Therefore, this paper intends to dismiss the inherent irreconci lability between democracy and Islamic values by developing a Shia Islamic conception of religious democracy. This paper assumes that not only is democracy, as a procedure for collective decision- making, plausible and should be appreciated, but also in the absence of a more plausible view, democracy should be preferred to its alternatives. Furthermore, as democratic peace theory suggests, democracies are less prone to violent conflicts among them, than nondemocratic regimes.

[٢]

Hence, the promotion of democratic regimes can contribute to international peace and security in the long run.

A Minimalist Conception of Democracy

Although democracy has recently received a widespread approval, as Keith Graham suggests, no one has a clear idea any longer what it is.

[٣]

Hence, Callie proposes that democracy is one of the essentially contested concepts the dispute over which are perfectly genuine: which, although not resolvable by argument of any kind, are nevertheless sustained by perfectly respectable arguments and evidence. He contends that the proper employment of this type of concept inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users.

[٤]

What accounts, partly, for the endless dispute over the proper use of democracy lies in the fact that defining democracy can be undertaken by implicitly or explicitly presupposing a normative judgment about the good government, the good society, or the good decision- making procedure called democratic.

[٥]

Thus, Saward suggests that one cannot fulfil the task of defining democracy neutrally, because it is a political action, which is subject is subject to the

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