Can There Be an Islamic Democracy?
Review Essay
by David Bukay
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2007
http://www.meforum.org/article/1680
Are Islam and democracy compatible? A large
literature has developed arguing that Islam
has all the ingredients of modern state and
society. Many Muslim intellectuals seek to
prove that Islam enshrines democratic
values. But rather than lead the debate,
they often follow it, peppering their own
analyses with references to Western scholars
who, casting aside traditional Orientalism
for the theories of the late literary
theorist and polemicist Edward Said, twist
evidence to fit their theories. Why such
efforts? For Western scholars, the answer
lies both in politics and the often
lucrative desire to please a wider Middle
East audience. For Islamists, though, the
motivation is to remove suspicion about the
nature and goals of Islamic movements such
as the Muslim Brotherhood and, perhaps, even
Hezbollah.
Western Apologia
Some Western researchers support the
Islamist claim that parliamentary democracy
and representative elections are not only
compatible with Islamic law, but that Islam
actually encourages democracy. They do this
in one of two ways: either they twist
definitions to make them fit the apparatuses
of Islamic government—terms such as
democracy become relative—or they bend the
reality of life in Muslim countries to fit
their theories.
Among the best known advocates of the idea
that Islam both is compatible and encourages
democracy is John L. Esposito, founding
director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center
for Muslim-Christian Understanding at
Georgetown University and the author or
editor of more than thirty books about Islam
and Islamist movements. Esposito and his
various co-authors build their arguments
upon tendentious assumptions and platitudes
such as "democracy has many and varied
meanings;" "every culture will mold an
independent model of democratic government;"
and "there can develop a religious
democracy."
He argues that "Islamic movements have
internalized the democratic discourse
through the concepts of shura
[consultation], ijma' [consensus], and
ijtihad [independent interpretive
judgment]" and concludes that democracy
already exists in the Muslim world, "whether
the word democracy is used or not."
If Esposito's arguments are true, then why
is democracy not readily apparent in the
Middle East? Freedom House regularly ranks
Arab countries as among the least democratic
anywhere. Esposito adopts Said's belief that
Western scholarship and standards are
inherently biased and lambastes both
scholars who pass such judgments without
experience with Islamic movements and those
who have a "secular bias" toward Islam.
For example, in Islam and Democracy,
Esposito and co-author John Voll, associate
director of the Prince Alwaleed Center,
question Western attempts to monopolize the
definition of democracy and suggest the very
concept shifts meanings over time and place.
They argue that every culture can mold an
independent model of democratic government,
which may or may not correlate to the
Western liberal idea.
Only after eviscerating the meaning of
democracy as the concept developed and
derived from Plato and Aristotle in ancient
Greece through Thomas Jefferson and James
Madison in eighteenth century America, can
Esposito and his fellow travelers advance
theories of the compatibility of Islamism
and democracy.
While Esposito's arguments may be popular
within the Middle East Studies Association,
democracy theorists tend to dismiss such
relativism. Larry Diamond, co-editor of the
Journal of Democracy, and Leonardo Morlino,
a specialist in comparative politics at the
University of Florence, ascribe seven
features to any democracy: individual
freedoms and civil liberties; rule of the
law; sovereignty resting upon the people;
equality of all citizens before the law;
vertical and horizontal accountability for
government officials; transparency of the
ruling systems to the demands of the
citizens; and equality of opportunity for
citizens. This approach is important, since
it emphasizes civil liberties, human rights
and freedoms, instead of over-reliance on
elections and the formal institutions of the
state.
Esposito ignores this basic foundation of
democracy and instead draws inspiration from
men such as Indian philosopher Muhammad
Iqbal (1877-1938), Sudanese religious leader
Hasan al-Turabi (1932-), Iranian sociologist
Ali Shariati (1933-77), and former Iranian
president Muhammad Khatami (1943-), who
argue that Islam provides a framework for
combining democracy with spirituality to
remedy the alleged spiritual vacuum in
Western democracies. They endorse Khatami's view that democracies need not
follow a formula and can function not only
in a liberal system but also in socialist or
religious systems; they adopt the important
twentieth century Indian (and, later,
Pakistani) exegete Abu al-A'la al-Mawdudi's
concept of a "theo-democracy," in which
three principles: tawhid (unity of God),
risala (prophethood) and khilafa (caliphate)
underlie the Islamic political system.
But Mawdudi argues that any Islamic polity
has to accept the supremacy of Islamic law
over all aspects of political and religious
life —hardly a democratic concept, given
that Islamic law does not provide for
equality of all citizens under the law
regardless of religion and gender. Such a
formulation also denies citizens a basic
right to decide their laws, a fundamental
concept of democracy. Although he uses the
phrase theo-democracy to suggest that Islam
encompassed some democratic principles,
Mawdudi himself asserted Islamic democracy
to be a self-contradiction: the sovereignty
of God and sovereignty of the people are
mutually exclusive. An Islamic democracy
would be the antithesis of secular Western
democracy.
Esposito and Voll respond by saying that
Mawdudi and his contemporaries did not so
much reject democracy as frame it under the
concept of God's unity. Theo-democracy need
not mean a dictatorship of state, they
argue, but rather could include joint
sovereignty by all Muslims, including
ordinary citizens. Esposito goes even
further, arguing that Mawdudi's Islamist
system could be democratic even if it
eschews popular sovereignty, so long as it
permits consultative assemblies subordinate
to Islamic law.
While Esposito and Voll argue that Islamic
democracy rests upon concepts of
consultation (shura), consensus (ijma'), and
independent interpretive judgment (ijtihad),
other Muslim exegetes add hakmiya
(sovereignty). To support such a
conception of Islamic democracy, Esposito
and Voll rely on Muhammad Hamidullah
(1908-2002), an Indian Sufi scholar of Islam
and international law; Ayatollah Baqir as-Sadr
(1935-80), an Iraqi Shi'ite cleric; Muhammad
Iqbal (1877-1938), an Indian Muslim poet,
philosopher and politician; Khurshid Ahmad,
a vice president of the Jama'at-e-Islami of
Pakistan; and Taha al-Alwani, an Iraqi
scholar of Islamic jurisprudence. The
inclusion of Alwani underscores the fallacy
of Esposito's theories. In 2003, the FBI
identified Alwani as an unindicted
co-conspirator in a trial of suspected
Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders and
financiers.
Just as Esposito eviscerates the meaning of
democracy to enable his thesis, so, too,
does he twist Islamic concepts. Shura is an
advisory council, not a participatory one.
It is a legacy of tribalism, not
sovereignty. Nor does ijma' express the
consensus of the community at large but
rather only the elders and established
leaders. As for independent judgment,
many Sunni scholars deem ijtihad closed in
the eleventh century.
Amplifying Esposito
Esposito's arguments have not only permeated
the Middle Eastern studies academic
community but also gained traction with
public intellectuals through books written
by journalists and policy practitioners.
In both journal articles and book length
works as well as in underlying assumptions
within her reporting, former Los Angeles
Times and current Washington Post diplomatic
correspondent Robin Wright argues that
Islamism could transform into more
democratic forms. In 2000, for example, she
argued in The Last Great Revolution that a
profound transformation was underway in Iran
in which pragmatism replaced revolutionary
values, arrogance had given way to realism,
and the "government of God" was ceding to
secular statecraft. Far from becoming
more democratic, though, the supreme leader
and Revolutionary Guards consolidated
control; freedoms remain elusive, political
prisoners incarcerated, and democracy
imaginary.
Underlying Wright's work is the idea that
neither Islam nor Muslim culture is a major
obstacle to political modernity. She accepts
both the Esposito school's arguments that
shura, ijma', and ijtihad form a basis on
which to make Islam compatible with
political pluralism. She shares John Voll's belief that Islam is an integral part
of the modern world, and she says the
central drama of reform is the attempt to
reconcile Islam and modernity by creating a
worldview compatible with both.
In her article "Islam and Liberal
Democracy," she profiles two prominent
Islamist thinkers, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the
exiled leader of Tunisia's Hizb al-Nahda
(Renaissance Party), and Iranian philosopher
and analytical chemist Abdul-Karim Soroush.
While she argues that their ideas represent
a realistic confluence of Islam and
democracy, she neither defines democracy
nor treats her cases studies with a
dispassionate eye. Ghannouchi uses
democratic terms without accepting them let
alone understanding their meaning. He
remains not a modernist but an unapologetic
Islamist.
Wright ignores that Soroush led the purge of
liberal intellectuals from Iranian
universities in the wake of the Islamic
Revolution. While Soroush spoke of civil
rights and tolerance, he applied such
privileges only to those subscribing to
Islamic democracy. He also argued that
although Islam means "submission," there is
no contradiction to the freedoms inherent in
democracy. Islam and democracy are not only
compatible but their association inevitable.
In a Muslim society, one without the other
is imperfect. He argues that the will of the
majority shapes the ideal Islamic state.
But, in practice, this does not occur. As in
Iran, many Islamists constrain democratic
processes and crush civil society. Those
with guns, not numbers, shape the state.
Among Arab-Islamic states, there are only
authoritarian regimes and patrimonial
leadership; the jury is still out on whether
Iraq can be a stable exception. Soroush,
however, contradicts himself: Although Islam
should be an open religion, it must retain
its essence. His argument that Islamic law
is expandable would be considered
blasphemous by many contemporaries who argue
that certain principles within Islamic law
are immutable. Upon falling out of favor
with revolutionary authorities in Iran, he
fled to the West. Sometimes, academics only
face the fallacy of what sounds plausible in
the ivy tower when events force them to face
reality.
What Ghannouchi and Soroush have in common,
and what remains true with any number of
other Islamist officials, is that,
regardless of rhetoric, they do not wish to
reconcile Islam and modernity but to change
the political order. It is easier to adopt
the rhetoric of democracy than its
principles.
While time has proven Wright wrong, the
persistence of Esposito exegetes remains.
Every few years, a new face emerges to
revive old arguments. The most recent
addition is Noah Feldman, a frequent media
commentator and Arabic-speaking law
professor at Harvard University. In 2003,
Feldman published After Jihad: America and
the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, which
explores the prospects for democracy in the
Islamic world. His thesis rehashes
Esposito's 1992 book The Islamic Threat:
Myth or Reality? and the 1996 Esposito-Voll
collaboration Islam and Democracy. Even
after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Feldman
argues that the age of violent jihad is
past, and Islamism is evolving in new, more
peaceful, and democratic directions.
Included in Feldman's list of Islamic
democrats is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Islamist
theoretician who has endorsed suicide
bombing and the murder of homosexuals.
While most academic debates do not exit the
classroom, the debate over the compatibility
of Islam and democracy affects policy.
Feldman pushes the conclusion that the
Islamist threat is illusionary. Accordingly,
he argues that Islamist movements should
have a chance to govern.[40] Feldman
concludes with the prescription that U.S.
policymakers should adopt an inclusive
attitude toward political Islam. "An
established religion that does not coerce
religious belief and that treats religious
minorities as equals may be perfectly
compatible with democracy," he explained in
a September 2003 interview.
Shireen Hunter, a former Iranian diplomat
who now directs the Islam program at the
Center for Strategic and International
Studies, also repackages Esposito's general
arguments in her book, The Future of Islam
and the West: Clash of Civilizations or
Peaceful Coexistence?, and, more
recently, in Modernization, Democracy, and
Islam, her edited collection with Huma
Malik, the assistant director of Esposito's
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown
University. Both books deny the Islamist
threat and try to reconcile Islamic
teachings with Western values. She seeks to
counter Samuel Huntington's Clash of
Civilization and gives an assessment of
the relative role of both conflictual and
cooperate factors of Muslim-Western
relations. She argues that the fusion of the
spiritual and the temporal in Islam is no
greater than in other religions. Therefore,
the slower pace of democratization in Muslim
countries cannot be attributed to Islam
itself. Although Hunter acknowledges that
Muslim countries have a poor record of
modernization and democracy, she blames
external factors such as colonialism and the
international economic system.
Other scholars take obsequiousness to new
levels. Anna Jordan, who gives no
information about her expertise but is
widely published on Islamist Internet sites,
argues that the Qur'an supports the
principles of Western democracy as they are
defined by William Ebenstein and Edwin
Fogelman, two professors of political
science who focus on the ideas and
ideologies that define democracy. By
utilizing various Qur'anic verses,
Jordan finds that the Islamic holy book
supports rational empiricism and individual
rights, rejects the state as the ultimate
authority, promotes the freedom to associate
with any religious group, accepts the idea
that the state is subordinate to law, and
accepts due process and basic equality.
Most of her citations, though, do not
support her conclusions and, in some cases,
suggest the opposite. Rather than support
the idea of "rational empiricism," for
example, Sura 17:36 mandates complete
submission to the authority of God. Other
citations are irrelevant in context and
substance to her arguments. Her assertion
that the Qur'an assures the "basic equality
of all human beings" rests upon verses
commanding equality among Muslims and
Muslims only, plus a verse warning against
schisms among Muslims.
Gudrun Kramer, chair of the Institute of
Islamic Studies at the Free University in
Berlin, also accepts the Esposito thesis.
She writes that the central stream in Islam
"has come to accept crucial elements of
political democracy: pluralism, political
participation, governmental accountability,
the rule of law, and the protection of human
rights." In her opinion, the Muslim approach
to human rights and freedom is more advanced
than many Westerners acknowledge.
Islamist Rejection of Esposito's Theory
Ironically, while Western scholars perform
intellectual somersaults to demonstrate the
compatibility of Islam and democracy,
prominent Muslim scholars argue democracy to
be incompatible with their religion. They
base their conclusion on two foundations:
first, the conviction that Islamic law
regulates the believer's activities in every
area of life, and second, that the Muslim
society of believers will attain all its
goals only if the believers walk in the path
of God. In addition, some Muslim scholars
further reject anything that does not have
its origins in the Qur'an.
Hasan al-Banna (1906-49), the founder of the
Muslim Brotherhood, sought to purge Western
influences. He taught that Islam was the
only solution and that democracy amounted to
infidelity to Islam. Sayyid
Qutb (1906-66), the leading theoretician of
the Muslim Brotherhood, objected to the idea
of popular sovereignty altogether. He
believed that the Islamic state must be
based upon the Qur'an, which he argued
provided a complete and moral system in need
of no further legislation.
Consultation—in the traditional Islamic
sense rather than in the manner of
Esposito's extrapolations—was sufficient.
Mawdudi, while used by Esposito, argued that
Islam was the antithesis of any secular
Western democracy that based sovereignty
upon the people and rejected the basics
of Western democracy. More recent
Islamists such as Qaradawi argue that
democracy must be subordinate to the
acceptance of God as the basis of
sovereignty. Democratic elections are
therefore heresy, and since religion makes
law, there is no need for legislative
bodies. Outlining his plans to establish
an Islamic state in Indonesia, Abu Bakar
Bashir, a Muslim cleric and the leader of
the Indonesian Mujahideen Council, attacked
democracy and the West and called on Muslims
to wage jihad against the ruling regimes in
the Muslim world. "It is not democracy that
we want, but Allah-cracy," he explained.
Nor does acceptance of basic Western
structures imply democracy. Under Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic
adopted both a constitution and a
parliament, but their existence did not make
Iran more democratic. Indeed, Khomeini
continued to wield supreme power and formed
a number of bodies—the revolutionary
foundations, for example—which remained
above constitutional law.
Is Islamic Democracy Possible?
The Islamic world is not ready to absorb the
basic values of modernism and democracy.
Leadership remains the prerogative of the
ruling elite. Arab and Islamic leadership
are patrimonial, coercive, and
authoritarian. Such basic principles as
sovereignty, legitimacy, political
participation and pluralism, and those
individual rights and freedoms inherent in
democracy do not exist in a system where
Islam is the ultimate source of law.
The failure of democracies to take hold in
Gaza and Iraq justify both the 1984
declaration by Samuel P. Huntington and the
argument a decade later by Gilles Kepel, a
prominent French scholar and analyst of
radical Islam, that Islamic cultural
traditions may prevent democratic
development.
Emeritus Princeton historian Bernard Lewis
is also correct in explaining that the term
democracy is often misused. It has turned up
in surprising places—the Spain of General
Franco, the Greece of the colonels, the
Pakistan of the generals, the Eastern Europe
of the commissars—usually prefaced by some
qualifying adjective such as "guided,"
"basic," "organic," "popular," or the like,
which serves to dilute, deflect, or even
reverse the meaning of the word.
Islam may be compatible with democracy, but
it depends on what is understood as Islam.
This is not universally agreed on and is
based on a hope, not on reality. Both Turkey
and the West African country of Mali are
democracies even though the vast majority of
their citizens are Muslim. But, the
political Islam espoused by the Muslim
Brotherhood and other Islamists is
incompatible with liberal democracy.
Furthermore, if language has an impact on
thinking, then the Middle East will achieve
democracy only slowly, if at all. In
traditional Arabic, Persian, and Turkish,
there is no word for "citizen." Rather,
older texts use cognates— in Arabic, muwatin;
in Turkish, vatandaslik; in Persian,
sharunad— respectively, closer in meaning to
the English "compatriot" or "countryman."
The Arabic and Turkish come from watan,
meaning "country." Muwatin, is a neologism
and while it suggests progress, the Western
concept of freedom—understood as the ability
to participate in the formation, conduct,
and lawful removal and replacement of
government—remains alien in much of the
region.
Islamists themselves regard liberal
democracy with contempt. They are willing to
accommodate it as an avenue to power but as
an avenue that runs only one way. Hisham
Sharabi (1927-2005), the influential
Palestinian scholar and political activist,
has said that Islamic fundamentalism
expresses mass sentiment and belief as no
nationalist or socialist (and we may add
democratic) ideology has been able to do up
until now.
Conclusion
Why then are so many Western scholars keen
to show the compatibility between Islamism
and democracy? The popularity of
post-colonialism and post-modernism within
the academy inclines intellectuals to
accommodate Islamism. Political correctness
inhibits many from addressing the negative
phenomenon in foreign cultures. It is
considered laudable to prove the
compatibility of Islam and democracy; it is
labeled "Islamophobic" or racist to suggest
incompatibility or to differentiate between
positive and negative interpretations of
Islam.
Many policymakers are also conflict-adverse.
Islamists exploit the Western cultural
desire to accommodate while Western thinkers
and policymakers attempt to ameliorate
differences by seeking to find common ground
in definitions if not reality.
Into the mix comes Islamist propaganda,
portraying Islam as peace-loving, embracing
of civil rights and, even in its less
tolerant forms, compatible with all
democratic values. The problem is that the
free world ignores the possibility that
political Islam can threaten democracy not
only in Middle Eastern societies but also in
the West. The legitimization of political
Islam has lent democratic respectability to
an ideology and political system at odds
with the basic tenets of democracy.
Esposito's statement that "the United States
must restrain its one-dimensional attitude
to democracy and recognize [that] the
authentic roots of democracy exist in
Islam" shows a basic ignorance of both
democracy and Islamist teachings. These
conclusions are exacerbated when Esposito
places blame for the aggressiveness and
terrorism of Islamic fundamentalism on the
West and on Said's "Orientalists." It is one
thing to be wrong in the classroom, but it
can be far more dangerous when such
wrong-headed theories begin to affect
policy.
David Bukay is a lecturer in the school of
political science at the University of
Haifa.