February 9, 2011

Islamic Democrats and the Turkish Model

Ahmad Ali Khalid

Turkish Flag
There is a realisation that the state must be secular in its institutions but liberal in its outlook, allowing for multiple voices in the public sphere. What we are seeing in the Muslim world is perhaps a return towards the early models of Islamic governance put forward by Islamic reformists and liberals.

The Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) and organisations like the Gulen movement represent the logical culmination of the democratic aspirations of the Muslim world. The combination of religious philosophy and liberal values whilst adopting secular state institutions and allowing religious voices a role in the public sphere is the most reasonable framework of democratic governance available to us. ‘Public Islam’ is desirable, but ‘state Islam’ is inevitably totalitarian.