ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the conditions necessary for stable democracy in the Muslim world. The solution to the problem of accommodating Islam to modernity is not so much to be found in the resistance of Islam to the market economy, which is what Weber emphasised. The problem lies elsewhere, namely in the opposition between a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and the universal recognition of human rights. Thus, Islam must be interpreted in such a way that it accepts basic principles within universal liberalism. The Arab republics are poor and overpopulated, keeping only a facade of republicanism. They tend towards authoritarianism to varying degrees. Some are openly authoritarian whereas others uphold a facade of multi-partism, like Egypt since 1971. Several factors have been identified in the literature as being conducive to authoritarianism. The exceptionalism of the Arab countries is based upon the contradiction between political modernisation as democracy and the religious traditions of Islam, which emerges in different ways.
