Democracy is a form of government that exists in numerous countries around the world, especially in the West. Is democracy compatible with Shari’ah? Can the Shari’ah still be in place with democracy around it?
Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains and answers.
Is democracy compatible with shediac?
democracy is a system of government which itself has many different variations and the shediac does not prescribe a specific mechanism of government. And if you look at Islamic history, yes, most of Islamic history was under what we would call King ships and kingdoms. But the fact of the matter is that there are ways that we can reconcile aspects of democracy with aspects of the shediac. This is a question that obviously, our modern scholars and political scientists will have to deal with. But it is permissible for populations to come together and vote about issues where voting is allowed, it is permissible to elect your representatives, the shadia has a basic Rubric or framework when that
framework is met, and allows commandments are done. Many other scenarios and issues can be resolved in a variety of ways. There is no one necessarily Islamic means of government and of choosing your leader and of any civic law. I mean, Allah did not come with zoning laws with with laws of traffic violations. This is something that the people can vote for, and decide amongst themselves. So the bottom line is this is a very deep topic, elements of the shediac can be made compatible with democracy. And it is possible, theoretically speaking, to form a type of democracy, where the shediac is still in place. And it is something that I would say is a very encouraging project that
modern philosophers and Muslim social scientists, political scientists and scholars should be interested in doing.