Whither Liberal Arab Democracy?
Ahmed al-Rahim Thursday, 1 September 2005
One paradox of the Arab world is that despite a wide-ranging literature in Arabic on democracy, stretching back to the end of 19th century, today none of the governments in the Arab world can truly be called democratic. The variegated form of this corpus is a reflection of both the diversity of intellectual currents found in the Middle East (pan-Arabism, nationalism, secularism, Islamism) and the impact of globalization.
But, as vigorous as this debate over the region's deficit of democracy has been, especially in the last three decades, it has had little, if any, practical effect on the democratization of governmental institutions in the Arab world. Instead, there are much-touted versions of "Islamic democracy"—which Islamists have unfortunately managed to make heavy on Islamism and light on democracy.
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