MOEZ MOBEEN For decades the Muslim World has imitated the West, its systems and its ideals without an intellectual inspection of the reality of the West and the ideas governing Western civilisation. Yet, we see that liberal democracy and Western ideals like free market economy, human rights and freedoms have not caused the Muslim World to revive. We do not have one example in the Muslim World where liberal democracy has brought the much promised prosperity and revival. The only argument which the proponents of liberal democracy seem to champion and its opponents feel difficult to answer is that it has worked and brought fruits for the Western World, so if it has worked for the West it must work for us. Other than that liberal democracy has failed miserably to address the problems of the Muslim World. The much touted traits of democracy like pluralism, accountability and representative government have exacerbated ethnic divisions, corruption, nepotism and intellectual stagnancy in the Muslim World. It is time that an intellectual inspection of the incompatibility of democracy with the Muslim World was carried out so that the real reason of the decline of the Ummah can be judged. A deep analysis of the situation of the West and the Muslim World reveals that ruling in the Western World is based on thought, whereas in the Muslim World it is through force and laws and systems copied from the West. The Western World revived when it shunned religion as a polity in political life and adopted the creed of separation of state and religion. Although renaissance in Europe was led by intellectuals and thinkers the masses at large adopted the new ideas, which presented an alternative to the repressive rule of the church thereby creating a society, which adopted the new ideas as their own. This did not happen in the Muslim World. While the European population at large was ready to abandon its old ideas and adopt the ideas of renaissance, the advent of liberal democracy at the international stage did not lead the Muslim population to adopt the new ideas at large. In fact, the Muslim World came in contact with democracy through eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial powers, which introduced the Muslim World to their systems when they conquered Muslim lands. There were no renaissance style intellectual and political struggle in the Muslim World, which led the Muslim World to adopt liberal democracy as a system of life, rather this system was imposed on them by European colonialists. More than that, unlike the Europeans the Muslim World has been extremely reluctant to abandon their previous ideas because for them implementation of Islam at a state level ushered a golden era of prosperity and global dominance under the system of the caliphate. Why liberal democracy worked for the West and why it would never work for the Muslim World is because of the absence of the ideological ownership of the ideals of liberalism in the Muslim World. The Muslim World is not convinced of the superiority of these ideas. These ideals were imposed on the Muslim World, through the use of force, by eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial West and it is being imposed on the Muslim World by 21st century imperial West. The writer is a freelance columnist.