World, Vol. 2, The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest,
11th–13th Centuries (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997); Stanley
Wolpert, A New History of India, 5th ed. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997).
democracy
Democracy, or “rule by the people,” is a term that
has been used to describe a number of different
kinds of government. In the modern sense, it is
usually connected to the idea of government by
popularly elected officials who legislate and enforce
the laws in accordance with notions of individ-
ual liberties and civil rights. Historically, Islamic
political thought has legitimated many kinds of
governance, from the despotic to the benign.
The bountiful intellectual fruits of Islamic tradi-
tions—philosophical, theological, jurisprudential,
mystical—are capable of justifying a wide array of
political models and forms of political behavior,
including models and forms of democratic prov-
enance. Professors, pundits, policy makers, and the
public in their wake have argued or assumed that
islam and democracy are inherently incompatible,
that cultural and political properties intrinsic to
Islamicate civilization preclude the birth of any-
thing remotely resembling “Islamic democracy.”
Yet empirical studies conclude that such cultural
explanations do not account for the emergence and
success or failure of democracies.
Today, a clarion call from Muslims around the
world is heard on behalf of the virtues of demo-
cratic values and principles, methods, and pro-
cesses. The overwhelming preference of the “Arab
street” and the majority of non-Arabic Muslims is
for ballots (“paper stones”), not bullets, as militant,
jihadist Muslims prove the exception to the rule. In
short, Islamic democracy is not an oxymoron.
Minimalist or thin theories of democracy
focus on the electoral components of the demo-
cratic process, the desiderata being free and fair,
multiparty elections by secret and universal ballot.
An electoral democracy is a constitutional order in
which the chief executive (for example, president
or prime minister) and legislative offices are filled
through regular and competitive elections. By this
standard, for example, tUrkey, bangladesh, and
indonesia are democratic, as are several states of
the former Soviet Union. egypt and malaysia are
quasi- or semi-democratic, Jordan and morocco
are democratic by fits and starts, and algeria has
democratic pretensions, as do Kuwait and Bah-
rain. Interestingly, iran also scores high on this
electoral scorecard. Even saUdi arabia has been
unable to resist the reformist clamor for electoral
democracy: The kingdom’s cabinet held its first
elections for municipal councils in early 2005. As
various forums of dialogue or “talking shops” are
essential forms of democratic participation, the
fact that the Saudi leaders (in particular, former
crown prince and now king Abd Allah ibn Abd
al-Aziz [b. 1923]) are talking about reform with
“reform groups” portends changes on the des-
ert horizon, however distant. Post-Saddam iraq
entered the early stages of forming a democratic
polity in 2004–05, where Shii political parties
have prevailed. hamas, the Islamic radical resis-
tance organization, won in Palestinian elections
in 2006. In the previous year, after the withdrawal
of Syrian troops, the radical Shii organization hiz-
bUllah won seats in the Lebanese election, plus
two cabinet posts. The results of these elections
provoked an escalation of armed conflict between
Israeli forces and Hamas in palestine and Hizbul-
lah in lebanon.
Other problems persist. Executive offices are
often uncontested, and opposition parties face
unwarranted if not unreasonable government
restrictions (and not a few parties are “banned”
for this or that reason), with often limited access
to media. In addition to voting fraud, authoritar-
ian elites do not hesitate to resort to insidious
forms of “electoral engineering” to achieve favor-
able electoral outcomes. In this case, the maxim
“something is better than nothing” holds. Per-
chance international election monitoring can play
a more effective part in preventing or discouraging
attempts at electoral manipulation.K 190 democracy