Democracy and Religion: Theoretical and Empirical Observations on the Relationship between Christianity, Islam and Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of the compatibility of Islam and democracy from the angle of empirical democratic theory and in a broad historical and comparative perspective. This includes the argument of, and evidence for, a Christian rooting of modern democracy. On the one hand, recent data and cross-time comparisons confirm that demo cracy's roots are in countries which are culturally shaped by Christianity. Religious traditions and institutions clearly provide constraints and opportunities for liberal democracies and processes of democratisation. Within the Christian tradition, distinctions between Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and Protestantism (also within Protestantism) matter, and so do different degrees of secularisation or specific patterns of Church–State relations. Religions that contain and prescribe an holistic view of society, especially Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Islam, tend to restrict the emergence and development of liberal democracies, and civil liberties in particular. On the other hand, the inherent ‘multi-vocality’ and the changes of religious traditions (e.g. Catholicism) which, in themselves, are massively affected by political institutions, already demonstrate that there is nothing deterministic about religion's relationship to democracy. This relation is also shaped by uneven processes of secularisation and by increasing religious diversity within the West. While a first glance at the current world map of religion and democracy seems to confirm Huntington's well-known view that Islam is ‘the problem’, closer analysis shows, however, that it is not the allegedly problematic relationship between Church and State in Islamic countries or the lack of secularisation in these societies which accounts for the democratic deficit. Rather, the main reasons are found in patriarchal orders, and in geopolitical and regional factors. I suggest that research should focus on the conditions under which an antagonistic relationship between a particular (empirical) religion and democratic principles and practice can be transformed into reconciliation by institutional, doctrinal and attitudinal learning. Such learning is massively stimulated by Muslims living under conditions of functioning liberal democracies ‘in the West’.