Islah (reform) as sulh signifies peaceful action which leads to reconciliation and accord. Sulh is sometimes rendered as consensus, a democratic precept by any other name.

If we are guided by sulh in all the critical questions that affect our Malaysian society, then we should be prepared to listen to the multiplicity of voices of our entire population. The more important consideration of sulh to my mind is the assurance that the negotiation process or debate is fair, open and fully inclusive of all segments of the population.

Abdulaziz Sachedina in his spiritually-affirming thesis The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism , (2001) proposes that Muslims identify with the growth of a religious consciousness that points beyond particular religious traditions to embrace pluralism.

Religion today is different from religion in the 100 glorious years of the Muslim caliphate. In substance it seeks the realisation of a universal global community with a common vision and destiny. This is already visible in the peace movement, environmentalism and debates on the ethics of biotechnology and human cloning.

Sachedina thinks that religion in the 21 century and beyond provides a universal creed derived from the interaction between the conventional, particularistic organised religions and universal ethics of just human relationships. Institutionalised religiosity is now irrelevant.

The other concept found in Islamic tradition is shura (consultative deliberations). There is as usual a rich diversity of views on this concept among jurists of all schools and sects.

Khaled Abou el-Fadl, (2003) has no doubt that the imperative of shura is an important participatory ethic in the Islamic intellectual tradition. This is so, irrespective of how this ethic was used or misused in Islamic history because as a normative ideal it could be "co-opted and utilized in the furtherance of a democratic government".