Why they can't be democratic

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 43-48

  Tibi, Bassam ^a  

^a Cornell University ^*

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 49149089938     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. In November 1982, I was among seventy Arab thinkers and opinion leaders who met in Limassol, Cyprus, to discuss the "crisis of democracy" in Arab countries - none of which would let us convene on its own soil. No Islamists were present. The proceedings were published under the title Azmat al-Democratiyya fi al-Watan al-Arabi (The Crisis of democracy in the Arab world) (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1983). My own contribution appears in Arabic on pp. 73-87. Among my extensive writings on the topic, I have contributed chapters on Islam and democracy to Alan Olson, ed., Educating for Democracy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 203-19;
2. Michael Emerson, ed., Democratisation in the European Neighbourhood (Brussels: CEPS, 2005), 93-116;
3. and Leonard Weinberg, ed., Democratic Responses to Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2008), 41-62.
4. John Voll and John Esposito, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). As I detail in my review in the Journal of Religion 78 (1998): 667-69, Voll and Esposito overlook important original sources and not only confuse Islam and Islamism, but even end up watering down the very definition of democracy itself.
5. Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
6. This last expression comes from Raymond Baker, Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).
7. On the MB, see Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
8. On the use of Hannah Arendt's notion of totalitarianism to describe Islamism, see Bassam Tibi, "The Totalitarianism of Jihadist Islamism," Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8 (March 2007): 35-54.
9. Present-day jihadism is clearly not the classical Islamic jihad, for in the latter violence remains bound by rules and restricted to limited targets. Therefore, classical jihad is a form of warfare (even if irregular) and not terrorism, as jihadism is. On irregular warfare, see Bassam Tibi, Political Islam, World Politics, and Europe (New York: Routledge, 2008), ch. 1, n4.
10. For a former insider's account, see Ed Hussain, The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam (London: Penguin, 2007).
11. Zeyno Baran, "Turkey Divided," Journal of Democracy 19 (January 2008): 69.
12. Bassam Tibi, "Islamic Shari'a as Constitutional Law? The Freedom of Faith in the Light of the Politicization of Islam: The Reinvention of the Shari'a and the Need for an Islamic Law Reform," in Church and State: Towards Protection of Freedom of Religion. Proceedings of the International Conference on Comparative Constitutional Law, 2005 (Tokyo: Nihon University Press, 2006), 126-70;
13. and "Islamic Law, Shari'a, and Human Rights: Universal Morality and International Relations," Human Rights Quarterly 16 (May 1994): 277-99.
14. On Islamism in Algeria, see Michael Willis, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria (New York: New York University Press, 1996). On Turkey, see Baran, "Turkey Divided."
15. Bassam Tibi, "Islamischer Konservatismus der AKP als Tarnung für den politischen Islam?" in Gerhard Besier, ed., Politische Religion und Religionspolitik (Political religion and religious politics) (Goettingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 2005), 229-60.
16. Bassam Tibi, Der wahre Imam: Der Islam von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart (The true imam: Islam from Mohammad to the present) (Munich: Piper, 1996).
17. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, al-hulul al-Mustawradah (The imported solutions) (Beirut: al-Risalah, 1980).
18. Al-Farabi's major work in this vein is known variously in English as The Perfect State or The Virtuous City. For a translation along with the original Arabic text, see Richard Walzer, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abu Nasr al-Farabi's Mabadi' Ara Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).