Islam compatible with democracy, scholars say

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Although democracy is not an alien concept to Islam, its implementation in a predominantly Muslim country is made difficult by the deep mistrust between Muslims themselves, scholars said on Monday.

Muslim scholars Muhammad Khalid Masud of the Allama Iqbal University in Pakistan explained that one of the many reasons democracy was not accepted in most of Muslim societies was the notion widely held by the elite that the masses were not qualified to govern themselves.

"In Islam, sovereignty belongs to God alone, and this is expressed through sharia because it is revealed by God. Since only experts in Islamic tradition can properly interpret sharia, they alone can represent the sovereignty of God," he said during a seminar organized by the International Centre for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP) in collaboration with the Asian Foundation here.

He said such thinking gives rise to denials of popular participation in politics in predominantly Muslim countries.

Masud also blamed western countries for persuading Muslim nations that democracy was simply incompatible with Islam.

"They hold the view that fundamentalism will arise if you hold an election," he said, adding that the victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria was their favorite example of the rise of fundamentalist groups through election.

He said that most Muslim communities were not used to democracy and electoral politics, and fundamentalist groups naturally usually took advantage of the situation.

"There is the belief that Muslim countries have to be first de-Islamized or secularized before democracy can be introduced," he said.

Amin Abdullah of the Yogyakarta-based Sunan Kalijaga Islamic State University said that the combination of tribal affinity (qabilah), the concept that enemies must conform to Islam after they have been defeated (qhanimah) and religious creed (aqidah) in Muslim political behavior presented a stumbling block for the introduction of democracy.

"Combined with the domination of religious orthodoxy in the hands of religious elite, the three aspects have failed democracy," he said, adding that most Muslims in the world have yet to find solutions to the problems.

Most Muslim countries, which have Islam as the major state guideline or where Islamic thinking plays an important role in state affairs are mostly monarchies or autocracies.

Meanwhile, Abdurrahman Wahid of the largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) told the seminar's participants that the absence of a single interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, had made the application of democracy more difficult.

"Because of a different interpretations of the law, there is always a reason to kill others based on the differences. There is a lack of tolerance, while in fact tolerance is a necessity in democracy," he said.

Nevertheless, the scholars claimed that Islam was compatible with the democracy.

"Democracy is compatible with Islam because according to the Koran all men are created equal," Masud said, quoting the Islamic thought of an Indian Muslim scholar.

He also said that Islam did not support monarchy and allowed free voting to take place. "There is no concept of monarchy in the Koran and election is permissible because Islam prescribes no specific form of voting.

Abdurrahman said the true form of democracy in Islam could be extracted from the concept of syura, or consultation, to solve a variety of problems afflicting the community from the Islamic law point of view.

"To me syura is the form of democracy in Islam as it enables anyone to express their views," he said.