In a necessarily brief discussion of major issues, it is fatally easy to go astray by misuse or misinterpretation of some of the words that one uses. Therefore, I ought to say first what I mean by the terms "Islam" and "liberal democracy." Democracy nowadays is a word much used and even more misused. It has many meanings and has turned up in surprising places \u2013 the Spain of General Franco, the Greece of the colonels, the Pakistan of the generals, the Eastern Europe of the commissars \u2013 usually prefaced by some qualifying adjective such as "guided," "basic," "organic," "popular," or the like, which serves to dilute, deflect, or even to reverse the meaning of the word.

Another definition of democracy is embraced by those who claim that Islam itself is the only authentic democracy. This statement is perfectly true, if one accepts the notion of democracy presupposed by those who advance this view. Since it does not coincide with the definition of democracy that I take as the basis of this discussion, I will leave it aside as irrelevant for present purposes.

The kind of democracy I am talking about is none of these. By liberal democracy, I mean primarily the general method of choosing or removing governments that developed in England and then spread among English- speaking peoples and beyond.

In 1945, the victors of the Second World War imposed parliamentary democracy on the three major Axis powers. It survives in all three, precariously, perhaps, in one. In none of them has it yet confronted any crisis of truly major proportions. Among the Allies, Britain and France bequeathed their own brands of democracy \u2013 with varying success \u2013 to their former colonies during the post-war retreat from empire.

Perhaps the best rule of thumb by which one can judge the presence of the kind of democracy I mean is Samuel P. Huntington's dictum that you can call a country a democracy when it has made two consecutive, peaceful changes of government via free elections. By specifying two elections, Huntington rules out regimes that follow the procedure that one acute observer has called "one man, one vote, once.\u201d So I take democracy to mean a polity where the government can be changed by elections as opposed to one where elections are changed by the government.

Americans tend to see democracy and monarchy as antithetical terms. In Europe, however, democracy has fared better in constitutional monarchies than in republics. It is instructive to make a list of those countries in Europe where democracy has developed steadily and without interruption over a long period, and where there is every prospect that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The list of such countries is short and all but one of them are monarchies. The one exception, Switzerland, is like the United States in that it is a special case due to special circumstances. In the French Republic, established by revolution more than two centuries ago, the march of democracy has been punctuated by interruptions, reverses, and digressions. In most of the other republics of Europe, and, for that matter, in the rest of the world, the record is incomparably worse.

In all this, there may be some lesson for the Middle East, where the dynastic principle is still remarkably strong. The most purely Arab and Muslim of Middle Eastern states, Saudi Arabia, derives its name and its identity from its founding and ruling dynasty. So, too, did the Ottoman Empire \u2013 the most recent and by far the most enduring of all the Islamic empires. Even such radical revolutionary leaders as Hafiz al-Assad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq endeavor to secure the succession of their sons. In a political culture where the strain of dynastic legitimacy is so strong, democracy might in some places fare better by going with it rather than against it.

What of our other term, "Islam"? It too has multiple meanings. In one sense, it denotes a religion \u2013 a system of belief, worship, doctrine, ideals, and ideas \u2013 that belongs to the family of monotheistic, scriptural religions that includes Judaism and Christianity. In another sense, it means the whole civilization that has grown up under the aegis of that religion: something like what is meant by the once-common term "Christendom."

When we in the West today talk of Christian art, we mean votive art, religious art. If we talk of Islamic art, however, we mean any art produced by Muslims or even by non-Muslims within Islamic civilization. Indeed, one can still speak of Islamic astronomy and Islamic chemistry and Islamic mathematics, meaning astronomy, chemistry, and mathematics produced under the aegis of Islamic civilization. There is no corresponding "Christian" astronomy or chemistry or mathematics.

Each of these terms, Islam in the sense of a religion and Islam in the sense of a civilization, is itself subject to many variations. If we talk about Islam as a historical phenomenon, we are speaking of a community that now numbers more than a billion people, most of whom are spread along a vast arc stretching almost 10,000 miles from Morocco to Mindanao; that has a 14- century-long history; and that is the defining characteristic of the 53 sovereign states that currently belong to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). For obvious reasons, it is extremely difficult (though not impossible) to make any kind of valid generalization about a reality of such age, size, and complexity.

Even if we confine ourselves to speaking of Islam as a religion, significant distinctions must be drawn. First, there is what Muslims themselves would call the original, pristine, pure Islam of the Koran and the hadith (the traditions of the Prophet Mohammed) before it became corrupted by the backsliding of later generations. Second, there is the Islam of the doctors of the holy law, of the magnificent intellectual structure of classical Islamic jurisprudence and theology.

Most recently, there is the neo-Islam of the so-called fundamentalists who introduce ideas unknown alike to the Koran, the hadith, or the classical doctrines of the faith.

Clearly, this last version of Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy, as the fundamentalists themselves would be the first to say: they regard liberal democracy with contempt as a corrupt and corrupting form of government. They are willing to see it, at best, as an avenue to power, but an avenue that runs one way only.

A first look at the historical record is not encouraging. Predominantly Muslim regions show very few functioning democracies. Indeed, of the 53 OIC states, only Turkey can pass Huntington's test of democracy, and it is in many ways a troubled democracy. Among the others, one can find democratic movements and in some cases, even promising democratic developments, but one cannot really say that they are democracies even to the extent that the Turkish Republic is a democracy at the present time.

Throughout history, the overwhelmingly most common type of regime in the Islamic world has been autocracy \u2013 which is not to be confused with despotism. The dominant political tradition has long been that of command and obedience, and far from weakening it, modern times have actually witnessed its intensification.

With traditional restraints on autocracy attenuated, and with new means of surveillance, repression, and wealth- extraction made available to rulers by modern technologies and methods, governments have become less dependent than ever on popular goodwill. This is particularly true of those governments that are enriched by revenues from oil. With no need for taxation, there is no pressure for representation.

Another noteworthy historical and cultural fact is the absence of the notion of citizenship. There is no word in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish for "citizen.\u201d The cognate term used in each language means only "compatriot" or "countryman.\u201d It has none of the connotations of the English word "citizen," which comes from the Latincivis and has the content of the Greekp o lite s, meaning one who participates in the affairs of thep o lis. The word is absent in Arabic and the other languages because the idea \u2013 of the citizen as participant, of citizenship as participation \u2013 is not there.