On 26 April 2005 Asef Bayat presented his inaugural lecture at Leiden University entitled, “Islam and Democracy: Perverse Charm of an Irrelevant Question,” presented here in extracted form. He posits that Islamist movements in Muslim societies are undergoing a post-Islamist turn characterized by rights instead of duties, plurality in place of a singular authoritative voice, historicity rather than fixed scriptures, and the future instead of the past. The full text of the lecture will be available through ISIM and Leiden University.