As Islamist movements have gained strength across the Muslim world, their commitment todemocratic means of achieving and exercising power has been repeatedly analyzed. The questionof whether resort to violence to achieve its goals is inherent in the Islamist project (that whatsome Islamists understand as a divine mandate to implement shariעa ultimately sanctionsthe use of force against dissenters) or contingent (that the violent exclusion of Islamists from thepolitical arena has driven them to arms, best expressed by François Burgat'scontention that any Western political party could be turned into the Armed Islamic Group inweeks if it were subjected to the same repression Islamists had endured1) loomslarge in this debate. Where Islamist movements have not had the opportunity to participate inelections for political office, analysts willing to give these movements the benefit of thedemocratic doubt argue that their peaceful participation in the student body and syndicateelections that they have been allowed to contest proves their intention to respect the results ofnational-level elections.2 They also point to these groups' repeated publiccommitment to play by the rules of the electoral game.3 The fact that the MuslimBrotherhood in Egypt and Jordan and members of the Islah Party in Yemen have successfullycompeted in not one but a series of parliamentary elections and evinced a tendency to wage theirbattles through parliament and the courts rather than by force suggests to many that the questionof whether Islamists can ever be democrats has already been settled in the affirmative.