Some influential writers, such as Samuel Huntington, consider Muslim culture averse to norms of democracy and rule of law.4 Other experts, for instance Larry Diamond, attribute Muslim authoritarianism to entrenched leadership and lack of opportunity for participation by ordinary people, not retrograde values or beliefs.5 Left largely unchallenged is the prior assumption common to all sides of the debate, which holds democracy to be unusually lacking in Muslim countries whatever the root causes might be. There were 126 "electoral democracies" in place at the end of 2005, according to Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that monitors democracy around the world.9 To qualify as an electoral democracy in Freedom House's lexicon, a state must have a competitive, multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, regular elections and open media.