Although people often conflate democracy and liberalism, there is a fine distinction between politics and culture; a democratic system of governance falls in the category of politics while liberalism, as a value system, falls in the category of culture. When we say that Islam and democracy are inconsistent, we make a category mistake as serious as the Islamists’ misperception that democracy is somehow un-Islamic. They too mix up democracy with liberalism.
I do concede, however, that there is some friction between liberalism as a cultural temperament and Islam as a religion. But democracy isn’t about religion or culture. It is simply a multi-party, representative political system that confers legitimacy upon a government which comes to power through an election process which is a contest between more than one political party to ensure that it is voluntary.
Thus, democracy and politics are mostly about matters of governance and economics, while culture is mostly about the social and moral values and the kind of social matrix that we, as individuals and families, would like to construct around us. There is some overlapping between politics and culture but as a heuristic principle this distinction holds true.
When I will discuss the political pragmatism of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the reader will further appreciate the fact that realpolitik is mostly about power and rarely about cultural matters.
Let us admit at the outset that Imran Khan is…