ABSTRACT
Two of the major forces sweeping the world in the 1990s are democracy and religious resurgence. The collapse of the Soviet bloc was followed by democratic experiments in former Soviet countries. Beginning with southern Europe and Latin America in the 1970s, and eastern Europe in the 1980’s, the events marked, what Samuel Huntington of Harvard University called, the ‘third wave’ of democratic transition(Huntington, 1993, pp. 21-4). Soon thereafter, Mark Juergensmeyer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, warned that secular governments will have to reckon with emerging religious forces in the post-Cold War period (Juergensmeyer, 1994, pp. 15, 33, 195-97). Beginning with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, in particular, the rising tide of Islamic rejuvenation in the Muslim world has drawn international attention.
