SOURCE: Brumberg, Daniel. Review of Islam and Democracy, by Fatima Mernissi. Contemporary Sociology 23, no. 5 (September 1994): 680-81.

In the following review of Islam and Democracy, Brumberg commends Mernissi's analysis of Islamic culture and political power, but objects to her assertion that the West must enforce democratization in the Arab world.

Fatima Mernissi is a Moroccan sociologist who has written widely on the role of women in the Arab Islamic world. She is also an Islamic liberal who believes that the values of liberal democracy can be reconciled with those of Islam. In Islam and Democracy, she has brought her interests together in one of the most thought-provoking books to be written on Islam in many years.

In the first half of her book Mernissi tries to account for the antagonism of Arab youth to democracy by tracing the historical development of Islam. During the first decades of Islamic history...