Democracy in Islamic Political Thought

[Introduction]

Democracy has preoccupied Arab political thinkers since the dawn of the modern Arab renaissance about two centuries ago. Since then, the concept of democracy has changed and developed under the influence of a variety of social and political developments.[^1] The discussion of democracy in Arab Islamic literature can be traced back to Rifa'a Tahtawi,[^2] the father of Egyptian democracy according to Lewis Awad,[^3] who shortly after his return to Cairo from Paris published his first book, Takhlis Al-Ibriz Ila Talkhis Bariz, in 1834. The book summahrized his observations of the manners and customs of the modern French,[^4] and praised the concept of democracy as he saw it in France and as he witnessed its defence and reassertion through the 1830 Revolution against King Charles X.[^5] Tahtawi tried to show that the democratic concept he was explaining to his readers was compatible with the law of Islam. He compared political pluralism to forms of ideological and jurisprudential pluralism that existed in the Islamic experience:

Religious freedom is the freedom of belief, of opinion and of sect, provided it does not contradict the fundamentals of religion . The same would apply to the freedom of political practice and opinion by leading administrators, who endeavor to interpret and apply rules and provisions in accordance with the laws of their own countries. Kings and ministers are licensed in the realm of politics to pursue various routes that in the end serve one purpose: good administration and justice.[^6]