ABSTRACT
It was Shakīb Arslān who gave the most precise statement of the question of iṣlāḥ: why have the Others become civilized, while we have lagged behind? Beyond the fact that this question implies a tête-à-tête or a parallel with Europe, both of them unjustified, we are concerned with a narcissistic view as much as with, paradoxically, self-depreciation. It has to be said that, since the eighteenth century, from Montesquieu to certain contemporary orientalists, the Europeans themselves have made numerous enquiries about the decadence of Islam. And this investigation has evoked a vast number of suggested “causes” (despotism, structure of the religion and of society, collective psychology, or means of production, as Marx would say). What must be avoided here is the repetition of such theories when applied only to the question of democracy, again with the recurrence of various different suggested causes.
