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interview with muhammad shahrur 527of God?’ I want to see it. Back home, our Sheikhs still could notconfront atheism, but now I have found strong arguments for itso that I can have a debate with atheists. Although I know thatthere is a 50:50 chance, as Stephen Hawking says, that God exists,at least I can tell people why I believe in God and then leave itto others to decide how convincing it is. I do not want to defeatatheism, I will not prove that God exists—and I don’t want anatheist to disprove my belief—all that I have now is a strongargument for God and people will judge how good it is.AC: In another answer to a question about post-1967 you talked about thenecessity for a new theory about society, but then you seemed to equate thiswith a call for an ideology. Maybe the translation didn’t capture what yousaid then, but can you clarify what you meant by this link between theoryand ideology?MS: Yes, my point was that we have got many ideologies but verylittle theory. The Arab world is a world of ideologies that are notbased on a sound theory of knowledge based on the Qur"an; andwe don’t have a theory of state and society. The views of Islamistsare pure ideology, an ideology of how to rule and how to seizepower. I am interested in theory, not ideology. I know how ideologieshave damaged societies in the past. When they [i.e., ideologiesor their followers] become dogmatic, they suppressfreedom of choice and turn into [ideologies for a] dictatorship.Communism and Islamism are very similar in that; they are dogmatic,oppressive ideologies. The only difference is that Islamistsbelieve in God and communists don"t, but other than that theyare very similar. I want to oppose that with theory, because weneed more theory, not more ideology. Ideology without theory isdogmatism.AC: Then you said, and also reiterated it in your book, that the opposite ofdogmatism is freedom, and that freedom is linked to democracy. However,you don’t really specify how exactly you define democracy. What isdemocracy?MS: We need to distinguish between democracy and the dictatorshipof a majority. It is not the same. Democracy means that youropposition is alive. Dictatorship of majority does not allow anyopposition. Democracy means that you allow an opposition tocriticize your government, to target your authority and to eventu-