Soumaya Mestiri’s essay, “Public Debate, Shûra, (Overlapping) Consensus, Ijma’: Toward a Global Concept of Democracy,” published in the UNESCO volume Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogues on Globalization, Democracy and Human Rights (2010), offers a compelling critique of both Eurocentric and Islamist exceptionalisms regarding democracy. Situating her argument within a broader effort to pluralize democratic theory, Mestiri draws on classical Islamic concepts—particularly shûra (consultation) and ijma’ (consensus)—to demonstrate the latent democratic potential within Islamic intellectual traditions. Her central thesis challenges the notion that democracy is exclusively a Western inheritance and asserts that a global, culturally plural conception of democracy must be forged through cross-cultural philosophical dialogue. Mestiri begins by deconstructing the “Islamic exception” thesis—the idea that Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy. She rightly critiques both Western orientalist...
...in his own words and in the words of others who read his works
