ABSTRACT
The revolutionary events that engulfed the Arab world beginning with the fall of the Tunisian dictator, Zain al-ʿAbidin Ben ʿAli, in January 2011 brought to the fore long-standing concerns about the relationship of Islam to democracy. With the failure of the January 25th Revolution in Egypt to usher in a democracy, the collapse of Syria into an all-out civil war, and the establishment of a fragile democracy in Tunisia, conventional analysis has laid the blame for the failure of these revolutionary moments to consolidate democracy on the uncivil and undemocratic role that Islam plays in Arab societies, with Tunisia proving the point: its provision success was largely a result of the fact that its Islamist movement, the Nahda, had become sufficiently diluted in its Islamic commitments that consolidation of democratic rule became possible. Assuming this is true, then the problem of democratization in the Arab world is essentially a theological problem: Muslims, to one extent or another, must either cease being Muslim, or radically revise their inherited understanding of Islam, in order to create space in which democracy can take root. Presumably, the reason why religion must retreat to make room for democracy is that there is an inherent and un-resolvable tension between the claim of democracy that it is the people who should rule, and the claim of religion (at least Islam) that God should rule.
