The impact of modern western cultures on Islamic societies has created an interesting debate regarding the compatibility of democracy and secularization with Islamic values. The rise of political Islam in the 1970s has intensified this debate leading it towards new perspectives regarding the compatibility of Islam with issues such as development, citizenship, identity, democracy and globalization. Western Academic discourse about the relationship Islam and modernity revolves around the distinction between essentialist and reductionist approaches1 . While Orientalists (or essentialists) claim that the essential background of Islam opposes modernization, secularization and democracy, reductionists argue that Islam is not a significant factor preventing the development of secularization.
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