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Similarly, Ahmad’s second agreement is that besides people’s interpretation of the word democracy, we must interrogate the concepts and workings of it. Just like “who is Islam” is asked, “who is democracy” should also be asked. In other words, democracy is a contested term. There is a general agreement on the concept but not the best application of it. Most people would agree that democracy contains the idea of popular power where all the members of a society have equal control over decision-making processes. It is the depiction of this control over the decision-making processes that is contested.

What about the other term, “Islam”? According to Lewis, this too has multiple meanings. It is a system of belief with all its specific ideals and ideas yet it is also the entire civilization that grew up under the guidance of this religion. From a historical point of view Islam deals with billions of people, making it tremendously difficult to make a generalization. Also, the dominant, political tradition had been that of command and obedience for a long time and in fact has intensified in ...