Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic

Abstract

Current history is marked by the meeting of two powerful currents, democracy and political Islam. Islam itself is the subject of a cultural dialectic between a modern and an authentistic form, out of which a synthesis tends to arise, only to be attacked again by a new authentistic antithesis. Political Islam is the current antithesis, attacking the unpopular states for impiety and materialism. Democracy is also rising in popularity as a criterion of good government, with special meaning as the consummation of nationalism for new states recently free from colonial rule. The two currents are not necessarily incompatible, but they have different sources and will have a profound effect on each other whenever they meet.

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