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ndonesian and Mali envoys took on the US congress on Thursday to showcase that democracy is alive and functioning in their Muslim-majority nations, defying the widely held view in the West, and in some quarters in the Muslim world, that Islam and democracy clashed with one another.

The briefing on the “evolving compatibility between Islam and democracy” was the first of its kind on Capitol Hill, and it comes four months after a controversial congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization in the US which critics said had unnecessarily fanned Islamophobia.

“They have great stories to tell,” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Washington) said when welcoming ambassadors Dino Patti Djalal of Indonesia and Mamadou Traore of Mali. Also taking part in the briefing was LaithKubba of the National Endowment for Democracy who spoke on Iraq. A representative from Bosnia-Herzegovina invited to talk about Europe failed to show up.

Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, has made the transition in the last 13 years from an authoritarian state to become the world’s third-largest democracy, while Mali has gone through four democratic and peaceful elections since 1991.

Dino said that when Indonesia held its first democratic elections in 1999 after the downfall of strongman Soeharto, “We didn’t want to change one authoritarian government with another form of authoritarian state.”

Three other congressmen came to the two-hour briefing, which was a joint-initiative of the Indonesian Embassy and the Congressional Caucus on Indonesia. They were Rep. David Dreier (R-California), Rep. David Price (D-North Carolina) and Rep. Andre Carson (D-Indiana).

Dreier said he was impressed at the way Indonesia brought a convergence between modernity, Islam and democracy, describing the transformation in the last 13 years as the case of “Indonesia taking like a duck to water”.

He encouraged Indonesia and Mali to assist other Muslim-majority nations with their democratization process, particularly in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab spring that saw long-reigning regimes collapse in the hands of popular uprisings.

Dino said Indonesians had not only become more democratic, but many had also become more religious, whether they were Muslims, Christians or from other religions.

He cited the large turnout during elections and the presence of Islamist parties, which were banned under Soeharto, as further evidence of democracy in Indonesia. But, he added, “The majority of Muslims did not vote for the Islamist parties. They reject the concept of Islamic state and sharia.”

He argued that as a rising power in Asia, Indonesia could become the new center of gravity for the Muslim world, not in terms of religion, which belonged to Mecca, but politically, socially and economically. “We could be the mover and shaker,” he added.

Traore said democratic principles had been embedded in Mali traditions for centuries. In the 13th century, decades before the Magna Carta, the kingdom of Mali wrote the bill of rights, including freeing slavery, he said. European colonialism replaced the constitution and only in 1991 that the bill of rights was written back into the national constitution. “Our problem today is rule of law,” he said.

Kubba said the real issue in predominantly Muslim nations, including Iraq, was not Islam but their culture and traditions, some of which were inconsistent with democratic values. He cited as examples the treatment of women, and honorary killings that were still practiced in some of these societies. “But they have nothing to do with Islamic teachings,” he added.

While the ballot system is a modern phenomenon, other values associated with democracy, including freedom of expression and religions, were recognized in Islam, and there were historical examples of when these concepts were present in various forms in these societies, Kubba said.