In many ways the question, raised so persistently in our times, is not whether Islam is compatible with democracy, but rather how Muslims can make these concepts compatible. Nothing intrinsic to Islam—or any other religion—makes it inherently democratic or undemocratic.
In Making Islam Democratic Asef Bayat draws our attention to an overlooked social movement in Muslim societies that represents an attempt to bridge the gap between Islam and democracy. Calling the phenomena “post-Islamism,” Bayat describes it as “an endeavor to fuse religiosity and rights, faith and freedom, Islam and liberty (dīndārī ve āzādī). It is an attempt to turn the underlying principles of Islamism on its head by emphasizing rights instead of duties, plurality in place of singular authoritative voice, historicity rather than fixed scripture, and the future instead of the past.”
Since the late 1990s, against the backdrop of intensifying
religious sentiment in the Muslim world, Bayat notes that there has been an
emerging trend to accommodate aspects of democratization, pluralism, women’s
rights, youth concerns, and social development. In Lebanon, the Hizbullah has,
to an extent, transcended its exclusivist Islamist platform by adapting to the
pluralistic political reality. In India, the Jama‘at-i Islami has transformed
itself from a political party resting on an exclusivist Islam that rejected
democracy into a movement that values democracy and pluralism. Even in a
religiously orthodox and politically conservative country like Saudi Arabia, a
post-Wahabi trend has attempted to incorporate notions of “liberal Islam”
seeking a compromise with democracy. Recently, in Turkey, the country’s
center-right AK party has sought to manifest a post-Islamist sensibility by
combining modernism, nationalism, and democracy while cherishing religious
precepts not withstanding an initial unease in the West about growing religious
revivalism. The AK Party is poised to stay in power in the country’s upcoming parliamentary
elections.
It has been widely reported how the “war on terrorism” has increased the appeal of religious fundamentalism in the Muslim world, and Islamic political parties that have expressed opposition to U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, if Asef Bayat’s analysis is correct there are ways to combine Islam and democracy, and these emerging solutions will need to be sustained by the efforts of politically engaged citizens of the Middle East who feel “compelled to join a cosmopolitan humanity, to link up with global civil activism and to work for solidarity.”
i think the best practice of democracy is in Madinah and Mecca with prophet Muhammad ruling them..now it's chaos and misleading in many ways...
Posted by: Bugil | December 25, 2007 at 11:20 PM