultural civilisation, is char-acterised by diversity and change. Although Islam is basically a faith, a culturalsystem, and a source of ethics, and thus is not necessarily a political religion inits fundamental nature, in the course of Islamic history Islam has always beenembedded in politics. That happened only in the sense that Islam was used tolegitimate authority and the actions of that authority, albeit always post even-tum. At present, and in contrast to the past, political Islam, Islamism or religiousfundamentalism (terms that I argue can be used interchangeably) interpretsmodern references to politics in a ‘religionized’ shape. The tradition of ‘shari‘areasoning’ is thus used as a ‘precedent’ (as per John Kelsay) to legitimate novel-ties. This happens as the result of a combination of religion and politics thatdid not exist to this degree in the past. The contemporary history of politicalIslam begins in 1928, with the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood by thegrandfather of Tariq Ramadhan, Hasan al-Banna. In short, Islam is a religiousfaith, while Islamism (or political Islam) is a modern political ideology, albeitone that is based on religion. Islam and Islamism are different phenomena, notonly different terms. Therefore, I disagree with Kelsay’s view that al-Banna’sMuslim Brotherhood is an ‘embodiment of the clerical shari‘a vision’, eventhough I mostly accept his analysis of shari‘a reasoning in Islam (p. 92).72

(3) When one addresses the issue of democracy in the world of Islam, it would bea terrible blunder – and also a great service to the Islamists – to blur the distinc-tion between the terms ‘Islam’ and ‘Islamism’ (political Islam) and to use theminterchangeably, as is done for instance by Voll and Esposito. Islamists makeprodigious efforts to camouflage themselves as ‘true Muslims’. In this sense,at issue are two different questions and two different objects. The first questionhas to do with Islam’s compatibility with democracy, while the second ques-tion has to do with how democratic Islamism could ever become. The answerto the first question is affirmative, although it is conditional on religiousreforms (Salafist Islam, for example, is not compatible with democracy). Theanswer to the second question is unfavourable, however, with a ‘but’ to bespecified later on. The distinction between the two adjectives ‘Islamic’ and‘Islamist’ does not reflect a form of linguistic pedantry, but instead applies totwo different phenomena. For instance, the Nahdatul Ulema party in Indonesiais an Islamic party – not an Islamist-party – and it can be qualified as a demo-cratic institution that represents a form of civil Islam. In contrast, the IslamistMuslim Brotherhood in Egypt – as well as its off-spring (e.g. Hamas) – is not ademocratic party, but one that is totalitarian in its outlook. Therefore, theformula ‘Islam without fear’ is highly misleading in this context.

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(4) Next to the distinction between Islam as a faith and Islamism as a religionisedideology, there is another significant distinction within Islamism itself. It is thedifferentiation between peaceful and violent Islamists. The latter are thejihadists who wage jihad in pursuit of their political agenda. Their jihad isinterpreted explicitly in the form of qital (violence), however, in accordancewith the new legitimation of jihadism. In contrast, peaceful Islamists partici-pate in and take advantage of democratic institutions. For tactical reasons, theyeschew resorting to violence. In short, jihadist Islamism differs from institu-tional Islamism with respect to its means, but not in terms of its goals. Kelsayis completely right (p. 165) to note that, even though these so-called ‘moder-ates’ and ‘militants’ disagree over practices, they share the same vision.73 Tobe sure contemporary jihadism, when interpreted as indiscriminate fighting,is not the same as the classical jihad in Islam, for in classical jihad violence (qital)was in theory bound by certain rules and restricted to limited targets. There-fore, classical jihad is a form of warfare, although it might be irregular, but it isnot primarily terrorism, as jihadism now is. Jihadism is a pattern different fromthe traditional Muslim regular warfare. To reiterate, the differences betweenjihadist Islamism and institutional Islamism concern means and practices, notbroader visions or ultimate goals. The establishment of a shari‘a-based nizamal-Islami is shared by both institutional Islamists and jihadists. As Baran putsit, the ‘moderates’ consent ‘instrumentally to democratic elections … the easi-est path to power’, and replace violent ‘Islamization … in favor of a gradualbottom-up policy’. This signifies nothing more than a ‘creeping Islamization’(see note 4). It is certainly not a bona fide form of democratisation.

(5) The analytical and political distinctions made above have to be kept in mindwhen Islam and Islamism are related to the question of their compatibility withdemocracy. The inquiry has to be enhanced by further distinctions with respectto democracy itself. To reiterate, democracy is based institutionally on anelectoral procedure, but it is much more than a form of balloting. Democracyis also and above all a political culture of pluralism and disagreement basedon core values, combined with the acceptance of diversity in terms of politicalpluralism. The procedure of elections and the institutional establishment ofthis political culture are elements of the same system that cannot be separatedfrom one another, as the institutional Islamists try to do. They abandon theearlier top-down form of Islamisation in favour of a bottom-up process ofIslamisation. They agree to ballots instead of bullets, but not with the pluralistpolitical culture of democracy or its form of civil society. This statement can beconfirmed by a careful study of the political programs released by Islamistmovements themselves, as well as by observing their actual behaviour. Itshould be taken seriously, even by those ‘Islam pundits’ who dismiss demandsfor maintaining the ‘pluralist civic culture’ of democracy as a form of ‘seculartakfiri fundamentalism’ (!). That reaction is obviously stupid, to say the least.

The Findings II: Politcal Islam and Democracy

As for the findings of the present analysis, I identify four issue areas that havebeen the focus of this problematique.

First, just as Islam has its unity and diversity, so too does Islamism. However,diversity does not signify a lack of commonalities within a social or historicalphenomenon. For instance, in Islam there are issue areas that apply to all Muslims

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– despite all of their diversity. One of these is the Islamic worldview. In the courseof my research in about 20 different Islamic countries in Africa and Asia, I alsoobserved non-Arab Muslims in Indonesia and West Africa and noted both charac-teristics, i.e. commonalities and differences. The same applies to Islamism. Onething that all Islamists have in common is that they aim to ‘shari‘atize’ Islam (notethat the term shari‘a occurs only once in the Qur’an in sura al-Jathiya, with themeaning of morality, not law) and establish an Islamic state system identified asnizam al-Islami. Moreover, neither the term dawla (state) nor the term nizam, bothof which are pivotal in the shari‘a reasoning of the Islamists – occurs in the Qur’anitself. In short, Islamism is a modern religionised political ideology gearedtowards remaking the world on the basis of the shari‘a, which is here understoodas an invention of tradition. This Islamist political shari‘a is poised first to changethe world of Islam itself, and then to transform the world at large. All Muslimswho subscribe to this agenda can be identified as Islamists. Thus, faithfulMuslims with a spiritual understanding of Islam are not Islamists, and do notgenerally subscribe to this agenda. The new term ‘post-Islamism’ consequentlymakes no sense. How could Islamists be viewed as post-Islamists if they maintaintheir pursuit of an Islamist nizam or order? Only if this idea is abandoned can onetalk seriously of post-Islamism. However, I do not know a single Islamist move-ment that has abandoned this Islamist agenda. In some cases, this very agenda ispublicly concealed or denied (as, e.g., by the AKP in Turkey), but such claims aremade primarily in order to avoid being banned, and are thus by no means a signof post-Islamism.

The second question relates to the potential that an Islamist party could evolveand eventually develop a ‘genuine commitment to democracy’, i.e. accept aliberal understanding of democratic pluralism. The study of the ideology ofIslamism and of its pillars does not support this assumption. The nizam al-Islami isa totalitarian order. One might challenge this view by arguing that such a changecould happen through gradual shifts in the thinking and cultural values of theIslamists themselves. In my study of the practices of political Islam, I fail to seeany such shifts. There have been verbal and rhetorical feints, as well as a strategicadjustments to democracy. Yet in all the cases that I know of, this type of adjust-ment occurs merely for instrumental reasons, be it to avoid banning (the AKP) oroutright prosecution (the Muslim Brothers in Egypt). Of course, there have beenindividuals who have been undergone such shifts, but in these cases one can saythat they have abandoned Islamism altogether.74 At issue here are individuals,not the movements they have broken away from. In the course of my research onIslamism, I have yet to encounter a single ‘post-Islamist’ movement.

Third, the argument that Islamist ideology is a totalitarian one that is notcompatible with democracy – and hence would effectively preclude the aforemen-tioned shifts – might be dismissed as too general. Therefore, one can be challengedto be more specific and to list the aspects that are considered to be critical. Aboveall, one must recognise that Islamist movements religionise politics. This leaves noroom for negotiation, since conceptions of the sacred are not negotiable. In such acontext, disagreement is regarded as heretical. The Hamas Charter, for instance,places conflict within the sacred realm, and therefore portrays its demands aboutPalestine as non-negotiable. It also rejects pluralism and diversity, which neces-sarily involve the open expression of different opinions, as ‘divisive’ and thereforeintolerable. The participation in elections and the ambiguous renouncing ofviolence are not by themselves an indication that Hamas is becoming genuinely

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democratic. Its fundamental commitments do not permit major shifts in thinkingor cultural values.

The distinction between institutional and jihadist Islamists is a valid one, eventhough it is called into question by the practices of some Islamist movementsthemselves. On the one hand, they agree to go to the ballot box, but neverthelessdo not altogether abandon bullets inasmuch as they retain their militias as armedwings. This is true for Hamas (Palestine), Hezbollah (Lebanon) and SCIRI,renamed SIIC, (Iraq) alike. All of these movements want to have it both ways, i.e.to be represented in the parliament on the basis of their participation in elections,but also to retain their jihadist wings and their practice of terrorism.

It is hard to imagine how a political movement or party that rejects the cultureof pluralism but still embraces authentic democracy. Islamist movements reject, inthe name of the shari‘a, any power-sharing with non-Islamists (e.g. secular parties)or ‘infidel’ non-Muslim minorities. They only permit what they believe that theirtotalitarian interpretation of the shari‘a allows. Despite the Islamist claim that theshari‘a is a form of constitutional law, it has been proven above that genuine consti-tutionalism and Islamist interpretation of the shari‘a are on all counts at odds.75

Fourth, the critical assessment of Islamism, the continued misgivings about itspotential for an accommodation to democracy and the Islamist agenda of an Islamicorder are all strong arguments against the compatibility view. Nevertheless, no onecan afford to ignore contemporary Islamist movements. The Islamists are at presentthe major opposition groups in most countries in the world of Islam. What, then,can one do? There exist two approaches, one that is inclusive and one that is exclu-sionary. The first is represented by the model of Turkey, whereas the second isillustrated by the example of Algeria. I confess that, despite my misgivings aboutthe AKP, I prefer the approach taken in Turkey. Yet in this case as well, the positivedimension of the inclusion of the Islamists has resulted in their increasing takeoverof state institutions, excluding the military. In the process, they have abused theconcept of pluralism by initiating a creeping process of Islamisation, both of thestate and Turkish society.

The inclusion of the AKP into the Turkish political process has resulted in a‘creeping Islamisation’ that contradicts democratic pluralism. The AKP is anIslamist party and not, as it pretends, a conservative Islamic party, and it is mostcertainly not comparable with the German CDU. The AKP is also intolerant, notonly vis-à-vis secularists (who are viewed, using antisemitic jargon, as dönme[hidden Jews]), but also against both ethnic minorities (the Kurds) and religiousminorities (the Alawis). This is not a politics of inclusion. The AKP came to powerthrough democratic means. These are institutional Islamists who view elections asthe ‘most legitimate path to power’, but they do not share the values of democraticpluralism. Instead, they aim ‘to reshape the republic, chiefly along Islamist lines’.76

In sum, the AKP is certainly not inclusive vis-à-vis the non-Islamist ‘other’.

The Conclusions: Islamism and Democracy Are at Odds

If reformed Islam could become compatible with democracy, Islamism cannot.Shura is a Qur’anic term which means consultation, and it occurs only twice in thetext of the Qur’an. Democracy is a cultural concept that was introduced as a noveltyinto the world of Islam, and it means much more than just ‘consultation’. In thisthird wave towards a global democratisation,77 the introduction of democracyneeds institutional and cultural underpinning, and therefore has to be connected

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to certain underlying Islamic ethics. Traditionally, each civilisation has had its owncalendar. Since the era of European expansion and the globalisation process itlaunched, there is one world time shared by all. The claim of democracy to univer-sality is embedded in this world time. However, this claim is questioned, not onlyby Western cultural relativists, but also by non-Westerners who seek to reclaim‘authenticity’.78 In this context, the reference to the origins of democracy in Europecreates tensions79 and closes the door elsewhere for adoptions from the West. Forinstance, Islamism views ‘secular democracy’ as a hall mustawrad (importedsolution) (see note 45). In contrast, there are Islamists who play the democracygame for purely instrumental purposes. This article questions the Islamist compat-ibility with democracy and asks the following question: could Islamists harmonisethe two rival claims, the universality of secular democracy and the authenticity ofthe ‘Islamic solution’, and thereby resolve the conflict between them?

There are cultural obstacles, one of which is the tradition in Arab Islam of theImam in power as a personalised political-religious authority.80 In this line, MiddleEastern Arab politics can be reduced to the study of the biographies of politiciansacting in the tradition of the ruler as Imam. In so arguing, one could be exposed tothe accusation of ‘Orientalism’. In US Middle Eastern Studies, this label resemblesthe accusation of kufr (infidelity) by Islamist takfiri (those who brand other Muslimsas infidels). It is, however, an undeniable fact that power in most Islamic societiesis personalised, and not based in institutions that prescribe accountability. As hasbeen demonstrated above, in Islamic history, the traditionally prevailing questionwas related to criteria that only an Imam fadil (righteous Imam) could fulfill. In thismanner of reasoning, the issue was not the proper and just institutions that mightbe required. I refer to exceptions, such as al-Farabi’s al-madina al-fadila, which wascompleted under the impact of the ancient Greek legacy and integrated into theIslamic tradition of rationalism. The reason for this positive reference to al-Farabiin Islamic intellectual history is to argue that even then universal standards ofknowledge were possible and accepted irrespective of authenticity. In short, theissue at this point is that institutions also matter. Could contemporary Islamistsaccomplish this? I doubt it! This article embodies these doubts.

Under conditions in which Islam’s war with itself is increasingly spilling overinto a geopolitical war, the Muslims of today need to re-commit themselves to apolitical development that promotes a pattern of democracy adjustable to theirsocieties. The requirements for this accomplishment are autonomous institutionsthat could be built up and promoted for the strengthening of civil society vis-à-visthe state. A working democracy presupposes not only the existence of institutionsof a civil state and a civil society, which have not been established yet in Islam,but also the cultural foundations for this endeavour. In the world of Islam, civilsociety is weak, as are all the participatory institutions of the state. The only work-ing institution is the mukhabarat, the secret police apparatus which guarantees theshort-term stability of regimes by engaging in the surveillance and repression ofthe entire population, thereby creating a culture of fear. Even though the Islamistsare also victims of this oppressive institution, they did not abolish it when theycame to power in Afghanistan, Palestine or Iraq. They simply turned the tables ontheir former oppressors. For this and other reasons, I do not trust them. What hashappened in Gaza under the rule of Hamas, and what is now happening inTurkey under the rule of the AKP, is hardly reassuring.

Under these conditions, the asala (authenticy) debate is little more than an ideo-logical scheme promoted by political Islam to oppose secular democracy. Islamism

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undermines any genuine democratisation in the name of authenticity. In contrast,the initiative by Sa‘ad al-Din Ibrahim and his Ibn Khaldun Center for Civil Societyto promote substantive pluralism and democracy is far more promising than theagenda of the Muslim Brothers, but it has unfortunately been suppressed.

In a nutshell, the conclusion herein is that Islamism is not compatible with democ-racy. If Islamists honestly – i.e. not tactically – underwent a shift in their mindsetto the point where they accepted democracy, not instrumentally but also as a polit-ical culture, then it would be wrong to label them as Islamists. In this case, and onlyin this case, the term Islamism would no longer apply and could be replaced bypost-Islamism. Yet this is not happening. The ideology of political Islam is basedon the belief in an organic entity named din-wa-dawla (unity of state and religion).This is the hallmark of political Islam, and its concept of a shari‘a state is neither inline with human rights nor with democracy. Islamism has two orientations, insti-tutional Islamism and jihadism. However, both share the same worldview and thesame concept of the Islamic shari‘a-based state as a vision for the future. They onlydiffer about which means should be adopted to achieve this goal. One has toconfront institutional Islamists with the political culture of democratic pluralismas the bottom line. Islamist jihadists are a hopeless case for democracy. Their globaljihad, i.e. their ‘Islamic world revolution’ (Qutb), is for them the only means torestore the global siyadat al-Islam (Islamic supremacy) that was lost with the rise ofWestern civilisation. Their obsessive concern is with ‘the Return of History’.81

Finally, the predicament of democracy in the world of Islam today is not onlyabout the holding of free elections, but also about the promotion of a culture ofdemocratic pluralism, a culture that is not shared by the Islamists. This is oneissue area of Islam’s predicament with cultural modernity.82 Iyad Allawi, thesecular former post-Saddam Prime Minister in Iraq, correctly testified that ‘Iraq’selections [have] set back democracy’.83 It is most pertinent to learn a lesson aboutpolitical Islam and democracy from this and other empirical cases. Scholars andpolicy makers have a duty to learn from history rather than to engage in wishfulthinking or political correctness, the most recent variety of intellectual censorshipand silencing. The ideological preoccupations of the derailed ‘Orientalism’ debateshould not be allowed to determine the political assessment of Islamism anddemocracy, where unfettered analyses should instead be the source of guidance.

Notes

1. In its July 2008 issue, the Journal of Democracy published a symposium consisting of eight contribu-tions on political Islam and democracy. One of these articles was by Bassam Tibi, “Islamist Parties.Why They Can’t be Democratic”, Journal of Democracy 19/3 (July 2008), pp.43–48. The presentarticle elaborates further on this critical assessment of Islamism and the western contributors whoendorse it.

2. In my view, the book by Raymond William Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003) includes great distortions about the MuslimBrothers, who surely do not represent an ‘Islam without fear’ but rather precisely the opposite dueto their totalitarian ideology and their historical behaviour. On this issue, see also notes 28, 30, and36 below.

3. See Richard Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969)and the reference in note 36, on the Muslim Brothers who are currently building up networks thateven reach into the US, see note 49.

4. Zeyno Baran, “Turkey Divided”, Journal of Democracy 91/1 (2008), pp.55–69. See also the similarassessment by Bassam Tibi, “Islamists Approach Europe: Turkey’s Islamist Danger”, Middle EastQuarterly (Winter 2009), pp.47–54.

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5. This term has been used in the US as a qualification for Turkey under the rule of the AKP, but ithas been contested even by the Chief Prosecutor of Turkey in his 162-page indictment of the AKPas an Islamist party. This view was shared by the Constitutional Court of Turkey, which processedthe indictment. See the report by Sebnem Arsu, “Against Ban on Turkey’s Top Party. Judges cutFinancing with Strong Warning”, International Herald Tribune, 31 July 2008. In this article it isargued that the AKP is an Islamist party, not a conservative Islamic party, as it has successfullycamouflaged itself in the West.

6. Stephen Larrabee, “Turkey’s Broadening Crisis”, International Herald Tribune, 26–27 July 2008, p.4.7. On Islamic political ethics, see the contributions included in Sohail Hashmi (ed.), Islamic Political

Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), includ-ing my chapter 9, pp.175–93.

8. See chapter 7 on democracy in Bassam Tibi, Political Islam, World Politics, and Europe: DemocraticPeace and Euro-Islam vs. Global Jihad (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp.216–34, and also, in the samebook, chapters 5 and 6 on Sunni and Shi‘i Islamist internationalism.

9. In a commemoration of the 11 March 2004 bombings (the European equivalent of 9/11 in the US),the Club of Madrid organised a huge congress in Madrid the following year. Professor PeterNeumann of King’s College is the editor of the three volumes that emerged from this venture.I was among the speakers at this Madrid meeting, and co-authored the second volume of thepapers, edited by Leonard Weinberg (ed.), Democratic Reponses to Terrorism (New York: Routledge,2008), pp.41–62. On this project, see further note 14.

10. See Bassam Tibi, “Religious Extremism, or Religionization of Politics? The Ideological Foundationsof Political Islam”, in Efraim Inbar and Hillel Frisch, Radical Islam and Western Security (New York:Routledge, 2008), pp.11–37.

11. See the article by Bruce Hoffman, “Perspektiven auf den radikalen Islamismus”, Neue ZürcherZeitung, 7 August 2008, p.41. The authoritative analysis by Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1998) focuses on terrorist groups (pp.94–100) and thus generallyoverlooks ‘peaceful’ Islamism. However, it can be argued that the latter represents a greater long-term threat, because its effects are more lasting than terrorist assaults.

12. On this ideology see Bassam Tibi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New WorldDisorder (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998, updated 2002), chapters 7 and 8. InIslamist ideology there are adoptions from Leninism that have been adapted to an Islamic context.See for instance Sayyid Qutb, al-salam al-‘alami wa al-Islam [World Peace and Islam] (Cairo: al-Shuruq, 10th legal printing, 1992), pp.171–3. In this mindset of Qutb, the jihadists represent the‘cadres’ of the Islamic umma, similar to the Leninist vanguard party which is supposed to lead theproletariat. The analogy is clear.

13. In November 1982, I was among the 70 leading Arab thinkers and opinion leaders, who met inLimassol in Cyprus to discuss the Amat al-dimuqratiyya (Crisis of Democracy). They were notallowed to convene in any Arab country. At the congress, no Islamists were present. The relatedproceedings were published by the Beirut-based Center for Arab Unity Studies (ed.), Azmat al-Dimuqratiyya fi al-watan al-‘arabi [The Crisis of Democracy in the Arab World] (Beirut: Markaz Dirasatal-Wihda al-‘Arabiyya, 1983). My chapter (in Arabic) appears on pp.73–87. Another event of thistype took place in Tunis. There, Arab intellectuals were allowed to meet in Tunis in October 1980to discuss the ‘Arab Future’. The host institution acted as an editor. See Centre d’Études et deRécherches Economiques et Sociales/CERES) (ed.), Les Arabes face à leur destin (Tunis: CERES,Série Études Sociologiques No. 6, 1980). My chapter therein appears on pp.177–216.

14. These three projects and their published findings are as follows: (a) At Boston University, AlanOlson chaired the project and edited the volume Educating for Democracy (Lanham, MD: Rowmanand Littlefield, 2005), wherein my contribution appears on pp.203–19; (b) at the EU think-tank,Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), a project was run and published in the book refer-enced in note 20; and (c) At the Club of Madrid a congress was held, and the book that emergedfrom it has already been referenced in note 9 above.

15. For example, the book by Jocelyne Cesari, When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe andthe United States (New York: Palgrave, 2004), ignores all of the facts on the ground (i.e. the Islamistnetworks placed in Europe) and claims to see ‘in the West a reformist trend … in Islamic thought’(p.159), which exists nowhere. This critical evaluation also applies to Jytte Klausen, The IslamicChallenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

16. Daniel Pipes, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power (New York: Basic Books, 1983). See chapter10 therein on the oil boom after 1973 and on the Saudi networks for the promotion of politics ofIslamisation. More recent details are included in Stephen Schwartz, The Two Faces of Islam: TheHouse of Saud from Terror to Tradition (New York: Doubleday, 2002).

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17. Robert Hefner, Civil Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). See also Fred R. vonder Mehden, Two Worlds of Islam: Interaction Between Southeast Asia and the Middle East (Tampa, FL:University of Florida, 1993), p.97.

18. See the references in note 4 and Bassam Tibi, “Islamischer Konservatismus der AKP als Tarnungfür den politischen Islam?”, in Gerhard Besier und Hermann Lübbe, eds, Politische Religion undReligionspolitik (Goettingen: Vandenhoek und Rupprecht, 2005), pp.229–60.

19. Mit dem Kopftuch nach Europa: Die Türkei auf dem Weg in die EU (Darmstadt: Primus, 2005,expanded edition 2007). See also the references in notes 4 and 18.

20. See Michael Emerson (ed.), Democratization in the Neighborhood (Brussels: CEPS, 2005), whichincludes a chapter by Bassam Tibi, “Islam and Freedom and Democracy”, pp.93–116.

21. Financial Times, 28 December 2005, editorial.22. Fouad Ajami, The Foreigner’s Gift. The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq (New York: The

Free Press, 2006).23. On the Shi‘i of Iraq, see the authoritative study by Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq (Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1994). More recent but also more biased is Faleh A. Jabar, The Shi‘iteMovements in Iraq (London: Saqi, 2003).

24. On Hamas, see the informed monograph by Matthew Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorismin the Service of Jihad (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), and Shaul Mishal and AvrahamSela, The Palestinian Hamas (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). The overall context inaddressed by Beverley Milton-Edwards, Islamic Politics in Palestine (London: Tauris, 1996).

25. On Hezbollah, see the most recent study by Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah. A ShortHistory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). Unfortunately, Norton engages inIslamist apologism.

26. On this war, see Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah and the War in Lebanon(New York: Palgrave, 2008).

27. Graham Fuller, The Future of Political Islam (London: Palgrave, 2003).28. These sorts of polemics about salibiyya (crusaderism) can even be found in US Islamic studies, e.g.

in the biased book of Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells, eds, The New Crusades: Constructing theMuslim Enemy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

29. Gilles Kepel, Jihad et le déclin de l’Islamisme (Paris: Gallimard 2000).30. On Islamism as a political opposition movement in Egypt, see Barry Rubin, Islamic Fundamentalism

in Egyptian Politics (London: Macmillan, 1990); the more recent but problematic work by CarrieRosefsky-Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt (New York:Columbia University Press, 2002) and the even more problematic book by Raymond William Bakerreferenced in note 2 are both misleading. This applies also to Bruce K. Rutherford’s Egypt afterMubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Thesebooks are not only uncritical but highly questionable in their interpretations. Unfortunately, theyserve to illustrate a worrisome and regrettable new trend in US Islamic studies. For a usefulcontrast, see the chapter on Egypt in Lawrence Harrison (ed.), Developing Cultures (New York:Routledge, 2006), Volume II: Case Studies, chapter 9, pp.163–80.

31. UNDP, Arab Human Development Report: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations (New York:United Nations, 2002).

32. On the antisemitism of Hamas, see Matthias Küntzel, Jihad and Jew-Hatred (New York: Telos, 2007),chapter 3.

33. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, reprint 1976), pp.xii–xviand Part One, pp.3–120.

34. For an introduction to democracy, see Anthony Birch, The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democ-racy (London: Routledge, 1993). On its globalisation, see Carol C. Gould, Globalizing Democracy andHuman Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

35. See the entry chapter “Fundamentalism” by Bassam Tibi, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Governmentand Politics, ed. by Mary Howesworth and Maurice Kagan, 2 vols (London: Routledge 2004), invol. 1, pp.184–204, as well as the earlier one in Encyclopedia Of Democracy, edited by SeymourMartin Lipset, in four volumes (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1995), vol. 2,pp.507–510.

36. See the reference to Mitchell in note 3. On the place of the Muslim Brothers in the development ofpolitical Islam, see Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam (London: Routledge, 1991), pp.70–87 and 130–45. Foran example for their current whitewashing, see Robert Leiken and Steven Brook, “The ModerateMuslim Brotherhood”, Foreign Affairs 86/2 (March–April 2007), pp.107–121.

37. See my newspaper articles “The Clash of Shari‘a and Democracy” International Herald Tribune, 17–18 September 2005, p.6; and “So wird der Irak nicht demokratisch”, Die Zeit, 9 March 2006, p.10.

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On the advance of the shari‘a to the status of constitutional law, as is being done in Iraq, seeBassam Tibi, “The Return of the Sacred to Politics as Constitutional Law: The Case of theShari‘atization of Politics in Islamic Civilization”, Theoria. A Journal of Social and Political Theory,55/3 (2008), issue 115, pp.91–119.

38. See Hannah Arendt, note 33. There were earlier two totalitarianisms, namely Stalinist communismand Nazism. The most recent variety of this phenomenon is Islamism. On this view, which owesmuch to the ideas of Hannah Arendt, see Bassam Tibi, “The Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism,”Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8/1 (2007), pp.35–54; and idem, Der neue Totalitarismus(Darmstadt: Primus, 2006).

39. For more details on this, see the work of Hamid Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin,TX: University of Texas Press, 1982), here pp.125ff.

40. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).41. Rifa‘a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi, Takhlis al-ibriz fi talkhis [Tahtawi’s Paris Diary] (Beirut: Dar Ibn Zaydun,

reprint, no date).42. Yechi Dreazen, “Iraqi Charter Causes Alarm. Bush Allies Raise Concern Over the Role of Islam”,

Wall Street Journal 19 September 2005, p.A15.43. Baran (note 4), “Turkey Divided”, p.57.44. See Bassam Tibi, Islam between Culture and Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2001, enlarged 2nd edn

2005), chapter 7, on the shari‘a, pp.148–66. My take on this issue differs radically from the apolo-getics of John Eposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press,1996). These authors not only explicitly fail to distinguish between Islam and Islamism, but alsoimplicitly equate the democratisation of Islam with the Islamist appropriation of democracy, ofwhich they approve. See my critical review of this book in Journal of Religion 78/4 (1998), pp.667–9.

45. See Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, al-hall al-islami, 3 vols, in particular vol. 1, al-hulul al-mustawradah [TheImported Solutions] (Cairo: al-Risalah, 1970, reprint 1980). The well-known Islamist al-Qaradhawispeaks weekly on al-Jazira TV and is therefore viewed as the ‘global jihad mufti’. Qaradhawi hasbeen misleadingly and erroneously qualified in some American books on Islamic studies as avoice of ‘liberal Islam’ (sic!).

46. Leslie Lipson, The Ethical Crises of Civilization (London: Sage 1993), p.62. On the two waves of theHellenisation of Islam, see W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press,1962, reprint 1979), parts Two and Three. On the Islamic heritage, seethe classic work by Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage of Islam (London: Routledge: 1975).

47. See my comprehensive monograph, which I consider to be the pinnacle of my lifetime work,Islam’s Predicament with Modernity: Cultural Change and Religious Reform (New York: Routledge,2009).

48. This interpretation is even shared by the Palestinian deputy Ziyad Abu ‘Amr, Islamic Fundamental-ism in the West Bank and Gaza: Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univer-sity Press, 1994). For a general debate, see the findings in Martin Marty and Scott Appleby, eds, TheFundamentalism Project, published in five volumes by University of Chicago Press. I am the co-authorof vol. 2, Fundamentalisms and Society (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), chapter 4.

49. See the contributions in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, vol. 6 (2008), published by The HudsonInstitute, in particular the article by Zeyno Baran, “The Muslim Brotherhood US-Network”,pp.95–122.

50. On ‘cultural development’, see Lawrence Harrison (ed.), Developing Cultures (New York: Routledge,2006), 2 vols. I am a contributor to both volumes. On institution building as ‘political development’,see the classic by Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1968).

51. See the classical study by Niazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (New York:Routledge, 1998), available in this new reprint. This process of secularisation, though incom-plete, has been threatened by the AKP’s rule since 2002. For more details, see the references innotes 4, 5, 9 and 18. The earlier book by Marvine Howe, Turkey Today: A Nation Devided overIslam’s Renewal (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), chapter 15, and also pp.243–63, continuesto be worth reading.

52. See Baran (note 4) p. 69.53. On military regimes in the Arab world, see Eliezer Be’eri, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society

(New York: Praeger, 1969), part 6; and Bassam Tibi, Militär und Sozialismus in der Dritten Welt(Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1973).

54. In the years 1967–1970 the phrase ‘self-criticism after the defeat’ was still a popular formula. On thepost-1967-development and the repercussions of the Six Day War, see Bassam Tibi, Conflict and Warin the Middle East (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993, 2nd edn, 1998, published in association with

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Harvard), chapters 3 and 4; see also chapter 12 on political Islam, which I added to the new edition.The intensified Arab predicament is among these repercussions, and it has been analysed by FouadAjami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice since 1967 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1981) – reprinted more than dozen times – herein in particular the chapter onpolitical Islam, pp.50–75. Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, Al-naqd al-dhati ba’d al-hazima [Self-Criticism after theDefeat] (Beirut: al-Tali’a, 1968) is among the critical Arab thinkers appreciated by Ajami, Predicament,pp.30–37.

55. See, for example, the work of Anwar al-Jundi, Al-mu’sara fi itar al-asala [Modernity Viewed in theFramework of Authenticity] (Cairo: Dar al-Sahwa, 1987). See also the chapter on authenticity inmy most recent and major book Islam’s Predicament (referenced in note 47 above), pp. 237–64.

56. See the book referenced in note 12, in particular chapters 7 and 8.57. For an enlightened Arab-Muslim view, see Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt, Islam, and Democracy

(Cairo: AUC Press, 1996), in particular chapter 12 on civil society and the prospects of democrati-sation in the Arab world, pp.245–66. Ibrahim was among the Arab thinkers who discussed thecrisis of democracy in the Arab world in Limassol in 1982 (see note 13). See also the chapter on‘democratization’, old and new, in Beverley Milton-Edwards, Contemporary Politics in the MiddleEast (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), pp.145–72.

58. See Hisham Sharabi, Arab Neo-Patriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (New York:Oxford University Press, 1992, first 1988); and Michael Hudson, Arab Politics: The Search forLegitimacy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), in particular pp.1–30.

59. On the Arab-Muslim Yale-educated Enlightenment philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, see note 54. Inhis other book Dhihniyyat al-tahrim [The Mentality of Taboos] (London: Riyad al-Rayyis Books,1992), pp.17–128, he speaks of al-istishraq ma’kusan (‘Orientalism in reverse’) and unravels this as aform of conspiracy-driven thinking.

60. On conspiracy-driven Arab political thought, see Bassam Tibi, Die Verschwörung/al-Mu’amarah:Das Trauma arabischer Politik (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1993), and the Spanish edition, Laconspiración: El Trauma de la Politica Arab (Barcelona: Editorial Herder, 1996).

61. See the intellectual history of Islam by Bassam Tibi, Der wahre Imam: Der Islam von Mohammed biszur Gegenwart (Munich: Piper, 1996, reprinted several times, last time 2002); and Fuad Khuri,Imams and Emirs: State, Religion, and Sects in Islam (London: Saqi, 1990), on the role of the imams increating sectarian divisions within the umma.

62. Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Al-madina al-fadila [On the Perfect State], translated and edited by RichardWalzer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

63. Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of theModern World (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966).

64. See Robert D. Lee, Overcoming Tradition and Modernity: The Search for Islamic Authenticity (Boulder,CO: Westview, 1997). See also note 55.

65. Hasan Sa‘ab, al-Islam tijah tahidiyat al-hayat al-‘asriyya (Beirut: Dar al-Ilm, 1965), p.123.66. On this controversial issue, see the criticism by Bassam Tibi, “Habermas and the Return of the Sacred.

Is it a Religious Renaissance or the Emergence of Political Religion as a New Totalitarianism?”,Religion–Staat–Gesellschaft. Journal for the Study of Beliefs and Worldviews 3/2 (2002), pp.205–296.

67. For more on the required double-track strategy, see Bassam Tibi, “Between Islam and Islamism. ADialogue with Islam as a Pattern of Conflict Resolution and a Security Approach vis-à-vis Islam-ism”, in Tami A. Jacoby and Brent E. Sasley, eds, Redefining Security in the Middle East (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 2002), pp.62–82.

68. John Brenkman, The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy: Political Thought since September 11(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 165–69.

69. See the reference in note 8 above and Bassam Tibi, “From Islamist Jihadism to DemocraticPeace? Islam at the Crossroads in Post-Bipolar International Politics”, Ankara Papers 16 (London:Taylor & Francis, 2005), pp.1–41, with reference to the debate launched by Bruce Russet, Grasp-ing the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1993).

70. This assessment strongly contradicts that of Noah Feldman, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). On the issue itself, see also Bassam Tibi,“Democracy and Democratization in Islam”, in Michèle Schmiegelow (ed.), Democracy in Asia(New York: Campus 1997), pp.127–46. See also the references in notes 13 and 14, and in particularthe article in Theoria (referenced in note 37) on Shari‘a and constitutionalism.

71. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).72. John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p.72.73. Ibid, p.165.

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74. For an example of an individual post-Islamist, see the autobiographical book by Ed Hussain, TheIslamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam (London: Penguin, 2007).

75. The books by Abdullahi An-Na’im of 1990 and of 2008 are so much in contrast to one another (theformer is critical of the shari‘a, whereas the latter advocates it) that one must ask how the sameperson could be so inconsistent. The references are Abdullahi A. An-Na’im, Towards an IslamicReformation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990); and idem, Islam and the Secular State:Negotiating the Future of Shari‘a (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

76. Zeyno Baran, “Divided Turkey” (note 4).77. Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World

(New York: Times Books, 2008). The term ‘third wave of democratization’ was coined by SamuelP. Huntington in his book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century (Norman, OK:University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

78. See Lee, Overcoming Tradition and Modernity, and note 55 above.79. On these tensions, see my earlier articles “Islamic Law, Shari‘a, and Human Rights. Universal

Morality and International Relations”, Human Rights Quarterly 16/2 (1994), pp.277–99; and mostrecently, “The Return of the Sacred to Politics: The Case of the Shari‘atization of Politics”, Theoria55/3 (2008), pp.91–119.

80. Tibi, Wahre Imam (note 61).81. On the notion of ‘a return of history’, see Tibi, Political Islam (note 8), introduction and chapter 5.82. See Tibi, Islam’s Predicament (note 47), chapter 7.83. See Ayad Allawi’s commentary in The International Herald Tribune, 3–4 November 2007, p.4. A rela-

tive of Ayad, namely Ali, who served as minister in post-Saddam politics acknowledges a culturalcrisis and the need for reformation. See Ali A. Allawi, The Crisis of Islamic Civilization (New Haven,CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

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