Islam and Democratization in Asia By Shiping Hua

the pro-stability posture and once again aligns openly and firmly with authoritarian regimes as Secretary Rice suggested, then it will find itself not only battling terrorism by jihadists but also pro-democracy activism by Islamists.

Going Beyond the Islam and Democracy Debate

While democracy is globalizing, having already established itself as the most legitimate form of governance, in vogue in most of the world, it continues to face a huge deficit in the Arab world. The democracy deficit in the Muslim world, however, has been mitigated by some stabilizing and some fledgling efforts at democratization in Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Iran. Most commentators in the West, especially in the United States, are inclined to dismiss Iran as a totalitarian regime run by clerics, but they ignore the fact that in spite of its many aberrations and limits, the current Iranian system has proven to be quite durable and is indeed more democratic than most regimes in the region, and certainly more than the pro-West, pro-United States Iran under the Shah. Nevertheless, democracy is glaringly absent from most of the Arab world, and with the rise of political Islam and Islamic politics in the region, the compatibility of Islam and democracy has become an important global issue. ¹

There are commentators in the West and in the Muslim world who share common interests in asserting that Islam and democracy are incompatible. Some Western scholars argue that Islam is incompatible with modernity, and in particular democracy, and insist that Muslims must either abandon Islam or reform Islam in order to join the “modern world.” ² Some Muslim scholars and militants reject democracy, arguing that it is contrary to the way of God (the Islamic shariah), and in their eagerness to reject Western domination they also reject democracy, falsely believing that democracy is something uniquely Western. ³ Fortunately, these arguments have been soundly rebutted both in theory and in practice. The compatibility of Islam and democracy is not in question anymore. Muslim theorists have systematically demonstrated that