A comparative study of the western democracy with the committed democracy initiated by Ali Shariati

Democracy is one of the most controversial terms in the literature of political thought. As a sociologist and philosopher, Shariati has defined the term within a religious discourse. During his series of lectures presented in 1969 at Hosseinieh Ershad, he proposed the idea of committed democracy and, criticizing the western liberal democratic systems, called the western democracy as false democracy. Inspired by the Islamic views, Sahriati believed that the western democracy is the democracy of the heads, not of votes, an aristocratic, elite system serving the interests of a certain class, that is, capitalists and aristocrats, and based his view of democracy on the religious and ideological foundations. In this paper, the writers analyze various views of democracy, especially the views of western scholars, and show the differences and similarities of these views with that of Shariati.