Westminster Democracy in an Islamic Context

This chapter examines the development of parliamentary democracy in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, which arrived in all three countries as an import from the West, i.e. the UK. Their experience suggests that there have been few conceptual difficulties in introducing parliamentary democracy in these societies. The real challenge to the functioning of parliamentary democracy in these as in other, non-Islamic societies is not represented by religion, but by the persistence of undemocratic practices, particularly among the political elites, which prevents the mechanisms of electoral democracy from becoming a faithful expression of the political and social grievances and aspirations of the population at large.