THERE are roughly 50 Muslim-majority countries in the world, nearly half of which claim to practise some form of democracy. Yet, arguably, only about seven to 11 qualify as functioning electoral democracies. This raises an uncomfortable question: why has democracy struggled to take deeper root in much of the Muslim world? Whatever the reason, the fact is that the majority of Muslim nations are still struggling to grasp the idea of a nation-state, and democracy is still an alien concept in the...