Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May - June 2001, page 68

Islam in America

 

Islam and Democracy: The Struggle Continues

 

By Muqtedar Khan

The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), a Washington-based think tank, held its second annual conference at Georgetown University on April 7. The think tank is the initiative of Muslim intellectuals, academics, and activists seeking to promote democracy in the Muslim world, along with several non-Muslim academics who have over the years demonstrated a remarkable lack of prejudice or ill will toward Islam and Muslims in their scholarship and their politics.

In the two years since its inception, CSID has grown in its role as well as its membership, becoming an important institution of American Muslim civil society. It has been joined in its mission by Muslim scholars and activists from all over the world. CSID and its ideas now receive attention from Western as well as traditional Muslim scholars, all of whom have welcomed its endeavors to increase an appreciation for democratic values in the Muslim context. CSID’s contributions are particularly exceptional because, by underscoring the Islamic basis of many democratic ideals such as equality, justice, tolerance, freedom and openness, they demonstrate the compatibility between democracy and Islam.

CSID’s founders share two fundamental ideas. One, that democratic values—and by that I mean much more than just the procedural elements of democracy—are indispensable for establishing a society that can pursue the will of its people, whatever that will may be (including Islamization). Two, the absence of democracy in the Muslim world, particularly in the Arab world, is not the fault of Islam.

These shared ideas have galvanized CSID into launching two parallel programs. The first project promotes activism among Muslims, educating them about the Islamic basis of democratic values and encouraging them to seek the institutionalization of democratic practices as a means to reform their societies and renew the spirit of Islam.

The second project is intellectual. The scholars involved with CSID have undertaken the challenging task of exploring the philosophical roots of democracy and examining its compatibility with the Maqasid al-Shariah (the objectives of the divine path of Islam). In so doing, they indeed are attempting to develop a political theory of Islam. CSID’s newsletter, The Muslim Democrat, along with its annual conferences and its lecture and seminar series, are instrumental in both programs.

 

Two groups argue that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

Two extremely different groups, one from the West and one from the Muslim world, have been arguing vehemently that Islam and democracy are incompatible.

On the one hand, some Western scholars and ideologues have tried to present Islam as an anti-democratic and inherently authoritarian ethos that precludes democratization in the Muslim world. By misrepresenting Islam in this way they are seeking to prove that Islam as a set of values is inferior to Western liberalism and is indeed a barrier to the global progress of civilization.

This argument also is helpful to Israel, which, despite its egregious human rights violations against Palestinians, continues to enjoy the reputation as the sole democracy in the Middle East. Positioned as the solitary defender of democracy in the Middle East, Israel enjoys immense moral and military support from the West, which includes the overlooking of its dismal human rights record. As an “in-principle advocate of democracy,” Israel with its horrible record is preferred over Islam, which has an exemplary history of tolerance and freedom but is presented as “in-principle antithesis to democracy.”

On the other hand, many Islamic activists, using extremely broad, simple and sometimes crude notions of secularism and sovereignty, reject democracy, as the rule of man, as opposed to Islam, which is the rule of God. I have dealt with these issues substantively elsewhere; readers may visit <http://www.ijtihad.org> for more references. For the purpose of reflection, however, let me merely suggest that Islamists who reject democracy falsely assume that secularism and democracy are inherently related. Secularism is a liberal tradition, not a prerequisite for democracy. Religion plays a significant role in democratic politics—the contemporary U.S. being a case in point.

Nor do these Islamists distinguish between de jure sovereignty and de facto sovereignty. For example, even though God is supposedly sovereign in Afghanistan, in fact it is the Taliban who are sovereign there.

In order to understand the situation better, one has to recognize the difference between sovereignty in principle and sovereignty in fact. Sovereignty in fact is always man’s, whether in a democracy or an Islamic state. Rejecting democracy because man is sovereign is a major error. What we really need to worry about is how to limit the de facto sovereignty of man. Democracy—with its principles of limited government, public accountability, checks and balances, separation of powers and transparency in governance—does succeed in limiting man’s sovereignty. The Muslim world, plagued by despots, dictators and self-regarding monarchs, badly needs the limitation of man’s sovereignty.

CSID and its scholars have been working on these issues. Not only are they exposing the politics behind the arguments of those Westerners who hold malice against Islam, but they also are exposing the false assumptions of those Muslims who misunderstand democracy and Islam.

 

A More Fruitful Inquiry

It is time we moved on to a more fruitful line of inquiry. If not Islam, what has precluded the democratization of the Muslim world? There are structural failures in Muslim societies due to the legacy of colonialism and the debilitating corruption which preceded and made the Muslim world colonizable. Can we find a way to remove these seeds of underdevelopment?

It is my hope that, in the years to come, the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy will focus on this line of inquiry. If it can pinpoint the structural problems that prevent the political and economic development of the Muslim world it will have accomplished a great task. Policy solutions sensitive to local conditions can then emerge to tackle the prevalence of underdevelopment.

For additional information on CSID,visit its Web site at <http://www.islam-democracy.org>.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan is director of international studies at Adrian College in Michigan and a member of the board of directors of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. His articles are archived at <http://www.ijtihad.org>

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