ISLAM AND DEMOCRACY: Are they compatible? (P Publishing Politics Series Book 2)

Democracy in its most confined sense means the rule of the people and usually in a representative form such as liberal-democratic parliamentary structures based on individual voting rights. So we need to analyse political and representative norms within Islamic societies and equate them with the consistency of Sharia law and other variables as a way of comparing the two kinds of systems. More generally, democracy involves the granting of certain individual freedoms that might be classified as ‘civil rights’ or equality before the law for all creeds, sexes and races. This requires an evaluation of Islamic practices, particularly with regard to legal, religious and women’s rights.