ISLAM AND CIVIL SOCIETY
What is the relationship between Islam, democracy, and civil society? This is the question which provides the subject of this dissertation, Its aim, more particularly, is to search the place of Islam in the modern world-a world which contemporary authors progressively try to understand by raising the concepts of democracy and civil society. However, the occasion for this victimization has a more exact origin still. The matter of the place of Islam in the modern world is raised, more often than not, by authors and reviewers for whom Islam is, above all, a danger. In geo-political terms; it is a danger to the West. In world-historical terms; it is a danger to modernity. And in philosophical terms; it is a danger to democracy. For many, then, Islam stands in a relationship of tension with-if not complete hostility to-democracy and modernity. It is a religion, and a philosophy, which is a regression to the middle ages, and a barrier to human progress. It is, in the end, inappropriate with any kind of free political order.
