Science Democracy And Islam

First published in 2008. This group of essays concentrates on the themes of freedom and democracy. The author argues that the pursuit of scientific culture is dependent on a religious culture, of which he regards Islam as one of the finest examples.

Soroush and his contemporaries in other Moslem countries are shaping what may become Islam's equivalent of the Christian Reformation: a period of questioning traditional practices and beliefs and, ultimately, of upheaval.".

In 1998, Indonesia's military government collapsed, creating a crisis that many believed would derail its democratic transition. Yet the world's most populous Muslim country continues to receive high marks from democracy-ranking organizations. In this volume, political scientists, religious scholars, legal theorists, and anthropologists examine Indonesia's transition compared to Chile, Spain, India, and potentially Tunisia, and democratic failures in Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Iran. Chapters explore religion and politics and Muslims' support for democracy before change.

Grounded in the Weberian tradition, Islam and Democracy in South Asia: The Case of Bangladesh presents a critical analysis of the complex relationship between Islam and democracy in South Asia and Bangladesh. The book posits that Islam and democracy are not necessarily incompatible, but that the former has a contributory role in the development of the latter. Islam came to Bengal largely by Sufis and missionaries through peaceful means and hence a moderate form of this religion got rooted in the society. Both militant Islam and militant secularism are equal threats to democracy and pluralism. Like democracy, political Islam has many faces. Political Islam adhering to democratic norms and practices, what the authors call “democratic Islamism,” unlike “militant Islamism,” is not anti-democratic. The book shows that the suppression of democracy and human rights creates avenues for the consolidation of militant Islamism, orthodox Islam, and “Islamic” terrorism, while the “fair play” of democracy results in the decline of anti-democratic form of political Islam.

Is Islam compatible with democracy? Must fundamentalism win out in the Middle East, or will democracy ever be possible? In this now-classic book, Islamic sociologist Fatima Mernissi explores the ways in which progressive Muslims--defenders of democracy, feminists, and others trying to resist fundamentalism--must use the same sacred texts as Muslims who use them for violent ends, to prove different views. Updated with a new introduction by the author written in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Islam and Democracy serves as a guide to the players moving the pieces on the rather grim Muslim chessboard. It shines new light on the people behind today's terrorist acts and raises provocative questions about the possibilities for democracy and human rights in the Islamic world. Essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of the Middle East today, Islam and Democracy is as timely now as it was upon its initial, celebrated publication.

This book examines Islam’s relationship to democratization in the Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives. It explores how and why an electoral democracy based in a constitution that has many liberal features but also Islam-based limitations, especially lack of religious freedom, emerged in the country by 2009. In doing so, the book interrogates a major approach to Muslim politics that assumes reformist interpretations of Islam are a positive, and even a necessary, force for liberalization and democratization in Muslim-majority contexts. This book shows reformist Islam did play certain positive roles in democratization in the Maldives. However, the book suggests reformist Islam may not be an invariably uncontroversial force in the space of politics. It argues that modern nation building in the Maldives shaped by political actors with reformist Islamic orientations, since around the 1930s, has also completely transformed Islam as a modern institutional and discursive political religion. These transformations of Islam as a modern political religion have existed as path-dependent constraints on the depth of democratization, ensuring religion-based limitations and intensifying controversy over religion vis-à-vis the state and individual rights. An original empirical contribution towards a better understanding of Islam and politics in the Maldives, this book will be of interest to academics and students working on democracy, and Islam in particular, and in the fields of political science and area studies, especially South Asian politics.