A review of Islam and Democracy, by John L. Esposito and John O. Voll.
About the Author
Ibrahim Karawan is director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah, where he teaches international politics. From 1995 to 1997, he was a senior fellow and directing staff member at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. He is the author of The Islamist Impasse (1997).
In the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, a dense and pervasive network of moderate Muslim civil society organizations significantly reinforces political moderation and limiting the appeal of radical Islamism.
The uneasy accommodation of competing visions of authority that has characterized Iran’s political system since 1979 is a familiar phenomenon in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Basic demographic and socioeconomic factors in Iran are favorable to democratization. The mullahs may hope to stave off democratic change by emulating the Chinese model, but this strategy is doomed…
