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Political Instrumentalisation of Islam, Persistent Autocracies, and Obscurantist Deadlock
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1028-3625
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EUI RSCAS; 2010/32; European Report on Development
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PLATTEAU, Jean-Philippe, Political Instrumentalisation of Islam, Persistent Autocracies, and Obscurantist Deadlock, EUI RSCAS, 2010/32, European Report on Development - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/13857
Abstract
The empirical literature has established a strong link between the fact of being a Muslim-dominated
country and indicators of political performance and democracy. This suggests the possible existence of
a relation between religion, Islam in this instance, and societal characteristics. Bernard Lewis and
others have actually argued the case for such a relation, pointing to aspects of the Islamic religion and
culture that make the advent of democracy especially difficult. These arguments fall into the general
idea of the “Clash of civilisations” put forward by Samuel Huntington. In this paper, we discuss this
sort of argument and show that there is a systematic misconception about the true nature of the
relationship between Islam and politics: far from being merged into the religious realm, politics tends
to dominate religion. Because of the particular characteristics of Is-lam, namely, the lack of a
centralised religious authority structure and the great variability of interpretations of the Islamic law,
there is a risk of an “obscurantist deadlock” in the form of a vicious process whereby both the ruler
and his political opponents try to outbid each other by using the religious idiom. This risk looms
particularly large in crisis situations accentuated by international factors.
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European Report on Development