1). With the main advantage of being democracy's "place of birth," the Western position is extremely firm. John L. Esposito, John O. Voll (1996) state that: "In the current global context, most who advocate democratization still do not recognize it […]as a result, they view people with different interpretations of democracy as "perverse and lunatic," and thus are open to the perils of underestimating the strength of the alternatives. This is especially true of advocates of the styles of democracy found in Western Europe and the United States, who believe themselves to be the true heirs to the only legitimate democratic tradition and thus view any other efforts to create democracies as false and undemocratic." (p. 14)

The answer to the question "Is Islam incompatible with democracy?" is hard to find. The personal opinion is that the major criteria by which one defines his/her position is the affiliation to one of these two distinctive worlds. What one must take for granted is the fact that democratization, along with all its principles, must be culturally legitimated by the history of an area and must not be imposed by...

Some changes in the religion's modern history and some new interpretations and reinterpretations are willing to achieve a consensus between two distinctive ideas of democracy. "These twin forces of democracy -- a changing relationship to society and internal reform -- promise a better future for a region that has become an increasingly lonely outpost for dictatorship and authoritarianism. At the heart of that vision is a new ideal of community." (Shadid, 2001, p. 253). These new perspectives are a proof of the fact that the incompatibility between Islamism and democracy and the rigid Western point-of-view may be excelled someday.
Bibliography:

1. Ahmad, Khurshid (2002). Islam and Democracy: Some Conceptual and Contemporary Dimensions. The Muslim World. Vol. 90.

2. Esposito, John L.; Voll, John, O. (1996). Islam and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

3. Shadid, Anthony (2001). Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats, and the New Politics of Islam. Boulder:…