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Islam and Liberal Democracy: Recognizing Pluralism

Issue Date April 1996
Volume 7
Issue 2
Page Numbers 86-89
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Read the full essay here.

About the Author

Laith Kubba, a native of Baghdad, is senior director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Endowment for Democracy. From May 2005 to March 2006, he was chief press spokesperson for Iraq’s Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaffari.

View all work by Laith Kubba

Further Reading

Volume 13, Issue 3

Clans, Pacts, and Politics in Central Asia

This region’s five republics have just lived through a remarkable first decade of independence that raises questions about “preconditions”-based theories of democratization.

Volume 14, Issue 2

What Is Liberal Islam?: The Elusive Reformation

An “Islamic Reformation” is not a necessary condition for the emergence of democracy in the Muslim world; what is most needed is a political reformation.

Volume 13, Issue 4

Democratization in the Arab World?: Emirs and Parliaments in the Gulf

How well-founded are Western concerns that the nascent parliaments of Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain will be captured by antidemocratic Islamists and lead to the ‘Talibanization’ of the Gulf?