Islam • 161tries to introduce representative forms of government with-
out complying with the Western slogan. But the democratic
ideal had often been tainted in practice. When the Iranians set
up their Majlis (Assembly) after the Constitutional Revolu-
tion of 1906, the Russians helped the shah to close it down.
Later, when the British were trying to make Iran a protec-
torate during the 1920s, the Americans noted that they often
rigged the elections to secure a result favourable to them-
selves. Later American support for the unpopular Muham-
mad Reza Shah, who not only closed down the Majlis to effect
his modernization programme, but systematically denied Ira-
nians fundamental human rights that democracy was sup-
posed to guarantee, made it seem that there was a double
standard. The West proudly proclaimed democracy for its
own people, but Muslims were expected to submit to cruel
dictatorships. In Egypt there were seventeen general elec-
tions between 1923 and 1952, all of which were won by the
popular Wafd party, but the Wafd were permitted to rule only
five times. They were usually forced to stand down by either
the British or by the king of Egypt.
It was, therefore, difficult for Muslims to set up a modern
democratic nation-state, in which religion was relegated to
the private sphere. Other solutions seemed little better. The
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, founded in 1932, was based on the
Wahhabi ideal. The official view was that a constitution was
unnecessary, since the government was based on a literal
reading of the Quran. But the Quran contains very little leg-
islation and it had always been found necessary in practice to
supplement it with more complex jurisprudence. The Saudis
proclaimed that they were the heirs of the pristine Islam of
the Arabian peninsula, and the ulama granted the state legiti-
macy; in return the kings enforced conservative religious val-
ues. Women are shrouded from view and secluded (even
though this had not been the case in the Prophet's time), gam-