Shūrà and Democracy

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

Art · Art history · Backwardness · Democracy · Economic growth · Economics · Institution · Islam · Literature · Oppression · Piety · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The Renaissance · Theology · Education and Islamic Studies · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies

• Muslim reformist scholars' arguments for democracy independent of religious justification

  Open Access•Ali Akbar•Critical Research on Religion•2020

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