Islam and Democracy.

John L. Esposito and John O. Voll. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 232 pages, index, Hardcover $45.00, paper $17.95.

Reviewed by Charles E. Butterworth

The question these days is why democratization does not exist in Muslim nations to the same extent as within Western ones, and the answer usually probes for ways in which Islam differs from either Judaism or Christianity. Yet momentary reflection should give pause. Judaism and Islam have many features in common, from the prominence of the divine law to the refusal to accord the prophet divine status. Esposito and Voll avoid such pitfalls as well as that of attributing the difference to Western peoples' non-adherence to the given faith, to a secularist mentality. Rather than trace the peculiar revolution in thinking that occurred in the West, and only in the West, from the end of the fifteenth century until the late eighteenth century and thus point to the way ideas influence action, they emphasize the vestiges of democracy to be found in nations adhering to Islam.

Carefully attentive to the facts, to what occurs in polities that either proclaim themselves Islamic or must be so considered because the majority of their citizens are Muslim, the authors emphasize the presence of democratization or vestiges of nascent democratization. Unlike Olivier Roy, they find political Islam anything but a failure; and their visit includes Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. They also find political Islam somewhat democratic. Where democracy does have difficulty taking root, they explain the phenomenon by factors having more to do with history, economics, and politics than Islam. (For a similar point of view, see the articles of Ghassan Salame, Aziz al-Azmeh, John Waterbury, Jean-Francois Bayart, and Abdelbaki Hermassi in Ghassan Salame. Ed., Democracy without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World [London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1994]).

Starting from the observation that "even in medieval Islamic civilization, in the era of the great Muslim empires of the Umayyads and the Abbasids, nonstate structures with important functions in the life of religious faith and action developed" (p. 4), Esposito and Voll seek to explain why Islam is not antithetical to democracy. Casting the reformers of the 19th and early 20th centuries as modernists, they argue that these activists were looking for structures that would not jeopardize Islam and thus were not desirous of mining back the clock (pp. 5-6). They arrive at such an understanding of Islamic reform, even the reform of recent times, because they look at the particular political phenomenon in a global context while paying especial attention to the opinions of the Islamic peoples they seek to explain.

With an eye to the fundamental precepts of Islamic teaching, Esposito and Voll investigate how recent Muslim reformers have proclaimed a basic agreement between the principles of Islamic government and those of democracy. They pay especial attention to Abu al-A'la al Mawdudi and his account of how sovereignty within Islam is rotted in the principle of divine unity or tawhid. This, coupled with the idea that each individual human being is on earth as a vicegerent - that is, a khalifa - of God and thus obliged to carry out His prescriptions to the extent possible, distinguish Islamic political thinking from Western notions of popular sovereignty and untrammeled freedom (pp. 21-24).

Yet even the most dedicated proponents of the people's will admit some limits to that will. Though the authors do not consider how fundamental a positing of the conditions for living together in community is to any comparison between the two systems, they turn to yet other Pakistani thinkers - Muhammad Iqbal, Fazlur Rahman, and Khursid Ahmad - to show how the principles of consultation (shura), consensus (ijma'), and interpretive judgment (ijtihad) embody many of the precepts of democratic practice and theory (pp. 25-30). Insofar as those principles are rooted in Islamic jurisprudence, nothing in Islam forbids democracy.

Indeed, many features of Islamic doctrine and practice are perfectly consonant with democratic rule. While opposition that arises as a threat to rulership (fitna) is no more tolerated in Islamic government than in any other polity, opposition as difference of opinion (ikhtilaf) about particular policies is perfectly acceptable (pp. 33-46). Evidence of toleration, the cornerstone of civil religion according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (On the Social Contract, Bk. 4, Chapter 8, end), is to be found in the freedom Islam has traditionally accorded Jews and Christians - "the people of the book" (pp. 46-48).

Broad, even somewhat elastic, these concepts provide at best merely the foundations for democratization. One must still wonder what evidence of democratic Islamic polities or Islamic movements tending towards democracy can be mustered. In response, Esposito and Voll offer six case studies. Two - Algeria and Egypt - are instances of Islamic movements or groups having been declared illegal that now function as militant opposition forces. With two others - Malaysia and Pakistan - the Islamic movements or groups represent the loyal opposition and are fully incorporated into a flourishing parliamentary system. In the final two case studies, Iran and Sudan, Islamic movements have come to full power.

The cases are well chosen and such as to obligate the authors to draw mixed conclusions. Though democracy is not to be found everywhere in the world of Islam - indeed, out and out opponents of it are sometimes to be found, as in Saudi Arabia - it does sometimes flourish. What is more, the cases of Pakistan and Malaysia show that the secular character of democracy can be tempered, that democracy need not be opposed to religion. That raises the question of why successive regimes in Tunisia have chosen to act so anti-democratically in suppressing Islamic political movements that claim to be democratic.

In sum, John Esposito and John Voll have provided an excellent portrait of the status of democracy in Islamic world today. Their deep understanding of Islam, familiarity with Islamic culture, and solid knowledge of Islamic history make their exposition highly readable and most persuasive. Scholars, students, and even the generally interested public will learn from it.

Charles E. Butterworth is a professor in the Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland.