THE CONCEPT OF RELIGIOUS DEMOCRACY AS A NEW POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY FOR COUNTRIES WITH MOSLEM PREDOMINANT
Abstract
The concept of Democracy has been known as having a basis on the aspirations of the people, which exist on three platforms: from the people, by the people and for the people. In general, there are two perspectives for the conception, i.e. objective democracy and subjective democracy. The first one refers to the people aspiration. However, it is further derived into a subjective democracy, e.g. a liberal democracy in USA, social democracy in Europe, a guided democracy or Pancasila democracy in Indonesian political context, etc. This brief study aims at proposing an alternative concept of democracy, i.e. the Religious Democracy, which may have relevancies for most countries with a Moslem predominant. Islam as a universal religion may have an approval to this new concept, because Islam offers two perspectives or philosophical ideas, i.e. universal values such as freedom, brotherhood, equality, etc., and particular forms as a formulation towards those values in articulating or socializing Islamic values in either political, economic, social or cultural area especially among Moslem communities. Thus, Islam as a religion may accommodate the concept of democracy in terms of the context of a subjective democracy, not an objective one.