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A specter is haunting the Muslim world. This particular specter is not the malign and much-discussed spirit of fundamentalist extremism, nor yet the phantom hope known as liberal Islam. Instead, the specter that I have in mind is a third force, a hopeful if still somewhat ambiguous trend that I call-in a conscious evocation of the political tradition associated with the Christian Democratic parties of Europe-"Muslim Democracy."
The emergence and unfolding of Muslim Democracy as a "fact on the ground" over the last fifteen years has been impressive. This is so even though all its exponents have thusfar eschewed that label1 and even though the lion's share of scholarly and political attention has gone to the question of how to promote religious reform within Islam as a prelude to democratization.2 Since the early 1990s, political openings in a number of Muslim-majority countries-all, admittedly, outside the Arab world-have seen Islamic-oriented (but non-Islamist) parties vying successfully for votes in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan (before its 1999 military coup), and Turkey.
Unlike Islamists, with their visions of rule by shari'a (Islamic law) or even a restored caliphate, Muslim Democrats view political life with a pragmatic eye. They reject or at least discount the classic Islamist claim that Islam commands the pursuit of a shari'a state, and their main goal tends to be the more mundane one of Grafting viable electoral platforms and stable governing coalitions to serve individual and collective interests-Islamic as well as secular-within a democratic arena whose bounds they respect, win or lose. Islamists view democracy not as something deeply legitimate, but at best as a tool or tactic that may be useful in gaining the power to build an Islamic state. Muslim Democrats, by contrast, do not seek to enshrine Islam in politics, though they do wish to harness its potential to help them win votes.
The rise of the Muslim Democrats has begun the integration of Muslim religious values-drawn from Islam's teachings on ethics, morality, the family, rights, social relations, and commerce, for example-into political platforms designed to win regular democratic elections. Challenges and setbacks will almost surely complicate the process, and the outcome is far from certain. Yet the ongoing dynamics of democratic consolidation, more than the promise of religious reform and ideological...