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).
Liberal Islam remains marginal because it is politically suppressed; in truth, it represents the predominant political hopes of Muslims around the world.
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.
The large number of nonvoters suggests that the movement for a free, internationally monitored referendum on the Islamic Republic’s constitution could gain widespread support. We must now work to make…
