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).
Those who warn against efforts to promote free elections in Muslim-majority countries often point to the threat posed by Islamic parties that stand ready to use democracy against itself. But…
While President Ali ABdallah Salih continues to call Yemen an ’emerging democracy,’ it more closely resembles athe autocracy of the pre-unification North.
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.
