Den demokratiske islamisten? : En studie av tre islamistiska rörelser och deras demokratiseringspotential

Sammanfattning: ABSTRACT Essay in Political Science, Advanced Continuation Course, 61-80 credits, by Jonas Nilsson ”The democratic islamist? - a study of three islamist movements and their potential role in a democratization process” Supervisor: Jonas Linde The purpose of this work has been to explain to what extent islamist movements can be said to be bearers of democratic values and if they have a role to play in future democratization processes. The purpose of this work is also to examine the democratic views of the different islamist movements and to compare them with each other in an effort to find a specific islamist definition of democracy. The essay is a qualitative analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Front Islamique du Salut in Algeria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The analytical framework is based on the political institutions included in Robert A. Dahl polyarchial democracy. The institutions provided by the polyarchial model is used to define the islamist movements stand on democracy which is defined by three different standpoints. The movements can either accept, decline or modify the various institutions and the results from the analysis helps us to evaluate the future role of islamist movements in the democratization process. The results also provides the opportunity to define a version of democracy specific for the islamist movements. The conclusion I have made is that the islamist movements included in the study have a part to play in a future democratization process. They have shown that their commitment to the democratic ideals defined by Dahl is quite extensive and that they as separate movements have developed a more advanced view of the relationship between islam and democracy as a social order. Though democratic at first glance there are signs that the islamists standpoint on democracy comes with certain reservations. The most significant of these reservarvations is the islamists regard of islam as an overarching ideology and the subordinate role of man made political systems such as democracy. However, the islamists have found ways to handle this problem and points out the inherent democratic values in islam and thereby tries to circumvent the problematic relationship between democracy and religion. The study also concludes that we can define the islamist version of democracy as a specific form of democracy, a value-based participatory democracy. This conclusion is based on the islamist emphasis on the importance of ethics, decency and virtue in a society, at the same time as they also emphasize the need for legitimacy provided by the people through free, fair and frequent elections.