DEMOCRACY AS THE CONCEPTUAL BATTLEFIELD OF EAST-WEST ENCOUNTERS: A DESTRUCTION OF THE ‘INCOMPATIBILITY CLAIM ’ AND ISLAMIST DISCOURSE OF DEMOCRACY

This paper applies a post-structuralist, non-foundational methodology to the question of the prospects of an Islamic democracy. Through a deconstruction of the culturalist discourse on democracy, the naturalness of the Western concept of liberal democracy is demythologized. More specifically it employs Ido Oren’s critique of democratic peace theory to display the contingency of a linking of secularism with democracy. This places policies of democratization and their scholarly derivative of the incompatibility claim within the continuity of previous historical East-West encounters all inflicting a sense of crisis upon the Arab world. Finally, it presents a triad of Islamist discourse on democracy, of which the syncretist discourse is given particular attention as it is presented not only as possibly destabilizing the hegemony of Western democratic discourse, but also as an important catalyst of Arab-Islamic emancipation and empowerment through self-representation and self-assertion