Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of “Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters” and the editor of “Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism.”
The New York Times
October 5, 2012

Modern nation states utilize political models that were unanticipated in any of our premodern scriptures. It is anachronistic to ask whether “Islam” endorses constitutionalism or democracy. Islam as such does not proscribe any one particular system of government. (Of course “Islam” doesn’t do anything, Muslims do. We human beings are the agents of our religious traditions.)

Rather, there are general ethical principles that have to be guaranteed under any system of government that Muslims adopt, like social justice; protection of life, property, and honor of humanity; accountability of rulers to law; distribution of wealth; and protection of minorities. All systems of government are imperfect, and it is not only good but also healthy to be perpetually vigilant against abuses of any form of government. However, it may also be the case that a genuine and robust democracy is the least imperfect of all imperfect political models today, as others before us have said. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard W. Bulliet, a professor of history at Columbia University, is the author of “The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization”
The New York Times
October 4, 2012

If democracy is to be born in the Muslim world, religious political parties will be the midwives.

Elections do not necessarily mean democracy, of course. Most majority-Muslim countries, including monarchies like Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco, hold elections. Usually nationalist regimes instituted them, and nationalist leaders transformed them into instruments of dictatorship, partly by banning religious parties.

Muslim political parties have been the strongest and most consistent force urging genuinely free elections in majority-Muslim nations.

The question is whether a Muslim party, once elected, would inevitably make a mockery of that process by creating a religious dictatorship.The question in both the Western and the Muslim world, however, is whether a Muslim party, once elected, would inevitably make a mockery of that process by creating a religious dictatorship. Read the rest of this entry »

by Reza Aslan, an associate professor at the University of California is the author of “No God but God” and “How to Win a Cosmic War”
The New York Times
October 5, 2012

The question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy is nonsensical at its core, first because it ignores basic empirical evidence (the five most populous Muslim countries in the world are all democracies) and second because it presumes that Islam is somehow different, unique or special — that unlike every other religion in the history of the world, Islam alone is unaffected by history, culture or context.

Anyone who would answer “no, Islam is not compatible with democracy” does not even deserve a response; this is merely recycling the same old tired and disproven stereotypes about Islam that are frankly starting to get boring.

The truth is no religion either encourages or discourages democracy. Indeed, because religions are in their nature absolutist, all religions reject the principles of liberalism and popular sovereignty that are at the heart of the democratic ideal. Read the rest of this entry »