Escalating Legitimacy Crises: Dwindling Political Authority and the Pursuit of Justice in Islamic, National and Global Arenas

Abstract

Western and Islamic societies suffer from a common ailment—their citizens are losing trust in the basic integrity of their political institutions. There is a growing sense that systematic injustices are the core reasons behind economic, political and social crises. The result is a global decline of political authority. Embattled liberals in the West and the Islamic world want to bolster struggling democracies, new and old. Both groups see religion as indispensable in coping with chronic crises of legitimacy. Western liberalism’s sense of vulnerability is paving the way for a rediscovery of Islamic Modernism. Western liberals hope that open-minded Muslims can help them combat fundamentalisms of all stripes, including extremist tendencies surging in America and Europe. Today’s Islamic Modernists comprise an influential network of writers, interest groups and activists that can be valuable allies in transnational struggles for democracy and religious tolerance.