"This flexibility of thought disappears, however, as soon as a political concept is taken over ready-made by people who belong to a very different civili-zation and have, therefore, passed through different historical experiences. To such people, the political term or institution in question appears, as a rule, to be endowed with an absolute, unchanging meaning which does not take into consideration the fact of its historical evolution and, consequently, contributes to the very rigidity of political thought which the new conceptual acquisition had sought to remove."
He is talking about "democracy".
Muhammad Asad, page 19, The Principles of State and Government in Islam.
"One of the main reasons for the confusion regarding the idea of the Islamic state is the indiscriminate application - both by the upholders and the critics of this idea - of Western political terms and definitions to the entirely different concept of Islamic polity".
Page 18.
"Not infrequently we find in the writings of modern Muslims the assertion that 'Islam is democratic' or even that it aims at the establishment of a 'socialist' society; whereas many Western writers refer to an alleged 'totalitarianism' in Islam which must necessarily result in dictatorship."
Page 18.
