During the political upheavals of the past decade in the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and what is often called the ‘Muslim world’, the attention of politicians, diplomats and policy-makers has turned ever more to the conundrum of the relationship between Islam and democracy. The question is not confined to the imperatives of realpolitik, but appears also on the agendas of scholars of social science, political philosophy, theology, Islamic history and even anthropology. A number of conferences on the topic have been added to the international circuit, such as those sponsored by the recently formed Indonesian International Centre for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP), which cover both theoretical and practical concerns of democratization and Islam in particular states. Most recently, concerns with symptoms of an ‘authoritarian democracy’ have emerged in some states, which this chapter addresses.

The approach to Islam and democracy taken by many social scientists (Hefner 2000; Weiss and Saliha Hassan 2003; Martinez 2004) has largely been directed towards finding connections between Islam and civil society, the voluntary and welfare sectors and assorted non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (e.g. Weiss), and in participation in the institutional electoral process, as measures of democratic potential. Others seek evidence of political, social, cultural and legal pluralism, or even authoritarianism within the democratic system, as an indicator of tolerance and accommodation of Islam and other religions within its own framework. Here, religious and democratic pluralism may be mutually constitutive. Invariably, social scientists tend to bound their focus and interests within national units or states, although they recognize that many religious communities, such as the Muslim ummah, do not always follow these boundaries.

Clearly the cultural and historical genealogies of social science and religious scholarship follow separate traditions and have their own epistemologies and methodologies. Each may take a different position on the ‘state’, the ‘law’, the ‘people’ and notions of authority, and each has its distinct styles of discourse and rhetoric, which have implications for comparative analysis. Recognizing that there is no single, universally accepted (or practised) understanding of democracy, or how it might be identified; there is scope for serious comparative political ethnographic research as to how democracy operates in actual cases.

Just as democracy cannot be taken for granted, Islam likewise is not monolithic, and needs to be understood in specific local, cultural and national contexts.