Martin Seymour Lipset stressed, more than fifty years ago, that ‘prerequisites’ for democracy include economic development and political legitimacy. Since the beginning of the so called Arab Spring, aspects of political legitimacy dominate discussions, while economic development seems to have been put on the back burner, if not forgotten altogether. In this talk, Dr. Filali-Ansary will revisit the way in which issues of legitimacy are linked to discussions of religious and cultural traditions. He will explore how this leads us to raise fresh questions about the on-going transitions in Muslim contexts and the prospects of democratisation in the Third World, more generally.

Abdou Filali-Ansary is Research Professor at the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) in London, UK. Previously, he was the Founding Director of the same Institute (2002-9), Director of the King Abdul-Aziz Foundation for Islamic Studies and Human Sciences in Casablanca, Morocco (1973-84), and Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Letters at Rabat University where he taught modern philosophy from 1970 to 1973. In 1993, Professor Filali-Ansary initiated a bilingual journal (Arabic/French) “Prologues: revue maghrébine du livre” with a team from the academic community in Morocco. His publications include French and English translations (with introduction) of Ali Abdel Razek’s essay Islam and the foundations of political power (Paris: La Découverte, and Casablanca: Le Fennec, 1994; Edinburgh: EUP, 2012), essays entitled L’islam est-il hostile à la laïcité ? (Casablanca: Le Fennec, 1996 and 1999),  Par souci de clarité (Casablanca, Le Fennec, 2001), Réformer l’islam ? Une introduction aux débats contemporains (Paris, La Découverte, 2003), as well as articles in academic journals.