ISLAM, DEMOCRACY AND THE WEST.

ISLAM; ATTITUDE (Psychology); ACTIVISM; DEMOCRACY; WESTERN countries

This article investigates the challenge and opportunity presented by the Islamic resurgence to the West. In many ways Islamic societies find themselves in the opening rounds of what the West went through in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in redefining both the relationship between God and man and between man and man. The challenge for Islamists is all the greater because the political climate, at home and in the international arena, is hardly conducive to reforms or experimentation, much less full expression. The specter of Iran's revolutionary excesses and Lebanon's terrorist zealotry continues to color local and Western attitudes toward Islam. Despite the growing body of evidence to the contrary, Islam is still widely and again wrongly perceived as inherently extremist. Despite the many shades and shapes of Islamic activism, it is also still wrongly treated as a single or monolithic force. Algeria has become the primary test case for the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Islamic activism emerged in Algeria when Algerian President Chandli Bendjedid ended socialist one-party rule after growing public discontent was capped in 1988 by riots in which at least 400 people were killed.