As a consequence of electoral participation,
some of the more militant Salafi Islamists have
formed alliances and coalitions with both Islamic
and “secularist” parties and movements, often
renouncing the methods of violence in ending
the campaign for an “Islamic revolution.” Deny-
ing Islamists participation in electoral politics can
have deleterious results, as in Algeria, when the
Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) resorted to rebel-
lion and violence. At other times, the denial of
participation simply compels Islamists to engage
in the politics of civil society, as with the mUs-
lim brotherhood in Egypt during the 1980s and
1990s. Islamist parties demonstrating some level
of commitment to democratic principles and pro-
cedures are found, for example, in Tunisia, Alge-
ria, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia,
and Indonesia, as well in most of the republics of
the former Soviet Union.
The growth and consolidation of democracy
in Muslim-majority countries face enormous
obstacles: authoritarian political traditions and
communalist orientations (including recalcitrant
Ulama with medievalist responses to the condi-
tions of modernity); histories of colonialist rule
and imperialist interference; the need to imple-
ment economic reforms by way of integration
into the global economy; the effects of anticolo-
nial nationalist struggles that lacked democratic
priorities; and economically bloated and ineffi-
cient states with excessive military expenditures,
to list the more egregious difficulties. Fortunately,
the level of economic development provides little
information about the chances of transition to
democracy, although per capita income does
correlate with the sustainability of democratic
regimes. Political economists and democratic
theorists alike well know that rentier states, such
as the Persian Gulf oil-producing countries, pose
peculiar problems for democratic development.
Of course, more substantive participatory and
deliberative democratic theories elaborate a vari-
ety of different social and institutional conditions
that serve as prerequisites of, or that are at least
conducive to, full-fledged democratic consolida-
tion and flourishing. When or if the various forms
of Islamic democracy do arise, the corresponding
criteria of assessment will be more stringent than
those that take into account only electoral forms
of democracy.
See also constitUtionalism; government,
islamic; islamism; politics and islam.
Patrick S. O’DonnellFurther reading: Khaled Abou El Fadl, Joshua Cohen,
and Deborah Chasman, eds., Islam and the Challenge
of Democracy: A Boston Review Book (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2004); Robert A. Dahl, Ian
Shapiro, and Jose Antonio Chiebub, eds., The Democ-
racy Sourcebook (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003);
John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, eds., Islam and
Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996);
Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for
Islamic Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
2003).Deoband
Located in Saharanpur District in Uttar Pradesh,
india, Deoband town contains mosqUes and build-
ings from the 15th and 16th centuries and is
mentioned in the Ayn-i Akbari of Abu’l Fazl (d.
1602). It is famous for the Dar al-Ulum (House
of Sciences) school, which was founded in 1867
by a group of highly learned Ulama. Principal
among them was Mohammad Qasim Nanautawi
(1832–77), who was trained by teachers in the
lineage of Shah Wali Allah (1703–62), the great
Sufi reformer and intellectual in delhi. The goal
of the institution was to create a new Indian body
of ulama that could provide spiritual and legal
guidance to Indian Muslims, rather than con-
tinuing to depend on scholars from the Arabian
Peninsula or having to travel to the Middle East
for instruction. Another paramount objective in
the founding of the school was to counteract the
growing influence of Christian missionaries.Deoband 191 J