THIS short study — 125 pages with two appendices — seeks by means of 40 discussion groups across a number of European countries and the United States to elicit the opinions of “lay” Muslims on whether they consider Islam and democracy to be compatible. The work comprises three substantive chapters. The first rehearses Muslim demographics and the number of mosques in Western Europe and the US. The second focuses on the key research question: “Islam and democracy”. The final chapter addresses the potential for cooperation, conciliation, and compromise.
Unfortunately, this admirable project is fatally flawed by failures in design, methodology, and execution.
The book started life as a survey of Muslim opinion in Britain and America, initiated by a small group of Anglican and Episcopalian priests and one of the authors, Mr Turner, a barrister and British MEP from 1979 to 1994. Completed in 2006, it was intended as a resource for the Anglican Observer to the UN, appointed in 2004, whom this group advises. Priests took the initiative in involving members of their congregation and inviting Muslims. The selection of parishes was “purely haphazard”, as Turner acknowledges with disarming candour.
This meant that in Britain, no discussions took place in majority-Muslim areas in the Midlands or the north. Each group met three times over a two-year period and discussed a wide variety of issues. To ensure a “lay” Muslim perspective, ulama (Muslim religious leaders) were deliberately excluded, as were Muslim academics (for reasons not explained).
From 2007, the second author, an Italian specialist on Islam, was invited to roll out such discussions in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and Canada. These groups, however, did not involve non-Muslims, limited the discussion to the question about “Islam and democracy”, and so met only once. While the first phase of the study in Britain and the US — involving about two-thirds of the 600-plus Muslim respondents — was complete in 2006, this second phase ran from 2007 to 2014.
Finally, the project was written up five years later, by which time the Arab Spring had turned to winter, Egypt and Turkey were becoming much more authoritarian, and thousands of young Muslims across Europe had proved susceptible to the siren calls of Islamic State. In writing up the research, the authors felt that they could not ignore such issues, but the opinions expressed are their own rather than Muslim voices earlier canvassed.
The authors throughout insist that their Muslim respondents agree that Islam and democracy are compatible. This reassuring conclusion is then qualified when they point to the existence of “absolutist” Muslim voices who assert the opposite, especially among the ulama and Muslim academics — the two categories deliberately excluded from the survey! They also concede that since clergy were involved in inviting the key Muslim interlocutors, radical Muslim voices might well have self-excluded.
Dr Philip Lewis is a consultant on Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, advised Bishops of Bradford for some three decades, and taught in Peace Studies at Bradford University.
Islam and Democracy: Voices of Muslims amongst us
Amédée Turner and Davide Tacchini
Mimesis International £13
(978-88-6977-177-4)
Church Times Bookshop £11.70
