Despite the wave of movements against dictatorship, the doddering old Orientalist Bernard Lewis continued to maintain that democracy will not work for Arabs; a consultative system that comes out of traditional Islamic culture would be better. As he put it, "We, in the Western world particularly, tend to think of democracy in our own terms—that's natural and normal—to mean periodic elections in our style. But I think it's a great mistake to try and think of the Middle East in those terms and that can only lead to disastrous results, as you've already seen in various places."

QUESTION: Does Islamic consultative tradition (shura) offer a viable alternative to Western elections, or is this an apologia for authoritarianism?

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 211