Since the 1990s, the emergence of “post-Islamist” intellectual and social movements has challenged the culturalist discourse which is based on the incompatibility of Islam and democracy. (Bayat, 2007). The culturalist discourse is criticized for constructing Islam and Muslim societies as ahistorical and fixed while underestimating the democratic potential of Islam as a religion. This paper aims to analyze the post-Islamist intellectual discourses on democracy in two different contexts, Turkey and Iran. Unfolding the differences and similarities is a significant task in the sense that post-Islamist movements are likely to shape the future of political regimes not only in those countries but in the broader Middle East. We will analyze two preliminary figures of ‘religious intellectuals’ in Iran,- Abdolkarim Soroush and Mohsen Kadivar who represent the reformist religious discourse in Iran.(Kamrava, 2008). From Turkey, the focus will be on Yalcin Akdogan and Ali Bulac. Akdogan came to be identified as the ideologist of the Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party(AKP).(Yavuz, 2009, 2). Although the AKP now represents a hegemonic manifestation of post-Islamism in Turkey, several other movements and parties might also be identified with post-Islamism. Bulac is chosen to reflect part of this diversity. In Turkey, the intellectuals’ claims to the coexistence of Islam and democracy are a call for the transformation of Turkey’s authoritarian secularism to a more religiously tolerant democratic regime. Whereas in Iran, Soroush and Kadivar develop the idea of Islamic/religious democratic government which has a concern for the inclusion of the already-excluded groups by the authoritarian religious regime. These different articulations of democracy have one common point: Despite appropriating the language of liberalism with reference to human rights, freedoms and individual liberties, each offers an authentic version of democracy, not necessarily in contradiction to Western liberal democracy, but as an alternative to it. We will conclude that although post-Islamist intellectuals challenge the essentialist construction of Islam and democracy as incompatible, the alternative form of democracy they put forth is limited. The paradox stems from their imagination of a religious society, the aspirations and demands of which, would be furthered under an authentic form of democracy. However, their imagination of such a religious society tend to result in blurring the distinction between the religious community and the political community. This in turn restricts the political representation of those outside this “particular religious community” to the narrow scope of human rights protection or the discourse of tolerance.