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Indonesia has developed an internal model of reconciling the values of democracy and Islam; therefore it could pursue international activities for bringing the West and the Islamic world together. However, Indonesia's international role as a bridge-builder between democratic values and Islam has limited effectiveness. In this paper the attempt is to investigate why Indonesia's international activity as a bridge-builder between the West and the Muslim world is ineffective? The analysis shows, and this is the argument, that its limited effectiveness results from a conflict between the country's conception and prescription roles. The assumptions are that Indonesia's underlying objective in its foreign policy is to provide a tool for reconciling the West and the Muslim world (role conception); however an enactment of this role is affected by a dissonance between the authors of this role. The paper examines three empirical case studies at different levels of Indonesia's external engagement: (1) civilizational and interfaith dialogues at the international level; (2) the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Developing-8 at the inter-regional level; and (3) the Bali Democracy Forum at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a few years of the historic Arab uprisings of 2011, popular mobilization dissipated amidst instability in many Arab countries. We trace the relationship between shifting macro-political conditions and individual-level political values in the Middle East, demonstrating that a preference for democracy and political trust are not fixed cultural features of populations but rather can shift rapidly in the face of perceived insecurity. Our empirical analyses employ longitudinal data from the Arab Barometer covering 13 countries and data from the 2015 World Values Survey, which includes both Arab and non-Arab countries in order to benchmark regional developments against global patterns. Our findings contribute to the growing body of research on the political effects of insecurity and oppose culturalist depictions of fixed political attitudes among Muslims in narrow perspectives on the relationship between Islam and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars argue that local cultures are an impediment to the diffusion of "global" norms. Others point out that local populations domesticate global cultural elements by integrating them into preexisting cultures, generating hybridized systems. In the current study, I argue that local cultures are not necessarily impediments to cultural change and hybridization is only one aspect of cultural domestication. Instead, I find that individuals attribute global norms to local cultural objects as a means for disassociating putatively universal norms from the powerful actors that dominate international politics. I illustrate this process using the case of support for shariʿa (sometimes called Islamic law) in majority‐Muslim countries. Results of multimethod analyses show that with the exception of attitudes about gender roles and sexuality, Muslims who support implementing shariʿa do not systematically object to many so‐called global norms; in fact, they may express more enthusiasm about democracy, tolerance for people of other religions, optimism about scientific advances, and concern for environmental preservation than those who oppose implementing shariʿa. Likewise, many Muslims assert their full participation in global society on terms not dictated by Western actors by repackaging ostensibly universal norms as components of the unambiguously local shariʿa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how concepts of liberal and progressive Islam, which have been developed in the political and theological academic literature, may inform the curriculum of Islamic education and the practice of religious educators in Islamic schools in the US. We investigate the meaning of in-faith Islamic education and how it can conform to the life in a democratic, multicultural, and multi-faith society. Liberal Islam challenges the transmission-oriented and rigid interpretations of Islam and seeks to appreciate and to contextualize the religious claims which are compatible with ideals of reflective education, rational thinking, mutual respect, and equal citizenship. It suggests that students become critical ‘consumers’ of Islam, its moral and civic purposes, and the cultural politics of religious interrogations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy & Peace is the property of Ihsan Dogramaci Peace Foundation, Center for Foreign Policy & Peace Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Is authoritarianismintrinsic to Islam? Is Islamincompatiblewith democracy? These questions are frequently debated in the context of the study of the relationship between theWestern and Islamic civilization. The debate has gained momentum since the last decade of the twentieth century, especially after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the subsequent transition of socialist states in Eastern Europe and other authoritarian states in Asia and Latin America to democracy. The publication of The Clash of Civilizations by American scholar Samuel Huntington, in which he presented a controversial argument about a cultural divide and clash between the Islamic world and theWest, pushed the debate even further. Apart from Muslim intellectuals, Western academics have spent a significant amount of time on these questions, with a multitude of articles and volumes examining the compatibility of Islam and democracy. In this paper, we will examine Islam's relationship with democracy from normative and philosophical viewpoints, examining how the established values and principles of Islam as reflected in the Qur'anic and prophetic traditions correspond to Western democratic norms and practices. In order to obtain a profound understanding of this subject, we have delved into, through content analysis, the thoughts of several early modernist Islamic scholars who have had tremendous impact on contemporary Islamic revivalist movements throughout the world, and interviewed a number of contemporary Islamic thinkers in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a century a question discussion has been whether democracy is compatible with Islam or not? The issue came into focus again after the recent phenomena of war on terrorism. The hypothesis is that in the wake of the terrorist act is a result of authoritarian and undemocratic regimes or politics. Similarly the issue has implications for the social sciences students also: does Islam in particular or religion in general, have an effective impact on the political establishment of a state? This question turns out to be more striking when one takes into account the reality that the greater part of the Muslim-majority countries are either unstable democracies or non-democratic regimes. The question whether democracy is compatible with Islam has a direct impact on almost one fourth of the world's populace. In terms of modernization which is the component of the democracy the Islamic world has a poor record. Though it cannot be said that the cause of this situation is due to the religion i.e. Islam but there are other factors which should be given due consideration such as colonialism, international trading and economic systems and above all the role of the military. Identifying these themes permits us to find a way of considering the potential remedies to bring change in Muslim populated countries. The much propagated and widely spread misconception, that Islam values dictatorship has its origin in the history of Muslim rulers. But we cannot and should not make this assumption on the basis of the Mughal rulers of India, the rulers of Baghdad, Abbasid period, Spanish and Turkish rulers etc., as these rulers were not the rulers according to the teachings and the injunction laid down in the Quran. They were only the dynastic regimes. And in this same period of time, the West also had similar dynastic autocratic rulers. The notion of democracy in Islam can be best defined as functioning at two levels: at the individual, and at the collective levels. Individually, the person has the freedom to adopt the way of worship that he or she likes, but when it comes to the collective level, it becomes a group matter, and the voice of the people in Islam, is given preference. From the social perspective, it is the communal Islam, which is prescribed to be practiced at all levels and thus democracy in Islam is a social concept more so than in any other theoretical tradition of democracy (e.g., Liberalism), and further, it is democracy understood as an expression of the group's voice which is more Islamic than any other theory of ruling. This study reveals the relationship of Islam and democracy in practice and thus offers a new perspective to boost our understandings of both democracy and Islam. A main proposition of this study is that instead of repeating the cliché that Islam is compatible with democracy, the focus should be on 'how' is democracy compatible with Islam and thus how can we democratize Muslim societies?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why, as a comparativist, did I find it compelling to carry out field research in over 20 countries on five different continents? Because comparative politics should be question-driven, not driven by methodology or existing data. Good questions led to new countries. My book on how Brazilian civilian elites were complicit in coups led to a comparative book on how to transform such civil–military relations in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. My colleague Juan J Linz and I broadened the scope of questions of democratic transition theory by adding post-communist countries to the transition set. New questions and relevant new countries continue to emerge. What to do if more than one nation exists in a polity pursuing ‘nation-state’ policies? I helped create the concept of ‘state-nation’ and documented how ‘multiple but complementary identities’ were fostered in India. How did polities that respected the ‘twin tolerations’ emerge in Muslim-majority Indonesia, Senegal, and Tunisia? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between Islam and democracy with emphasis on the issue of whether and how Islam has bearings on democratic adjustment speed. Using comprehensive data on 17 Asian countries from 1996 to 2010, the study demonstrates that religion is a significant factor for determining democracy. Results indicate that the level of democracy in Islamic countries is generally lower than that in non-Islamic countries. However, the level of democracy in Islamic countries exhibits an upward trend, whereas that in non-Islamic countries displays a downward trend. Moreover, when benchmark variables are controlled, democratic adjustment in Islamic countries is faster than in non-Islamic countries. Hence, despite the current lower level of democracy in Islamic countries, the results of this study refute the conventional wisdom that Islam hinders democracy. Instead, Islamic countries are highly malleable and exhibit a potential for faster democratic development compared with non-Islamic countries. Results further suggest that Islamic countries can effectively promote democracy by improving education, minimizing the gender gap, controlling population growth, or becoming an oil exporter similar to non-Islamic countries. However, Islamic countries likely own an additional unique advantage in effectively improving democracy – that is, promoting urbanization. This aspect is in contrast to non-Islamic countries where urbanization plays no role in determining democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some Arab citizens regard democracy favourably but see it as unsuitable for their country? Modernization theory contends that economic development creates modern citizens who demand democracy. Cultural theories see Islam and democracy as incompatible. Government performance theories argue that citizens who perceive the current authoritarian government as acting in a transparent manner will demand greater democracy. I argue that attitudes toward democracy are shaped by beliefs about its political, economic, and religious consequences, including those related to sectarianism. I test this consequence-based theory using Arab Barometer data from six nations. Sixty percent hold favourable views of democracy generally and for their country, while 7% reject democracy. Twenty-seven percent support democracy generally but see it as unsuitable for their country. Beliefs that democracy will have negative consequences and perceptions of poor government performance are the most important predictors of democracy's unsuitability. Modernization theory receives support, but Islamic identity and beliefs do not consistently predict attitudes in the expected direction. These findings offer a more nuanced understanding of Arab public opinion and suggest that concerns about the consequences of free elections affect support for democracy as much as assessments of the political and economic performance of the current authoritarian regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islamist parties' electoral performance is a hotly debated question. Two arguments dominate the literature in terms of Islamist parties' performance in democratic elections. The conventional argument has been the “one man, one vote, one time” hypothesis. More recently, Kurzman and Naqvi challenge this argument and show that Islamists tend to lose in free elections rather than win them. We argue that existing arguments fall short. Specifically, we theorize that moderateness of Islamist platform plays a key role in increasing the popularity of these parties and leads to higher levels of electoral support. Using data collected by Kurzman and Naqvi, we test our hypothesis, controlling for political platform and political economic factors in a quantitative analysis. We find that there is empirical support for our theory. Islamist parties' support level is positively associated with moderateness; however, this positive effect of moderation is also conditioned by economic openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about the roundtable titled Democratic Reform and the Role of Women in the Muslim World that was organized by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy on March 29, 2004, is presented. Topics discussed include the relationship between Islam and democracy; women in Muslim countries and gender inequality in the Muslim world. Other topics include tribal leaders and rulers resisting reforms as they fear decline in authority due to democracy and economic empowerment.

The article presents an interview with various personalities of International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS), Malaysia, which includes Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Mohamed Azam Mohamed Adil, and Tengku Ahmad Hazri. When asked about Islamic human rights, Kamali refers to the different Islamic laws which includes huquq Allah, huquq al-‘ibad, and the Ummah. Kamali comments on the limits of state authority and constitution. Azam and Hazri comment on democracy, consensus and freedom.

This study uses the Religion and State round 2 (RAS2) dataset to examine the presence of religious freedom in 177 countries. There are many different conceptions of the meaning of religious freedom but they can be divided into two categories, those which focus on the free exercise of religion-that is the right to practice religion and maintain religious institutions-and those which focus on treating all religions equally, also known as the level playing field model. The results show that neither form of religious freedom is common even among democracies and states which have constitutional clauses protecting religious freedom. This finding has serious implications for our understanding of the nature of liberal democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the U.S. can positively influence political changes and promote democracy in the Middle East. Topics covered include the use of public diplomacy in Muslim countries, the development of Islamist versus secularist democracy in Muslim countries, and the use of soft power in international relations. Other topics include culture wars and pluralism in the U.S., the importance of avoiding concentrations of power in political systems, and constitutional democracy.

This article examines the evolution of state--religion relations in Malaysia from a secular-constitutional democracy with Islamic symbols to one where Islam as the religion of the federation is becoming a public doctrine, influencing norm-creation and norm-critique. It identifies a normative convergence between the Syariah and the secular courts on the content of religious freedom and the imperative to maintain a closed community. In this regard, this paper locates this development within a wider movement to reverse the priority of secular norms over Islamic ones. It analyses the attendant social, legal, and political factors influencing these developments and considers their implications for the equal rights of non-Muslim citizens and the ideal of a democratic Malaysian state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case of Hizbullah offers an important opportunity to examine Islamist actors. Created during the 1980s as a religious-oriented movement with a clear Islamic agenda, it gradually shifted towards a more pragmatic position, entering Lebanese political life in 1992. In its early days Hizbullah adopted a clear anti-system posture and strongly criticised the consociational Lebanese system and the international order. By comparing three key moments in the political evolution of the movement this article analyses the strategy of Hizbullah from an anti-system perspective. The aim is to demonstrate how playing as a dual anti-system actor (as both social movement and party) on two interrelated levels (domestic and external) has been a strategic and informed political choice. Hizbullah has been able to juggle these positions over the years, activating or silencing its domestic anti-system attitude to the benefit of the external one. To have a differentiated anti-system attitude has allowed it to maintain a double (but always coherent) position in the different systems it plays, adapting its anti-system posture to the political circumstances, to its goals and to the international context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the potential of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for the study of EU foreign policy and argues that CDA can provide a systematic way of studying discourses on EU foreign policy through the refined linguistic and argumentative tools that it offers. The article first outlines the main theoretical premises of CDA and its one particular variant, the discourse-historical approach, and then presents a discussion on its analytical and methodological toolkit. After discussing the various ways in which EU foreign policy texts can be subject to CDA, the article concludes with the theoretical challenges posed by CDA, particularly regarding its relationship with poststructuralist approaches to foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is a study of the origins and consequences of the Arab Spring through highlighting the higher objectives of the Shariah in governance, as well as the basic rights and responsibilities of the citizens and the rulers in Islam. The paper suggests that maintaining peace, harmony and social stability are the main objectives of Islam in governance. But revolutionary changes commonly destroy social harmony and well-being; and produce chaos, insecurity, injustice and economic collapse. At the same time, the citizens own rights to disobey their deviant rulers. Accordingly, through discussing the rights and responsibilities of the citizens before their rulers and of the rulers before their people, the paper recommends adoption of the approach of nonviolent and evolutionary changes to improve political and social ills. It also suggests that governments should conduct peaceful, fair-minded and just rule rather than giving people no other option but to create public havoc. The paper also suggests that Islamic principles in governance, as embedded in the text and traditions, are conducive to good governance and democratic thought in many compelling ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the roots of successful Islamist political mobilization in new democracies lie in the developmental trajectories of the authoritarian regimes that preceded them. Tunisia under Ben Ali and Egypt under Mubarak, where Islamists flourished in opposition, are examples of corrupted development, in which the failure of a secular regime to provide widely shared increases in material prosperity facilitated mass opposition to authoritarian rule under various forms of Islamism. Indonesia under Suharto represents corrupt development, in which sustained improvements in material welfare hamstrung the ability of a nascent Islamist opposition to develop a broad movement base. These differences in the breadth of opposition to incumbent authoritarian regimes, in turn, explain the failure of Islamism as an electoral force in Indonesia, and its success in Tunisia and Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey commissioned by the Center of Arab Unity Studies (CAUS), and carried out in late 2009 and early 2010, was the first Arab public opinion survey on democracy of its kind. This article presents its findings and contextualizes the analyses in the debate that has marked Arab political thinking on democracy as a system of good governance. The purpose of the survey was to shed light on the attitudes of ordinary Arabs with respect to democracy. Contrary to approaches that sought to explain the democratic deficit in the Arab world by virtue of its inherently ‘undemocratic’ culture and the Islamic religion, democratic elements are not absent from Arab culture and Arab people are yearning for democracy. The article analyses and compares the results with those of other surveys to conclude that contemporary Arabs are no exception and they have the same attitudes shared by humanity at large with respect to democracy as a solid political base for a fair system of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on the economic and political sciences literature to examine the possibility that the Arab Spring could bring the region out of the past vicious circle by which regional integration is stalled by political tensions and the latter are exacerbated by the lack of integration. This analysis suggests that the outcome depends on a number of factors, among which democracy plays a major role. Arguments based on the relationship between human capital and the development of democracy are put forward to support the likelihood of a virtuous circle developing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This Article examines the role of religious law in constitutionalism by focusing on Egypt and Tunisia as two main case studies: Egypt is an example of the so-called "Islamic constitutionalism " and Tunisia is an example of a more secular variety. Both cases are analyzed against the backdrop of U.S. constitutional theory and law. I begin by rejecting conceptualist approaches which focus on abstract concepts in order to assess the compatibility of religion, like Islam, with democracy. I show the futility of this kind of debate through a comparison to American debates between "living constitutionalists " and "originalists. " I then elaborate a pragmatic account that assesses the consequences of different institutional arrangements. For that purpose Part I rejects the normative and political-realist arguments supporting the constitutionalization of religion, according to which constitutionalization of religion in a largely-liberal constitution is either an ideal compromise or a historical dictate. I focus on four assumptions that underlie these arguments: that popular acceptance requires Islamic constitutionalism; that people's identity includes religious law and should be reflected in Islamic constitutionalism; that Islamic law's indeterminacy belittles the possible risks of its constitutionalization; and that the legal order's transparency requires an acknowledgment of the religious aspect. Part II considers two of the primary arguments supporting the U.S. Establishment Clause: alienation; political division and distraction; and corruption of religion. The first two arguments have been subjected to growing critiques in the United States. I defend these two arguments by connecting between alienation and internal effects within religious minorities, and between political division and instability and violence. Specifically, I argue that, first, the constitutionalization of religion is likely to produce an unequal status for religious groups given the pluralist conditions in Egypt and Tunisia. Second, constitutionalization is likely to polarize and destabilize the political system in these states. Finally, this polarization happens for the wrong reasons and may produce bad effects: the dominance of the debate over the constitutionalization of religion may distract the citizenry in these states from addressing other socio-economic and political questions that are not necessarily reduced to concerns over religious law; constitutionalization is an anti-participatory move because it empowers few jurists to make decisions rather than collective decision-making; delegating controversial religious questions to the judiciary is a form of secular escapism; and a constitutionalization of religion is part of a constitutional fetishism which-- along with judicial empowerment--unduly legalizes political questions. The implication of these effects is to neglect political responsibility. Thus, the Article ends with a call for a Weberian consequences-driven ethics of responsibility. This ethical stance, in turn, should be part and parcel of the recognition of value pluralism and the attempt to transform politics into an adversarial "agonistic pluralism. By displacing the conceptualist debate, the Article seeks to avoid the generalizing tendency of conceptual debates; evade the unwarranted optimism of the normative argument; and reject the realist argument's despondency and uncritical acceptance of reality. Additionally, the Article seeks to demystify Islamic constitutionalism by grounding the discussion in American constitutional debates. Finally, the Article argues against Islamic constitutionalism without falling prey to essentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the modern period - usually called the Renaissance ( Nahda in Arabic) - prominent pre-Islamists and Islamists such as Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, Rashīd Ridā and Yūsuf al-Qaradāwī have condemned the political oppression that prevails in much of the Muslim world and attributed its backwardness to that oppression. For many of those authors, the solution is the implementation of the old Arab institution of consultation ( shūrà), which is mentioned in the Koran and has been associated with the Western parliamentary system. But were those Islamist authors just trying to encourage the adoption of Western-style democracy in Muslim lands by painting it with the brush of Islam? Can we really conceive shūrà as a form of democracy? And what about those who espouse shūrà but reject democracy? The present paper looks at that institution in its historical context and offers the opinion of several renowned contemporary Islamist thinkers on its prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processes of political transformation and external assistance in fragile states have received increasing attention in the academic literature over the past decade. This literature, however, has not yet adopted a multi-dimensional categorization of fragility. This article discusses the evolution of the concept of fragility, and assesses the growing literature on processes of political transformation in fragile states, with a special focus on the quantitative literature and on the effectiveness of external democracy-support policies. Its novelty lies in its contribution to drawing links between these parallel bodies of literature. Furthermore, this article argues that, by incorporating a more complex definition of fragility, future research could reach more nuanced approaches on how fragility influences both processes of democratization and the effectiveness of democracy-support policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While briefly examining the compatibility of democracy and Islam in Arab and Muslim countries, I focus on domestic and regional developments relating to the ongoing bloody war in Syria. While Shi'i Iran has empowered its quasi-Shi'i ally, Bashar Assad's Alawi regime, Sunni Muslim countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar are divided regarding support of the mainstream Muslim rebel groups. All these parties are deeply concerned about the strengthening of Al-Qai'da's affiliated fanatic Islamic groups in Syria and beyond. Bashar has taken advantage of the Al-Qaida menace to present himself to the West as a pragmatic, secular partner. He adopted his Russian ally's initiative to give up his chemical weapons, and the US, which had previously endeavored to topple Bashar, has accepted Russia's offer. Relevant to these developments is the agreement on Iran's nuclear program signed by Washington and its European partners with Tehran, Bashar's ally. The intriguing question is whether Iran would now meet Washington's expectation and induce Bashar to step down within a political settlement, or would Iran continue to back Bashar and Hizballah while advancing its Shi'i Crescent strategic design? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the positive consequences of the Arab Uprising in 2011 in Indonesia. Topics mentioned include the Indonesians' tolerate practice of Islam, the democratization of the country, and its foreign relations since the Arab Spring. The author also discusses the role of Islam in the development of the democracy.

The aftermath of 9/11 and the current surge of revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East have caused Muslim Americans to be either demonized or forgotten altogether, despite the significance of their everyday navigation of both Islamic and democratic values and unique efforts toward identity construction. The neglect of the Muslim American individual experience in the dominant discourse on Islam and democracy has stifled the voices of members of this marginalized population, thereby limiting their self-representation. Through the use of a phenomenological framework and Critical Discourse Analysis, this study complicates the dominant discourses on Islam and democracy by shedding light on the lived experiences of seven Muslim American university students and providing supplemental perspectives from their university professors. These participants constructed an alternative discourse that positioned the Islamic and democratic values of equality, respect, freedom, and education as compatible, albeit with some complications. The article concludes with suggestions toward better understanding and enactment of Islamic and democratic values, including attaining education and engaging in civic participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on state accommodation of Muslim religious practices has focused on the regional context of Western Europe and North America. In this project, I identify and compare state policies toward Islamic religious practices using a sample of 22 former communist Muslim republics of Eurasia. For this purpose, I construct an original dataset collected from a variety of sources. Employing the number of mosques functioning in each post-communist Muslim republic as the measure of state accommodation of religious practices I find that among all factors the level of democracy is the single most important variable in explaining variation in accommodation of Islamic religious practices. To further demonstrate significance of these results I trace the process of democratic influence on state accommodation of religious policies examining in-depth the case of Tatars both in the pre-communist Imperial and revolutionary Russia and the contemporary republic of Tatarstan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the hostility they exhibit towards each other, almost all Arab secularist and radical Islamists agree that democracy and Islam are irreconcilable, and that belief in one inevitably precludes belief in the other. In this article I will focus on the beliefs of the Islamist Rachid Ghannouchi regarding this issue. First I will examine his notion of how democracy can be achieved in an Islamic state. I will then explore issues of conflict that have arisen between traditional and modern Islamist thinking relating to the compatibility of democracy and Islam. Finally I will focus on two variables that are claimed to be major obstacles to liberal democracy in Muslim states: secularism and modernisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Yearbook of the Faculty of Political Sciences / Godisnjak Fakultet Politickih Nauka Beograd is the property of University of Belgrade, Faculty of Political Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It would be an anachronism to search for modern democracy in the Qur’an that is the first among the other sources of Islam, i.e. Sunnah, ijma and the qiyas. To deduce the definition of Islam merely on the basis of the primary and secondary textual sources rather than the application of them as Muslim praxis would be an incomplete hermeneutic process in understanding it. We can see that the state and the religious society, which was represented by ulama, were separated from each other in an early stage of Islamic history. The members of ulama were in charge of the intellectual and social life, the law and its application. The values of the modern democracy such as law and order, separation of state authority from the public sphere, observing the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals such as women and religious minorities as the inseparables of democracy were upgraded in Muslim societies. This structure of Muslim society, however, was spoiled by colonialist interventions and the adoption of the modern nation-state concept. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Several of the Middle East’s traditional economic institutions hampered its political development by limiting checks on executive power, preventing the formation of organized and durable opposition movements, and keeping civil society weak. They include Islam’s original tax system, which failed to protect property rights; the waqf, whose rigidity hampered the development of civil society; and private commercial enterprises, whose small scales and short lives blocked the development of private coalitions able to bargain with the state. These institutions contributed to features that sustain autocracies and keep democracies unstable: high corruption, low trust, widespread nepotism and high tolerance for law-breaking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Arab revolts of 2011 raised new questions regarding democracy. On the one hand, a new kind of democracy is apparently born: the democracy of the multitude. On the other, Islam has been a major actor in the Arab revolts and presumably will play a growing role in the future. The article investigates if there is a new political model put forward by the foreseeable Islamic developments of the revolts. If we take for granted that there is not only one kind of democracy and that there is much more space for Islamic organizations in the present and future political arena of the Muslim countries, then it will not sound like a heresy to ask whether there is an Islamic way to democracy. In order to demonstrate this original point of view, it is necessary to deal with the principles of Islamic political thought. The Arab revolts promise to renew and update these principles. The article will try to peruse this revision from the point of view of Antonio Gramsci and his theory of hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article I review two contrasting approaches to Muslim women’s rights: those that want Muslims to secularize the Qur’an as the precondition for getting rights and those that emphasize the importance of a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics to Muslim women’s struggles for rights and equality. As examples of the former, I take the works of Nasr Abu Zayd and Raja Rhouni and, of the latter, my own. In addition to joining the debates on Muslim women’s rights, this exercise is meant to illustrate that secular attempts to undermine Islam also undermine the prospects for rights and democracy in Muslim societies. In fact, I see the secular project in Muslim societies as a form of self-harm. Lastly, I revisit Antonio Gramsci’s critique of democracy as a way to query the title of the İstanbul Seminars, ‘The Promises of Democracy’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, scholars have struggled to explain high levels of support for both state-sponsored Islamic law (sharia) and democracy in many new Muslim-majority democracies. The origins of popular support for Islamic law in uncertain democratic environments can be considered using the case of Northern Nigeria, where twelve states implemented sharia through democratic institutions during the early 2000s. Sharia implementation movements gain popular support by framing problems common to new democracies (corruption, inequality, poor governance) as moral concerns to be addressed by the state's enforcement of ethical conduct. While sharia implementation has had a dubious effect on democratic governance in Nigeria and elsewhere, support for Islamic law is likely to endure within Muslim communities where governance remains poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes philosopher John Rawls's concept of Kazanistan, an imagined idealized Islamic state, as expressed in his book "The Law of Peoples," focusing on questions regarding the role of Kazanistan as a realistic utopia. The author discusses Rawls's considerations of modern international relations, and special attention is paid to Kazanistan's government and culture. Other topics include religious tolerance and Islam in Kazanistan, and Rawls's considerations of citizenship, justice, and democracy.

Jamaat al-Adl wal-Ihsan, or the Justice and Spirituality Movement (JSM), is the largest oppositional movement in Morocco, which combines Islam and politics to mobilize against the monarchy for greater democratization in the country. JSM is neither a political Islamist movement nor a Sufi order but it combines spirituality and justice, piety and politics. This article examines how JSM combines spirituality and politics in practice by analyzing the religious authorization process with ethnographic data based on participant observation and interviews. It illustrates that JSM is able to combine spirituality and justice through its central activity of Majlis al-Nasiha. There are various practices involved in this biweekly gathering of members and novices such as rituals, informal talks, and also qas ru'ya, or the sharing of dreams and visions. This article argues that JSM is able to combine spirituality and politics through vision-sharing, which combines the mystical form of dreams with political content in the religious authorization process of JSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My empirical results in Potrafke () confirm past conclusions that Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be democratic. Hanusch takes issue with my results-and by inference with all past empirical results on the relation between Islam and democracy. In his comment on my study, Hanusch indicates that he believes I was using the POLITY IV index. He has not realized, as I made most clear, that the purpose of my study was to show results based on new data from Cheibub et al. (). Hanusch claims to have reversed the conclusion that having a Muslim majority is associated with having autocratic government. He establishes his conclusion by excluding the heartland of Islam from the estimation sample. For his estimates, Hanusch moreover uses data that do not appear to exist, at least in the claimed sources. I update my estimates to address issues that Hanusch raises. My new results confirm the conclusion that countries with Muslim majorities are less likely to be democracies. In deriving this result, I do not follow the strategy proposed by Hanusch of excluding from the data sample the countries in the heartland of Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A debate has emerged whether countries with Muslim majorities are intrinsically more likely to be autocratic. Recent studies have traced this to the allegedly repressive nature of Islam. This article replicates the most recent study on this topic, published in Public Choice (Potrafke in Public Choice 151:185-192, ), and demonstrates that the effect is not robust to a number of sensible alterations to the statistical specification. The effect between Islam and democracy is spurious. There is no causal relationship between Islam and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current debate about Islam in Western Europe is predominantly theoretical by nature and fails to adequately reflect on the experience of and knowledge about inherently European Muslim societies. Consequently, the debate lacks a sound empirical foundation and has started to live a life on its own. The authors of this article challenge the assumptions beyond this debate about Muslims, such as Muslims being a religious group incapable of embracing democratic and secular principles or accepting social plurality. Meanwhile, the authors also challenge the idea that the so-called European values are the key to the acceptance of Islam as a “European religion”. This conclusion is derived from empirical studies conducted in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, where they studied the way these Bosnian Muslims—who have been European from the outset and Muslims for centuries—relate to several key elements from the “European Islam” debate and their resulting self-image. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]