There exist a number of perspectives on the relationship between the religion of Islam and democracy (the form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state and democracy) among Islamic political theorists and other thinkers, the general Muslim public, and Western authors.
Many Muslim scholars have argued that traditional Islamic notions such as shura (consultation), maslaha (public interest), and ʿadl (justice) justify representative government institutions which are similar to Western democracy, but reflect Islamic rather than Western liberal values. Still others have advanced liberal democratic models of Islamic politics based on pluralism and freedom of thought. Some Muslim thinkers have advocated secularist views of Islam.
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