{"id":639,"date":"2012-10-05T03:54:49","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T03:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/islaminamerica\/?p=639"},"modified":"2012-10-05T04:00:05","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T04:00:05","slug":"is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;As Arab populations &#8216;pursue values like freedom, justice, equality, autonomy and pluralism, and new models of democracy and of international relations,&#8217; the scholar Tariq Ramadan wrote in <em>The New York Times<\/em> this week, &#8216;they need to draw on Islamic traditions.&#8217; But what would that look like? Does Islam encourage or discourage democratic government?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Follow the debate among Ed Husain, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; Robert D. Kaplan, chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm; Reza Aslan, an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside; Jerusha Tanner Lamptey, an assistant professor of Islam and ministry at Union Theological Seminary; Richard W. Bulliet, a professor of history at Columbia University, and Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2012\/10\/04\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;As Arab populations &#8216;pursue values like freedom, justice, equality, autonomy and pluralism, and new models of democracy and of international relations,&#8217; the scholar Tariq Ramadan wrote in The New York Times this week, &#8216;they need to draw on Islamic traditions.&#8217; But what would that look like? Does Islam encourage or discourage democratic government?&#8221; Follow the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,30],"tags":[129,132,134,131,133,130],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-news","tag-ed-husain","tag-jerusha-tanner-lamptey","tag-omid-safi","tag-reza-aslan","tag-richard-w-bulliet","tag-robert-d-kaplan"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy? - Islam In America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy? - Islam In America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;As Arab populations &#8216;pursue values like freedom, justice, equality, autonomy and pluralism, and new models of democracy and of international relations,&#8217; the scholar Tariq Ramadan wrote in The New York Times this week, &#8216;they need to draw on Islamic traditions.&#8217; But what would that look like? Does Islam encourage or discourage democratic government?&#8221; Follow the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Islam In America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-05T03:54:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-10-05T04:00:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Suzy Shuraym\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy? - Islam In America","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy? - Islam In America","og_description":"&#8220;As Arab populations &#8216;pursue values like freedom, justice, equality, autonomy and pluralism, and new models of democracy and of international relations,&#8217; the scholar Tariq Ramadan wrote in The New York Times this week, &#8216;they need to draw on Islamic traditions.&#8217; But what would that look like? Does Islam encourage or discourage democratic government?&#8221; Follow the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/","og_site_name":"Islam In America","article_published_time":"2012-10-05T03:54:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-10-05T04:00:05+00:00","author":"Suzy Shuraym","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/","name":"Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy? - Islam In America","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-10-05T03:54:49+00:00","dateModified":"2012-10-05T04:00:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/#\/schema\/person\/d5810a8303f7a52a4e4623e330c93323"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/2012\/10\/05\/is-islam-an-obstacle-to-democracy\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Is Islam an Obstacle to Democracy?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/","name":"Islam In America","description":"Islam, Muslim Wisdom, Muslim Inspiration, Muslim News","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/#\/schema\/person\/d5810a8303f7a52a4e4623e330c93323","name":"Suzy Shuraym","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/author\/smckee\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions\/643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/islaminamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}