This argument is also helpful to Israel, which regardless of its egregious human rights violations against Palestinians, continues to enjoy the reputation as the sole democracy in the Middle East. Positioned as a solitary defender of democracy in the Middle East, Israel enjoys immense moral and military support of the West, which includes overlooking its dismal human rights record against Arabs. On the other hand many Islamic activists, using extremely broad, simple and sometimes crude notions of secularism and sovereignty, reject democracy as rule of Man as opposed to Islam which is rule of God. But for the purpose of reflection let me merely suggest that Islamists who reject democracy falsely assume that secularism and democracy are necessarily connected. Secularism is a liberal tradition not a prerequisite for democracy.
Religion does play a significant role in democratic politics.
The contemporary US is a case in point. These Islamists also do not make a distinction between dejure sovereignty and defacto sovereignty. For example even though God is supposedly sovereign in Afghanistan, in fact it is the Taliban who are sovereign there. Those who think that Allah is sovereign in Taliban's Afghanistan perhaps worship Mulla Omar. In order to understand the situation better one has to recognize the difference between sovereignty in principle and sovereignty in fact.