SOURCE: Kramer, Martin. “Politics and the Prophet.” New Republic 208, no. 9 (1 March 1993): 39-41.

In the following review, Kramer praises the courage of Mernissi's polemic in Islam and Democracy, but finds her appeal for Western-style liberalization in the Arab world naïve and unrealistic.

Can Islam and democracy be reconciled? The vexed old question has enjoyed a revival since January of last year, when Algeria's ruling party voided the results of that country's first free parliamentary election. The election gave an overwhelming mandate to the party of Islamic fundamentalism, whose most outspoken leader affirmed that “it is Islam which has been the victor, as always, not democracy. We did not go to the ballot boxes for democracy.”

There are some in the West who have tried to sweep such fundamentalist disavowals of democracy under the rug. They include not only apologists for Islam, but also engineers in the democracy foundations...