| Abstract: |
The empirical literature has established a strong link between the fact of
being a Muslim-dominated country and indicators of political performance and
democracy. This suggests the possible existence of a relation between
religion, Islam in this instance, and societal characteristics. Bernard Lewis
and others have actually argued the case for such a relation, pointing to
aspects of the Islamic religion and culture that make the advent of democracy
especially difficult. These arguments fall into the general idea of the “Clash
of civilisations” put forward by Samuel Huntington. In this paper, we discuss
this sort of argument and show that there is a systematic misconception about
the true nature of the relationship between Islam and politics: far from being
merged into the religious realm, politics tends to dominate religion. Because
of the particular characteristics of Is-lam, namely, the lack of a centralised
religious authority structure and the great variability of interpretations of
the Islamic law, there is a risk of an “obscurantist deadlock” in the form of
a vicious process whereby both the ruler and his political opponents try to
outbid each other by using the religious idiom. This risk looms particularly
large in crisis situations accentuated by international factors. |