Conceptual Transformation of "the People" and "Democracy" in Contemporary Muslim Political Thought

Democracy in contemporary Muslim political thought is not a fixed concept but a contested and historically embedded one that has been continuously redefined in the context of encounters with political modernity. This study employs Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history framework to analyze the transformation of the concepts of “the people” and their relation to democracy. Within this approach, political concepts are understood as temporal structures that emerge from the tension between the “space of experience” and the “horizon of expectation.” The central question is how differences in historical experiences and political expectations among Muslim thinkers have produced plural interpretations of both “the people” and “democracy.” The research adopts a conceptual-historical analysis of selected texts by contemporary Muslim intellectuals. The findings demonstrate that the concept of “the people” evolves across four configurations—ummah, nation, legal-political subject, and social actor—while democracy likewise shifts through four stages: rejection, controlled incorporation, political right, and social practice. The study concludes that debates over democracy in the Muslim world are fundamentally temporal and conceptual struggles over the possibility of political futures.