ABSTRACT
This chapter applies a different approach than those introduced in previous studies on Islamic discourses on democracy. Specifically, instead of asking whether the modernist-apologists are "really" democratic or "sincerely" support human rights, the chapter aims to discern whether they have managed to put forward a political theory that reconciles their promise for a non-despotic, non-theocratic regime in which the religious establishment does not possess power over political decisions with their insistence that the regime will be shari'a-based and will never breach Islam's unequivocal regulations on the permissible and prohibited. Scholars calling for a positive approach to the Islamist discourse on democracy also failed to make a convincing case often times. Little was written by al-Ghazali on Islam and democratic theory during the 1960s and the 1970s, years in which he was more preoccupied with communism as a theoretical challenge. Western democracies established dignified principles that guide their political practices, and Muslims should adopt many of these.
