Measuring conceptions of Shari‘a

The study of the relationship between Islam and democracy is linked to contemporary geopolitics. As the third wave of democracy spread across much of the world, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa remained steadfastly authoritarian. While there were important democratic examples elsewhere in the Muslim world, such as in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, and Albania, many scholars and practitioners pointed to Islam as the reason why the Middle East remained undemocratic and an exception to broader global trends. More recently, the failure of democracy to take root in the Middle East and North Africa after the 2010–2011 Arab Spring uprisings, and the salience of the religious-secular divide in the ill-fated early elections, constitution drafting processes, and transitional justice attempts during nascent democratic transitions, have continued the debate about the compatibility of Islam and democracy.

Proponents of Islamic exceptionalism focus on the incompatibility of Islam’s central tenets with democracy—much like earlier literature on the supposed incompatibility between Catholicism and democracy. One common claim was that by its very nature, shari‘a, as religious law, was incompatible with the secular law necessary for democracy to take root. The logic of the argument centered on Islam’s central role in adherents’ lives in shaping not just politics but also prescribing rules for culture and society (Kamrava, Reference Kamrava1998). In effect, it represents a “blueprint of a social order” which is effectively inescapable (Gellner, Reference Gellner1983, 1). Moreover, although countries with a Christian heritage were not immune to this challenge, scholars argued that Islam had no concept equivalent to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” that creates a theological basis for the separation of church and state, a key characteristic of modern democracies (Lewis, Reference Lewis1994). According to this argument, Islam has been inseparable from the state since the religion’s earliest days; the model Islamic state is one under religious leadership, making this system incompatible with rule by the will of the people. As a result, “the ideas of the security of the state, of society being composed of a multitude of self-activating groups and associations—all of these are profoundly alien to the Muslim political tradition” (Kedourie, Reference Kedourie1994, 6). Because of the theorized outsized influence of Islamic tenets, scholars also pointed to the public at large as a substantial barrier to democracy, due to their adherence to shari‘a, preference for rule by religious leaders, and antipathy towards democracy as the rule of the people. This revived earlier arguments centered on civic culture, in which populations’ values and beliefs were integral to the establishment and flourishing of democracy (Almond and Verba, Reference Almond and Verba1989; Inglehart and Welzel, Reference Inglehart and Welzel2005). Here, scholars argued that Islam did not promote values that created pluralistic preferences among Muslims, most notably the protection of basic civil rights for all citizens, including women and ethnic or religious minorities (Diamond and Morlino, Reference Diamond and Morlino2004).

On the other side of the argument are those scholars and practitioners who believe that Islam and democracy are compatible. They put forward scriptural or religious-based counter-arguments, such as identifying clear examples where democracy can be accommodated within Islamic ideological discourses; instances of egalitarian behavior of the prophet; Islamic concepts that are generally democratic, such as the notion of shura (consultative deliberation in decision-making) or the notion of ijtihad, which references the continuing ability of religious scholars to interpret religious texts. Many studies also observe that preferences for democracy are high in many Muslim countries. Scholars mobilize a variety of theoretical frameworks to advance claims about Muslims’ taste for democracy, including cultural claims, political-economic arguments, theories about modernization, social capital, and arguments about government performance under different regime types, among others (Spierings, Reference Spierings2014).Footnote ¹

For much of its history, the scholarship on the relationship between Islam and democracy was produced without empirical evidence that actually measured Muslims’ support for shari‘a-based governments and democracy, instead relying heavily on analysis of religious texts, interpretations, and practices. However, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, scholars began to test these claims empirically with evidence produced by ambitious survey projects run across the Middle East. However, the empirical evidence produced has provided inconclusive evidence on the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Overall, scholarship finds a limited or insignificant relationship between variables measuring support for political Islam and those measuring support for democracy (Tessler, Reference Tessler2002).

At the same time, public opinion research revealed that stated support for democracy was among the highest in the MENA of any world region in the early 2000s. These results held across a range of contexts and definitions. Of nine predominantly Muslim countries surveyed by the World Value Survey in its fourth wave (1999–2004), in all but one, at least 86 percent expressed support for democracy when asked about it directly and were not especially likely to support strongman rule (Inglehart, Reference Inglehart2003). Tessler and Gao (Reference Tessler and Gao2005) found similar results in another set of surveys across MENA, with at least 90 percent of citizens favoring democracy in their country and support for secular versus Islamic democracy roughly evenly split. By implication, there may be a difference in the type of support for the democratic system that citizens want vis-a-vis the role of religion. It is nevertheless clear that the vast majority of those who support political Islam also support democracy.

Measurement issues

We find that one of the biggest challenges to conclusively understanding the relationship between support for Islamism and support for democracy is how support for shari‘a has been measured in existing studies. In fact, we believe it explains our collective inconclusive findings on the relationship between support for Islamism and support for democracy.Footnote ²

Many scholars rely on cross-national datasets that ask similar questions about respondents’ support for Islam in politics. For example, a Pew survey asks respondents about the extent to which they want their government to implement shari‘a and in which areas, including penal laws, personal status laws, and inheritance laws (The World’s Muslims, 2012), while the World Values Survey asks about support for a “greater role of religion in politics” in Muslim countries (Inglehart et al., Reference Inglehart, Haerpfer, Moreno, Welzel, Kizilova, Diez-Medrano, Lagos, Norris, Ponarin and Puranen2018). Other scholars employ survey questions about the extent to which respondents prefer that shari‘a should be the source of law; possible answers range from shari‘a being the only source to shari‘a being considered alongside other religious, secular, and civil sources (Ciftci, Reference Ciftci2010; Ciftci, Reference Ciftci2013; Ciftci et al., Reference Ciftci, Wuthrich and Shamaileh2019; Dzutsati and Warner, Reference Dzutsati and Warner2021; Rheault and Mogahed, Reference Rheault and Mogahed2008). Some employ surveys that ask about respondents’ support for religious influence on the government, but in the form of a formal role for religious leaders or politicians who hold strong religious beliefs (Breznau et al., Reference Breznau, Lykes, Kelley and Evans2011; Buckley, Reference Buckley2016; Driessen, Reference Driessen2018). Still others ask about respondents’ beliefs surrounding the creation of shari‘a—whether the Qur’an is the literal and direct word of God, or authored by mortals—and whether it is open to interpretation, multiple interpretations, or should be understood literally (Berger, Reference Berger2019). A final set of studies measures respondents’ level of agreement that governments or parties (both generally and specific governments/parties) that implement shari‘a are normatively good (Davis and Robinson, Reference Davis and Robinson2006; Moaddel, Reference Moaddel2006), or choosing to vote for an Islamist party (García-Rivero and Kotzé, Reference García-Rivero and Kotzé2007; Kurzman and Naqvi, Reference Kurzman and Naqvi2010; Wegner and Cavatorta, Reference Wegner and Cavatorta2019). We leave aside those studies that operationalize aspects of religiosity as a proxy for support for Islam in politics, as this erroneously conflates religious behavior with religious beliefs in line with earlier scholarship.Footnote ³

These are all undoubtedly interesting and important aspects of how religious beliefs may affect those in the political realm. However, these questions do not capture what respondents understand to substantively comprise shari‘a. This is arguably the most important aspect of Islam for politics—how adherents understand the concept, what it means to them (particularly in the political realm), and thus what they are supporting when they say they support its implementation or a political actor advocating for its implementation. In our previous research, differentiating between aspects of shari‘a, when asking about support, we find a conditional and nuanced relationship between conceptions of shari‘a and support for democracy (Fair et al., Reference Fair, Littman and Nugent2018; Fair and Patel, Reference Fair and Patel2022). This fits an understanding of both Islam specifically and religion generally that allows for multifacetedness: some aspects promote support for democracy, while others diminish it. For example, Islam has a strong egalitarian emphasis, which might contribute to support for a political system that promotes equality at the ballot box (Ciftci, Reference Ciftci2013). The importance Islam places on providing for the poor through zakat could be translated into a political system that promotes redistribution, which is common in many democracies (Davis and Robinson, Reference Davis and Robinson2006). Yet, as with any religion, there are also teachings that may prove more challenging for democratic governance, such as general social conservatism. Restrictions related to full gender equality, for example, may be inhibitors to democratic development (Ciftci, Reference Ciftci2013).Footnote ⁴ As such, as in any religious tradition, there may be aspects of Islam that foster support for democracy and others that limit it.

In the next section, we outline the battery which permits scholars to accurately test for a link between Islam and support for democracy and help resolve inconclusive empirical findings by allowing for Islamic or Islamist orientations to, in some instances, hinder democracy while in other instances be fully compatible with it.

Data and methods

We explore the relationship between conceptions of shari‘a and support for democracy among a nationally representative sample of Arab citizens aged 18 and above, surveyed face-to-face by the Arab Barometer in 2018 and 2019.Footnote ⁵ The Arab Barometer asked questions about shari‘a to Muslim respondents only, so the analysis is limited to members of this faith. Additionally, our battery was administered to a split sample, meaning only respondents randomly chosen to participate in form B of the survey instrument were asked to answer these questions. It also only includes observations for which data about the survey enumerator was available. As a result, our sample of respondents includes approximately half of the total Muslim population sampled across 11 countries (see Table 1).Footnote ⁶

Table 1.

Survey respondents by country

Cross-national conceptions of Shari‘a

To begin, we ask: how do Muslim respondents in different countries conceptualize shari‘a? There is significant variation across countries in respondents’ agreement that a shari‘a-based government is defined as one that provides basic services, is without corruption, uses physical punishments to induce compliance, or restricts women’s role in public. Figure 1 demonstrates that most respondents understand shari‘a to be strongly related to government service provision. In all countries except Lebanon, the median respondent “agrees” with this understanding of shari‘a. In Iraq and Yemen, the response is “strongly agree.” Lebanon is the only country where most Muslims disagree. Only in Tunisia do at least a quarter of respondents disagree or disagree strongly.

Figure 1.

Perceptions of Shari‘a: Response patterns by country to different conceptions of the Shari‘a.

There is a greater variation in whether a government under shari‘a has corruption. In most countries, the median respondent “agrees” that there is no corruption when shari‘a is implemented. However, in Algeria, the median response is “disagree.” The perception that there is no corruption under shari‘a government is particularly strong in Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen, where the modal response is “strongly agree.” Algerians, Sudanese, Tunisians, and Lebanese are far less likely to hold this perception.

There is a far weaker link among ordinary Muslims between shari‘a and imposition. In all but two countries (Yemen and Sudan), the median respondent disagrees that shari‘a government includes the use of physical punishments. Iraqis, Tunisians, and Libyans are especially likely to say that physical punishments are not a part of shari‘a government. There is greater uniformity across countries on the perception that shari‘a government restricts women in public. In all countries, the median response is “disagree,” but Yemenis and Sudanese are somewhat more likely to associate shari‘a with restrictions on women in public than those in other countries.

In summary, despite general agreement, there are clear country-specific differences across the region. Yemenis in particular are more likely to see all four aspects, including interpretations that both provide and impose, compared with those in other countries. Lebanese Muslims are comparatively unlikely to associate any of these definitions with the shari‘a government. Other nuanced differences also exist: Algerians are the least likely to say government under shari‘a is free of corruption, while Egyptians are relatively likely to understand shari‘a government as imposing physical punishments.

Preferences for Shari‘a and democracy

Next, we ask: how do different conceptualizations of shari‘a-based government correlate with support for democracy, and does their inclusion improve understanding of the relationship between support for shari‘a and support for democracy?Footnote ⁸ Table 2 includes the results of three models with country fixed effects. The first specification includes the variable measuring support for shari‘a-based government, but does not include the conceptualization of a shari‘a-based government. The second drops support for shari‘a and only includes the conception of shari‘a-based government. The third includes both support for shari‘a and conceptions of shari‘a-based government. The results of additional analyses, presented in the Appendix in Table A4, demonstrate that these conceptions of shari‘a are robust predictors in a number of model specifications.

Table 2.

Support for Shari‘a, perceptions of Shari‘a (index), and support for democracy

Standard errors in parentheses.

* $p\lt 0.05$ , ${{\rm{\;}}^{{\rm{**}}}}$ $p \lt 0.01$ , ${{\rm{\;}}^{{\rm{***}}}}p\lt 0.001$

Regressions separating the data by individual country show that there is some country-level variation. While the positive relationship between conceiving of a shari‘a-based government as one that provides and support for democracy is generally consistent across countries, the relationship between conceiving of a shari‘a-based government as one that restricts and support for democracy is more mixed. Exploring this country-level variation is beyond the scope of this research note (see Table A8, Table A9, and Table A10 in the appendix).

We interpret the combined results—that support for a shari‘a-based government is only significantly correlated with support for democracy when controlling for respondents’ conceptions of a shari‘a-based government, though conceptions remain significant on their own—as evidence that measuring respondents’ understanding of shari‘a-based government is necessary either in place of or in addition to measuring respondents’ level of support for a shari‘a-based government given that respondents have differing understandings of what is meant by shari‘a itself.