First, I view Islam, at least as it is practiced today, as very fatalistic. This can result in a kind of passivity and resignation in the populace.
Very good point!
Islamic doctrine is very ambivalent concerning free will. As best I appreciate it, there is free will but it is considered an illusion somehow subsumed to Allah's will. In other words, while one may believe he is doing something volitionally, he is not as he is simply executing Allah's will. Thus, I am not sure that free will is necessarily recognized. If so, another reason for difficulty with democracy.
Churchill commented on Islam's fatalism in 1899. His other comments are also incredibly prescient:
ant.sillydog.org
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.
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