Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (57 page)

such submission and obedience, any constitution is illegitimate, and the state loses any shred of legitimacy and enters into paganism, or
jahiliya
. Ayatollah Khomeini limited further the confines of a legitimate Islamic government. While the
Shari‘ah
theoretically legitimizes a government, only the
vilayat-i faqih
(rule of the jurist) actualizes its legitimacy. Within the Islamic world today, the demands of the mainstream Islamist movements in Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, and Egypt are derived from al-Banna’s discourse on the Islamic state, constitutional rule, and multi-party politics; radical Sunni movements follow the discourse of Sayyid Qutb and Shi‘ite political movements follow that of Khomeini.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union has hastened the focus on the political legitimacy of democracy, the social necessity of human rights, and the intellectual suitability of pluralism to both the Middle East and the Islamic world. Secular and religious thinkers alike attribute the miserable conditions of economic, social, and political life to the absence of democracy and pluralism in the Arab world. A new political process that stresses the importance of political democratization and liberalization is on the rise and is entertained within a whole range of political and social strata, including the media and academia. For instance, the widely read London-based Arabic newspaper
Al-Hayat
serialized extensively and for many days around the issues of civil society, pluralism, and democracy in Egypt and the Arab world. A few meetings, like “The Democratic Experience in the Arab World” in Morocco, “The Crisis of Democracy in the Arab World” in Cyprus, and “Political Pluralism and Democracy in the Arab World” in Amman, show clearly the emerging interest in democracy and pluralism. The Beirut Center for Studies of Arab Unity convened as well a conference in Cairo to discuss democracy in the Arab world.
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However, the West at large has focused on Islamic threats to Western interests and order while paying no real attention – or sympathy – to the oppression of the peoples of the Islamic world as well as the dialogues and debates that have been going on among diverse political trends over political theories and rights of people. Amazing titles in magazines and newspapers such as “One Man, One Vote, One Time,” “The Challenge of Radical Islam,” “Will Democracy Survive in Egypt?,” “The Arab World Where Troubles for the U.S. Never End,” and “The Clash of Civilizations” have further scared and pushed the West away from the Muslim world.
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While quite a few Western academics concerned with the Middle East deal with people’s real concerns, the West in general regards these concerns as negligible because their impact is localized and does not affect its interests.

Current political circumstances in the Arab world, especially in Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, and Tunisia, have led to ideological, political, and religious inquiries and debates on the compatibility of Islamic discourses, especially the doctrines of an Islamic state, with democracy, pluralism, and human rights as

well as the West. However, a majority of Western media and scholars along with a majority of their Middle Eastern counterparts have directly viewed Islamist political thought, and indirectly Islam, as unfit for democracy because the Western sources hold Islamic movements to be exclusivist by nature and definition. There is no doubt that there are few religious groups that are truly exclusivist and believe in the necessity of radical ideological, religious, and political transformation. They believe that only through radical coups and education can they achieve any meaningful victory. However, most popular and influential Islamic political groups adhere to new interpretations of inclusion that manifest in pluralism and democracy. Ideological, religious, and political radicalism is not based on the main theological and religious Islamic doctrines and conceptions of the world, religion, knowledge, and salvation. More importantly, radicalism is a worldwide manifestation and is not restricted to a few Islamic groups.
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Therefore, to make radicalism an essential part of Islamic doctrines or modern Islamic thought is only to miss the point.

Classical and modern Islamic thought, whether jurisprudence, theology, philosophy, or other disciplines of knowledge, contain within them roots comparable to modern day principles of democracy and pluralism. While they are not based on the law of natural rights, they are based on textual authorities derived from the Qur’an and the
Sunnah
that lend themselves to arguments favoring democratic forms of governments, pluralistic societies, and schemes of human rights. The contexts that shaped the development of Islamic thought have not been conducive to pluralistic democracy. Now, through a process of deconstruction and re-construction, modern Islamic thought has mostly adopted the principles of pluralism and democracy. For instance, the seminal consequence of prophetic arbitration on national and international levels lies in its acceptance of pluralism and diversity. However, any national and international political order that aims at ending conflicts and providing peace must acknowledge and accept substantive religious, ideological, and political differences. Thus, any political order can be legitimately set up without negating the others. That the historic Islamic political order was composed of many religious and ethnic communities opens the road to solving many long-standing modern conflicts. As opposed to those who hold the notion of a purely Islamic, or only ideological, state, an argument has been made to the effect that the fundamental law of the first Islamic state distinguished between religious authority and political authority. And although the religious authority had no choice but to call people to religion, the political authority must deal with down-to-earth social structures and human needs as well as diversified religious and ideological claims to the truth and sharp ethnic and economic struggles. Therefore, the inclusion of a political order of many religions, or a confederation of religions, as one factor, and the acceptance of the diversified social and economic structures, as another, shows the original non-dogmatic and Islamic viewpoint on political matters. This viewpoint allowed non-Muslims full

partnership in the political structure, even on those sensitive issues of war and peace.

It has been made obvious that the religious and, at times, even the Divine were subject to and understood by the political; Divine arbitration became understood only through human judgment. The inability of anyone, from the majority’s perspective, to claim to be God’s sole representation led to the acceptance of human judgment in political matters and in religious affairs. Even in the first Islamic state – long idealized as the model community for Muslims – everyone acknowledged Muhammad’s political authority, but a whole religious community, i.e. the Jews, contested his religious authority. Muhammad sometimes resolved religious disputes in his capacity as a national arbitrator, and not always as a religious authority.

It is clear from the historical events mentioned above that claiming a divine origin for a political position renders that position into an uncompromising value. However, when a religious dispute is projected as a political conflict, then there is, theoretically at least, a viability for solution. For if politics is the art of the possible, and this had allowed the inception of the first Islamic state, then the art of the impossible will most probably hinder any serious attempt to revive Islam. When Mu‘awiya and ‘Ali looked to their differences as political in nature, a compromise, i.e. submission to human arbitration, was possible. But when the Khawarij introduced the impossible or God’s direct judgment on that matter, then the problem was reified and abstracted to an uncompromising value. For the “humanization” of the abstract conditions it to the needs and requirements of life. The history of Islam shows that any abstract and non-historical understanding turns the human into the Divine and, consequently, into an uncompromising metaphysical and meta-historical entity. However, when the Divine is theoretically channeled through a human interpretative agency and is historically subjected to human development, then it becomes in the service of humankind. Put differently, when the Divine is “humanized” it becomes a source of compromise.

The resolution of conflicts with ideologically oriented religious groups must take into account the “Divine” element of the conflict first and then deconstruct that element into its political components. Because insofar as political conflicts are rooted in Divine concepts, then a peaceful solution seems far away.

Human judgment then is the method to solve conflicts, but Divine arbitration makes that impossible, since no one can resort immediately to the Divine sources. Therefore, a theoretical return to the first Islamic state may well rekindle a new political philosophy that treats equally other states, religions, and ideologies. That the first Islamic state incorporated, for instance, non-Muslims and older structures indicates the need to adopt intellectual and political pluralistic models that incorporate freedom and fairness and shun prejudice and arbitrary judgment. Therefore, the arbitral authority of the
umma
(the community) as an expression of and interpretation of the Divine will and law

should be employed today to re-organize political orders. If a political regime, from the majority’s view, does not represent the Divine will, then the possibility of pluralistic understanding and tolerance is more likely. The community is then the human sovereign whose application of the Divine will is not restricted to an individual or a group. If the community is the source of all powers, no individual or a group of people, whether fundamentalist, modernist, or traditionalist, whether military or religious, can claim exclusive rights to interpretation or government. Consensus, then, whether through consultation or other means, is legitimate because the community
,
through its power to arbitrate, made it so.

From a majority’s point of view, political rule became a religious duty

because of people’s agreement on the matter. Similarly, arbitration was chosen by the people to settle many of the most important and formative events in the history of Islam. Consequently, arbitration as well as government rests on the people’s contractual authority to shape and reshape their life. While its multiple interpretations have, ironically, divided the community into many sects, the legitimacy of communal arbitration and judgment became almost incontestable, although later on it was historically waived in the interest of the increasing power of states. However, its legitimate employment by the majority was never questioned and might therefore be re-instituted today in order to deal with issues of political legitimacy and the exercise of political power.

Seen as the source of communal power, arbitration as a form of democratic interaction may be used to develop other principles of legitimacy and methods of action. It may be turned nowadays into a central principle of politics as well as international relations. In addition to this, its elasticity could make it as well a method for resolving the conflicts between Islamic states themselves with non-Islamic ones and with world orders. Thus an old concept, deconstructed and re-constructed in line with modern democratic connotations and reshaped by modern technology, might be postulated as a modest starting point in the authentic process of legitimate democratization in the contemporary Muslim world.

Islamic political thought that developed after the Prophet’s death and during the classical and medieval history of Islam acknowledged the people’s basic notions of rights. While these rights are not, could not, and do not have to be identical to modern human rights schemes in the West, they acknowledged, at least theoretically, the very basic roots of rights. In fact, these rights historically preceded modern Western schemes of rights and were responses to the needs that jurists felt were religiously required and sanctioned by the fundamental objectives of religion and the nature of social interactions.

Taking into consideration the nature of political power, numerous Muslim political thinkers and jurists tried as much as possible to make rulers good practitioners of Islamic law, in the sense of abiding by the basic notions of the
Shari‘ah
that could protect individuals and societies from state tyranny. Other thinkers and jurists attempted to justify the state’s oppressive nature by referring

to the conditions that Muslims lived under. Nonetheless, if one examines other civilizations during that period, one may find that medieval Islamic thought was offering at that time the most advanced political discourse on human rights, political rights, and the complex duties and relationships between the rulers and the ruled. This is said not in order to exonerate the misuse of political power and the misconstruction of certain schemes of rights and duties, but rather in order to place these things within their historical contexts. For instance, when Muslims where discussing the human nature of political power and the need to reform it in accordance with
shura
(consultation) and
ijma‘
(consensus), the West was still holding to the notion of the Divine nature of power. When Islamic thought acknowledged the rights of minorities as a consequence of accepting Christianity and Judaism as recognized religions, the West considered Muslims only as infidels, and Islam was not recognized or allowed to be practiced, and Muslims (and often Jews) were harassed and persecuted.

Of course, the history of Islamic governments and dynasties testifies indeed to many incidents of mistreatment, oppression, and even suppression of both Muslims and minorities. However, it also testifies to Islam’s historical and theoretical tolerance, good treatment, and even mutual assistance of both Muslims and minorities. More importantly, what has been left for modern Muslims, which has not been developed into full schemes of modern human rights, is a basic scheme of human rights that must be developed in line with modernity and its concerns.