In the last few years, the presence of islamism has been felt in contexts of migration. Behind islamist demands, there is an ideology that promotes a societal project that does not bode well in terms of democracy and human rights. This paper examines the foundations of the islamists' conception of democracy, on the basis of the founding documents on which it has been built. We show that there has been two dominant attitudes: one that rejects democracy, and one that tries to appropriate it, that is that tries to modify its fundamental meaning in order to make it stick to traditional conceptions of power. We also examine the consequences of the rejection of the democratic ideal on the evolution of Muslim-Arab societies and on their democratic transition.