Author Description

This dissertation challenges the belief that religious politics and liberal-democratic development are structurally incompatible. In the course of doing so, three key arguments are advanced: (1) In societies where religion is the primary marker of identity, the road to liberal democracy, whatever other twists and turns its makes, cannot avoid passing through the gates of religious politics. The primary theoretical implication that flows from this position that is relevant for the study of liberal democracy in Muslim societies is that the process of democratization and liberalization cannot be de-linked from debates about the normative role of religion in government. (2) Liberal democracy requires secularism. While this equation is not in dispute, two caveats are in order: first, religious traditions are not born with an inherent democratic and secular conception of politics. These ideas must be socially constructed. In the context of an emerging liberal democracy, how secularism becomes indigenized as part of the political culture is an important---and oft-neglected---part of this debate. Equally significant are the different models of political secularism that liberal democracy might accommodate. (3) An intimate and oft-ignored relationship exists between religious reformation and political development. The first necessarily precedes the second. This is particularly true in societies under the sway of an illiberal or undemocratic religio-political doctrine. Democratization and liberalization do not necessarily require a rejection or privatization of religion but what they do require is a reinterpretation of religious ideas with respect to the moral basis of legitimate political authority and individual rights. By engaging in this reinterpretation, religious groups can play an important role in the development and consolidation of liberal democracy.This dissertation analyzes the relationship between religion, secularism and liberal democracy, both theoretically and in the context of the contemporary Muslim world. The central problematic that this inquiry seeks to resolve is the following: liberal democracy requires a form of secularism yet simultaneously the main, political, cultural and intellectual resources that Muslim democrats can draw upon are religious. A paradox, therefore, confronts the democratic theorist.Overall, this dissertation argues for a rethinking of democratic theory so that it incorporates the variable of religion in the development and social construction of liberal democracy.