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Pacted Democracy in the Middle EastHistory, Secularism, and Islam

Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: History, Secularism, and Islam [This chapter provides a rich historical context to the study of Islam and democracy. It interrogates Western notions of secularism and secularization, arguing against theories of modernization that impute the decline of religion as a precondition to democratic politics. It further demonstrates that even in the heart of the Islamic experience, political actors should be studied not as essentialized religious forces but instead as human agents seeking to make sense of uncertainty. This argument explicitly postures against Orientalist presumptions about the unchanging and fixed framework of Islam, and instead imagines not a distinctive Islamic politics but rather a pluralistic field of politics within Islam. The classical principles of maqāṣid al-sharīʿa and siyāssa sharʿiyya corroborate this. The broader lesson is that resolving the debate about how Islam and democracy are compatible requires not theological discussions or interpretative struggles, because these are open-ended disputes that will not end in our lifetimes. Instead, it means prioritizing the practicality of politics—that is, how political elites and oppositionists make ordinary decisions regarding power and the state.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Pacted Democracy in the Middle EastHistory, Secularism, and Islam

Part of the St Antony's Series Book Series
Alaoui, Hicham
Pacted Democracy in the Middle East — May 18, 2022
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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
ISBN
978-3-030-99239-2
Pages
13 –54
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-99240-8_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This chapter provides a rich historical context to the study of Islam and democracy. It interrogates Western notions of secularism and secularization, arguing against theories of modernization that impute the decline of religion as a precondition to democratic politics. It further demonstrates that even in the heart of the Islamic experience, political actors should be studied not as essentialized religious forces but instead as human agents seeking to make sense of uncertainty. This argument explicitly postures against Orientalist presumptions about the unchanging and fixed framework of Islam, and instead imagines not a distinctive Islamic politics but rather a pluralistic field of politics within Islam. The classical principles of maqāṣid al-sharīʿa and siyāssa sharʿiyya corroborate this. The broader lesson is that resolving the debate about how Islam and democracy are compatible requires not theological discussions or interpretative struggles, because these are open-ended disputes that will not end in our lifetimes. Instead, it means prioritizing the practicality of politics—that is, how political elites and oppositionists make ordinary decisions regarding power and the state.]

Published: May 18, 2022

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