Islam and Democracy

"[It is] worth the effort for anyone interested in better understanding political Islam. Esposito and Voll avoid social science jargon, provide brief historical overviews of all the countries they consider, and carefully define all their terminology, including what is meant by both 'Islam' and 'democracy.'...Through careful examination of the political writings of contemporary Muslim thinkers, Esposito and Voll conclude that there is much in Islam that supports participatory government: the central Islamic concepts of consultation, consensus, and varied interpretation of opinion, for example. Moreover, the authors place political Islam in a global and historical perspective, from its rise in the 19th century as an anticolonialist movement to its current affinities with other third-world insurgency movements."Esposito, John L. is the author of 'Islam and Democracy', published 1996 under ISBN 9780195108163 and ISBN 0195108167.