In this brilliantly argued book, Mohamed Charfi tackles this pressing question facing all Arab -Muslim nations today. Contemporary Arab government... s have yet to conceive the very idea of democracy in terms of today's criteria, and until they do so, the debate between traditionalists and democrats cannot progress.Charfi rejects the position of those who downplay Islamist violence and legitimise fundamentalist positions. But, although he is attuned to the relationship between some forms of...

In this brilliantly argued book, Mohamed Charfi tackles this pressing question facing all Arab -Muslim nations today. Contemporary Arab government... s have yet to conceive the very idea of democracy in terms of today's criteria, and until they do so, the debate between traditionalists and democrats cannot progress.Charfi rejects the position of those who downplay Islamist violence and legitimise fundamentalist positions. But, although he is attuned to the relationship between some forms of Islamism and popular dispossession, he remains convinced that fundamentalist constructions are deeply damaging for all people, not least for women. Charfi believes passionately that those Arabs who compaign for freedom and democracy are not deracinated supportes of Western constructs.Rather, they are treading the same precarious but necessary path as thinkers such as Mohammed Abdoh and Taher Haddad who called for a new understanding of Islam and modernity over 100 years ago. Sadly, however, tge 21st century is witnessing a regression in the independance of the law from holy writ. Charfi advocates a profound revision of Islamic thought. He insists on a new reading of Islamic history and Islamic law and presses for a society that allows for dissent, secularism and freedom of belief. Above all,he stresses the overriding importance of educational reform - an area where he himself played a pivotal and pioneering role when minister of education in his own country, Tunisia, in the early 1990s.