Wednesday, 25 January 2017, 5.00 pm - 6.30 pm |
Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstr. 14, 14193 Berlin

The Possibility (and Tensions) of 'Muslim Democracy'

Asef Bayat
(University of Illinois / Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2016/17)

Chair: Cilja Harders
(Freie Universität Berlin / EUME)

Abstract
How can we imagine a democratic polity in societies where people take their religion seriously? Can we then imagine such a thing as ‘Muslim democracy’? And if so what is it, and how different it may be from liberal democracy? In an attempt to address this question, I would suggest that post-Islamist trajectory might materialize in some kind of ‘Muslim democracy’, but one in which tension with liberal values may mark its principal character. 

Asef Bayat is a Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Illinois, Bayat taught at the American University in Cairo for many years, and served as the director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) holding the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, The Netherlands. In the meantime, he had visiting positions at the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University, Oxford, and Brown. Currently, he is a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.