Muslim Democracy

How can we explain poor progress in the transition and consolidation of democracy in the Muslim world? What has gone wrong with Muslim-majority societies? Could Islamic traditions be compatible with democratic principles, norms, and values? Questions such as these have stirred much debate and controversy among scholars, policy-makers, and the public in the past decade. Edward Schneier’s Muslim Democracy is an attempt to answer those hotly debated questions by historical and comparative observation of developments and events around the Muslim world and far beyond. The first four chapters offer broad historical accounts of events and developments across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia since the inception of the “Islamic world” in the seventh century, primarily based on selected secondary sources and think-tank and journalistic reports. The book provides brief accounts in chapters 5 and 6 of the relatively successful cases of Turkey and Indonesia in terms of democratization. Although the major arguments and contributions of the book to the abovementioned debates are not entirely clear, the book advances a sound view overall: it is not the intrinsic dogmas or principles of Islam that have contributed to the slow and regressive development towards consolidated democracy within the Islamic world, but rather the shared history of colonial rule, political/military intervention, weak state apparatus, and violent conflict. This is a general point that most experts may not attempt to dispute.

Democracy · Democratization · History of Islam · Islam · Muslim world · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · Asian Studies and History · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions