In recent years, the Middle East has witnessed several examples of religious parties coming to power. These parties have usually encountered problems when it comes to dealing with a democratic system of governance. This has led to the fall of some — such as in Egypt — or to major challenges in terms of democratic values, ​​such as human rights and public freedoms. Why are religious parties unable to deal with democracy? Is it the lack of necessary experience in governance, or are there other fundamental issues —linked to the intellectual and ideological structure of the religious parties — behind the problem?

Historically, Middle Eastern societies have been confronted with democratic systems of governance in a sudden manner. This has resulted in a great shock within these societies, particularly among intellectuals. In contrast, democracy came to the West gradually, through centuries of cognitive theories developed by thinkers of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment eras, and accumulated human experiments. Moreover, some aspects of a democratic system have been present in European societies since the Middle Ages. The most important of these aspects — when making a comparison with the Middle East — is the relative separation between the political and religious authorities within various systems of governance in Europe.

Islam and the Foundations of Governance, a book by Ali Abdel Raziq published in 1925 — shortly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 — is a qualitative example of the shock that was produced at the time and subsequent reactions. The main idea of the book focused on rejecting the “caliphate” as the legitimate Islamic form of governance. Abdel Raziq pointed out that there is no specific system of governance prescribed in Islam, and that Islam did not forbid taking into consideration rational judgments and countries’ experiences in building their systems of governance. The book was harshly criticized by scholars of Islamic law in Egypt and other Arab countries. The author was tried and stripped of his position as a judge in Egypt, and many responses to the book were published.

Theologians in Islamic societies faced the shock of democracy with the following question: Is it possible to establish a political system to manage the state that is separate from the religious system? The question was raised against the backdrop of a prevailing ideology that Islam is the true religion, is unequaled by any other religion, and should provide human beings with all their demands, whether individual or collective. Based on that, these thinkers showed two types of reactions. The first radically rejected democracy, and described it as being contrary to and divergent from Islam in all cases. The second tried to reconcile Islam and democracy, based on different versions of “modernizing Islamic theology." The first reaction was adopted by the various Salafist regimes in the region, which conclusively rejected the democratic system by abstaining from holding elections, establishing political parties and other key elements of democracy. The second reaction was adopted by the religious parties that we are talking about.