Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (58 page)

Shura
and
ijma‘
are two key doctrines that Muslims can use today for the religious development of democratic notions of government and politics as well as human rights. For they take away the Divine perception of political government and reduce its legitimacy to people’s choice. The doctrine of
ikhtilaf
(difference) opens the door wide for the acceptance of pluralistic understanding of not only power and government but, more importantly, the multiplicity of religions and philosophies of life. Furthermore, doctrines of opposition and human or legitimate rights could be used today in accordance with modern standards of thought and living in order to make them workable, in the first place, and then to develop them further in order to change the vicissitudes of modern living and government. These doctrines could be an escape for not only minorities but also majorities from the tyranny of the modern state in the Islamic world, a way to select free governments, and a method to reduce the traditionalism of Islamic establishments.

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Democracy and pluralism, the basic ideological doctrines in the ever-increasing globalized world, are not only fundamental doctrines of modern Western political philosophy but are now emerging primary concerns of modern Islamic political thought. While the process of blending modern Islamic thought with

democracy and pluralism appears to astonish many politicians, intellectuals, and ordinary people, it is currently underway and is one of the main intellectual occupations of intellectuals and political parties in the Islamic world. Furthermore, the awareness of the need for democracy goes beyond the theoretical to become a demand of Muslims themselves, especially
vis-a`-vis
their governments. A majority view in Islamic intellectual circles, including even major Islamist theoreticians, with various expressions that adopt emergent Islamic doctrines on democracy, pluralism, and human rights, is now making its way in Islamic studies.
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All justifications for tyrannical thought and authoritarian politics are collapsing, since they are now perceived to be the main historical impediments to the development and freedom of Muslim commu- nities as well as good religious life.

The possibility of developing liberal and democratic discourses in Islam is expanding rapidly. One cannot deal with Muslims as supporters of tyranny and opponents to democracy, both in terms of philosophical and political discourses and of real politics. A new reading of Islam becomes the basic condition for starting a modern process of reformulating Islamic history and reforming Islamic civilization. However, this process in itself re-examines the tenets of political Islam and reforms the principles of political rule. The need for serious re-interpretation of Islamic literature and traditional institutions is postulated as a way for accommodating human needs with the modern conditions of living. While fundamental doctrines such as sovereignty are grounded in the Qur’anic discourse, only popular consent creates and justifies the legitimacy of discourses and institutions. If charged with the interpretation of the Divine word, then the community enjoys the only legitimate power; other powers and authorities are only derivative and subject to the approval of the community.

Again, although Divine governance is viewed as an absolute political doctrine, so is the doctrine of
shura
. In fact, the good realization of the former becomes dependent on the good exercise of the latter. Modern interpretations of
shura
normally absorb democracy within a political and religious context. Like democracy,
shura
should provide legitimate religious means for the control of government, since legitimacy is made dependent on popular approval. By denying any contradiction between democracy and constitutional rule, on the one hand, and
shura
and Divine law, on the other, modern thinkers absorb the principles of natural law in their re-interpretations of religious revelation. While the Islamists transform Islam into a system capable of absorbing modern philosophy, politics, economics, science, and history without disclaiming the validity of Islam, they also modernize interpretations of Islam and bring into it principles such as democracy and pluralism that have become essential for modern political living.

One of the basic elements in the revival of Islam is to re-examine and to demystify history and to center responsibility on human actions. The essence of development lies within human power, not within the scope of a mythical

history: humans can positively effect their future. Spiritual, intellectual, political, and economic regeneration is the proper domain of humans, who are endowed by their Creator to act on God’s behalf. The process of regeneration cannot freeze in history, and must be linked in practice to relative sciences and changing conditions. Linking regeneration to the relative and the changeable without neglecting the revealed leads modern Islamic thought generally to reject traditional understanding and institutions. This is why democracy is accepted and turned into a modern form of Islamic
shura
. Today, the demands for democracy and human rights are popular aspirations, and many arguments for their adoption are made in the name of Islam and are justified by the Qur’an. This is why two major practical developments are required. First, unlimited governmental powers should be limited by a process of them being filtered through popular channels and representative bodies to reflect people’s needs and ambitions. Second, by this, a tolerant political context should be set up that facilitates the development of a tolerant intellectual, religious, social, and ethical context.

The arguments that make Islamic culture and Islam despotic by definition are erroneous. Classical and modern concepts and doctrines as well as institutions are the result of human manipulation, not Divine predestination. Qur’anic doctrines such as
shura
(consultation),
ijma‘
(consensus),
tahkim
(arbitration),
bay‘a
(oath of allegiance),
ikhtilaf
(difference),
al-hurriyya
(freedom), and
al-huquq al-shar‘iyya
(legitimate rights) are religiously demanded. However, the historic and institutional practice of these doctrines has mostly shown the possibility of their manipulation by governments and their elite. Thus, for instance,
shura
, a doctrine that demands the participation of society in running the affairs of its government, became in reality a doctrine that was manipulated by political and religious elites to secure their economic, social,

and political interests at the expense of other segments of society.
Bay‘a
, a doctrine that should have been used to indicate people’s voluntary approval of their ruler, became a formal act of forceful subjection to the ruler. Today,
shura
is not viewed merely as a religious concept but reflects initially the public will. The state institutionalization of
shura
and
ijma
‘ provides the state with a normative role in making basic choices in people’s lives. Thus, some mechanisms and institutions should be made within the state to acquire formal legitimacy. If the
Shari‘ah
is also institutionalized in the state, all attempts should be made to prevent making legitimacy an issue of formality only. More importantly, a political contract should be the legitimate means for assuming power. Because Islam is the constitutional reference for modern Islamists, these understandings of Islamic political thought should be upheld in all public choices.

In most countries of the Muslim world, today’s political contexts are not much different from medieval and classical contexts, thus “democracy” is exercised as a source for acquiring formal legitimacy. While most of these countries have institutions like parliaments and parties that adhere formally to

democracy, human rights, and due processes of law, none of these is really observed. In fact, these institutions are used to cover the tyrannical aspects of state manipulation. They only serve as a cover
vis-a`-vis
the outside world. Such acts by Muslim regimes pushed people away from such institutions and into trying to find indigenous institutions that can be used to counterbalance the oppressive nature of Islamic regimes under the guise of important Western institutions.

This is why one should look into the modern quest for democracy and pluralism as a quest for liberation from the tyranny of regimes. It is a quest for liberation that uses religious doctrines that the state cannot challenge safely or manipulate without fear of losing legitimacy. If
shura
, for instance, is a Qur’anic doctrine, and if the state does not refer to people’s choices, then the state is illegitimate. The religionization of democracy in the form of
shura
is a quest for popular empowerment
vis-a`-vis
the oppressive state. This form of popular empowerment, derived from a Qur’anic doctrine, offsets the power of the state, derived from its coercive power.

This is why the modern Islamic trend that adopts democracy and pluralism does not view these issues as an exercise of academic nature. More importantly, it views them as a quest for liberation though democracy, tolerance through pluralism, and respect through human rights. They are made as solid as the Qur’anic doctrines through their association with religion, interpretation in a religious fashion, and their authentication in the Qur’an and the
Sunnah
. This is why the possibility that this trend bridges the gap between the Islamic world and the Western world is real.

What remains, however, is that the West itself should really support the quest

for democracy and pluralism, instead of supporting regimes that are undemocratic, refuse any opposition or difference, and break all schemes of human rights. The West must support on the international level the process of democratization at its own expense, in the short run, in order to gain support and secure its interests, in the long run. In a globalized world, the West cannot just sit back and imagine that the Islamic world could be kept away from its borders or that its interests are kept secure by a few authoritarian regimes. The quest for democracy and pluralism is now a global quest that not only is of concern to people within specific borders but goes beyond all borders. The mixture of advanced technology, concentrated capitalism, and the quest for democracy may prove very explosive if it lacks the elements of fairness and justice, not only within countries but also among them. While these characteristics are shaping the newly globalized world, they are not to be limited to the industrial world and must surely include the Muslim world.

It has been clear throughout this discussion that Islamism, though perceived as being one exclusive phenomenon in both practice and theory, is in fact otherwise. Political movements that operate in the name of religion have now become a world phenomenon. However, it is only Islam that is identified with

radical fundamentalism in an essentialist manner. As a result, traits associated with radical Islamism are transferred not only to moderate Islamism, but also to Islam itself. If an ordinary practicing or non-practicing Muslim is asked whether the Qur’an postulates God’s governance in all aspects of life, the answer is “yes, of course.” This belief does not, however, make that Muslim an Islamist by necessity, or, conversely, it makes almost all Muslims Islamists by definition.

The real issue and the decisive element in distinguishing a radical view from a moderate one revolves primarily around the conditions and principles of transforming a political agenda into daily life. As we have seen, Islamist movements deploy diverse methodological and practical processes to achieve their political aims. One of these is based on conceptual exclusivity and “
otherness,
” whether philosophically, morally, or politically, that permit all unusual means to fulfill the real “self.” Radical Islamism has perceived its own real and imagined isolation for a whole host of reasons ranging from social disunity and exploitation, and the political violence and illegitimacy of regimes, to personal impiety and corruption. As a consequence, it has reified, mostly under severe conditions of torture and mishandling, its political discourse into a purified theology of politics. Without this political contextualization, Islam cannot, from the point of view of radical Islamists, survive in the consciousness of the individual and society.

Shura
is not merely a religious concept or a mechanism for elections. It reflects for the radicals the public will, a much more superior concept than individual freedom or social agreement. More importantly, it represents the Divine will, and any deviation from whatever is Divine is a religious violation. The individual cannot but submit to this will; in fact, he or she is only an appendage to it, with his or her freedom depending on it. While this will, for the Islamist radicals, may opt for a political contract with a ruler, it cannot, because of what it represents, allow pluralism and basic differences that may lead to disunity. The establishment of an Islamic state becomes for radicalism the fulfillment of this Divine will, and again, individuals and groups are consequently subordinated to the state.

Through the lenses of the
Shari‘ah
, the radicals believe that the institutionalization of
shura
and
ijma
‘ provides the state, which expresses the general will, with a normative role in making basic choices in people’s lives. The formal legitimacy that the state acquires in fact makes it unaccountable to anyone but God – or, at most through obedience to
Shari‘ah
, itself institutionalized in the state. Thereafter, legitimacy becomes an internal state affair and not a social and public issue, though originally it may have been so. Therefore, insofar as the state is not going against the
Shari‘ah
, no one can legitimately overthrow it, and it supervises in this context the morality of people and the application of
Shari‘ah
. Thus individual religiosity is transformed by the radicals into a communal public will, itself transformed into state control, both moral and political. Parties, associations, and other civil institutions have no intrinsic validity in this hierarchy, and may only operate in a supplementary manner. Ultimately, an

elaboration like this seems to demand exclusivity: it allows for no possibility of a pluralistic understanding of religion. Through the politicization of Islam as the proper Islamic interpretation, Islam itself cannot be represented except by the state. In this context, the establishment of inclusive pluralistic civil democracies and ways of life seems unworkable for theoretical and practical reasons.

However, to use the radical groups as representatives of Islamic and Arabic culture is both factually erroneous and culturally biased. Other non-Islamic religious interpretations witness very similar phenomena but are never treated in the same manner. One has to keep in mind that the employment of violence by these groups is not theoretical in origin, but is based on a theory which is historically developed. Put differently, they have not been committing violent acts because of their theories, but rather their theories justifying violence have been derived from the violence that they have been subjected to. At the very least, this is what they have perceived. In fact, practice has been reified into theory, which has now gained a life of its own. Both radical groups and most regimes are committed to recycling intellectual and practical violence and exclusivity. Violence, whether by secular or religious groups, has been exercised most of the time in reaction to the tyrannies of political regimes. ‘Abud al-Zumar, serving a forty-year term in jail, attributes, incorrectly or not, the violence of the radical groups to the violence of the Egyptian regime. For him, Islamist violence is directed against those who have already liquidated Islamists.
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On the other hand, the absence of a pluralistic society and of democratic institutions is cited by the moderate trend as the real cause for violence. While moderate Islamists have long been excluded from political participation, they still call for their inclusion, as well as that of others, into politics and formal institutions. Their involvement in civil society, and their calls for human rights, pluralism, and democracy are still seen by many as the road to salvation for the community and individuals. Their inclusionary views do not postulate an eternal or Divine enmity between Islam’s institutions and systems, and the West’s institutions and systems. Properly grounded, what is Western becomes indeed Islamic. Here, I think, the moderate Islamists as well as the modernists may blend the culture of the Muslim world with that of the West, for they are providing Islamic arguments for the adoption of human rights, pluralism, and democracy, not mutual exclusivity. The conflict between the Muslim world and the West is viewed by them as being primarily either political or economic, but not religious or cultural. The two have common monotheistic grounds upon which multicultural and religious cooperation and co-existence might be built. Moderate Islamist discourses on revivalism focus essentially on the termination of the normativeness of the past as both a history and a system. Of course, the moderate Islamists exempt the Qur’an and the
Sunnah
from such a termination, since both sources are viewed metaphysically and meta- historically as formative and constitutive fundamentals of Islam. Since the past is no longer normative, the moderate Islamists can choose to validate or negate

certain aspects of past practices, such as stating that
shura
is akin to democracy, or that
shura
is not what has been practiced in the past. A necessary component of moderate Islamist thought is that, with the exception of the Prophet’s society, there have not been any perfect Muslim societies, with complete collective Islamic self-awareness. This frees the moderate Islamists to push for achieving modern Islamic democratic and pluralistic societies and newly developed self- awareness and human rights. In this way, moderate Islamists are engaged in an unending process of renewal based on interpretation and re-interpretation.

Moderate Islamist quests for re-interpretation rest on developing intellectual

and formative discourses that rediscover the appropriate meanings and significance of the texts within the framework of modern life. Such discourses must reformulate the religious roots or
usul al-din
. These discourses also reformulate a political theology loaded with political connotations, for it is directed not at a more substantive understanding of the Divine but at more control of the mundane, in particular the political. Questions related to Divine theology are bypassed in favor of those related to political theology; now, for moderate Islamism, the former can only be realized in terms of the latter. While obedience to God, for instance, is still an important demand for moderate Islamists, its most important manifestation is not mere individual religiosity but more essentially political doctrines such as the Islamic state, the community’s choice, and individuals’ rights.

Again, the most important measure of divine oneness (
tawhid
) manifests not in the individual’s private conscience but in his or her commitment and actions toward the Islamization of state and society. For deep theological commitment to Islam must involve the economic, social, and political concerns of society. Practical Islamic activism signifies the deep-rootedness of belief, the moderate Islamists hold, while shallow and ceremonial non-active commitment to Islam weakens belief, if not destroys it altogether. Although Divine governance has become for moderate Islamism an absolute political doctrine, so has the doctrine of
shura
. In fact, the good realization of the former becomes dependent on the good exercise of the latter. Moderate Islamism developed
shura
to absorb democracy within Islamic political and even epistemological thought, and consequently to take the initiative from its advocates. It has also provided legitimate religious means towards the control of government, since legitimacy is linked to popular approval. By denying any contradiction between democracy and constitutional rule, on the one hand, and
shura
and Divine law on the other, moderate Islamism became capable of postulating their correspondence. All of these have become parts of the Islamists’ non-historical discourses that transform Islam into a system capable of absorbing what is best in philosophy, politics, economics, science, and history without the need to disclaim the validity of Islam itself. On the contrary, this shows to the Islamists the true non- historical and metaphysical power of the Islamic revelation as an eternal message capable of meeting the needs that arise from development.

What moderate Islamism has also done is to drive a wedge in-between Muslims’ understanding of history itself and Islam. For our understanding of the history of Islam is not Islam itself. This understanding is only one discourse on Islam within specific spatio-temporal conditions. Therefore, according to moderate Islamism, history and people’s understanding of it, as well their understanding of Islam, have no normative status in themselves. In fact, their correctness depends on their utility to society and to Islam. However, though constitutional rule in the West and
shura
in Islamic history had quite different historical origins, moderate Islamism finds no theoretical problem in forcing their correspondence. In fact, it has no hesitation in calling for the adoption of Western models of government. An act like this is not un-Islamic, the moderate Islamists hold; rather it is Islamic, since it helps the Islamic state to run its affairs along Divine postulates. Of course, moderate Islamists reject secularism and communism, but not every Western doctrine for them is secular or communist. For moderate Islamism, Muslims can and should benefit from the other and update their thinking in order to keep pace with basic changes in the world.

What moderate Islamism has also done is to rework the meaning and formative character of history. It extracts historically loaded terms from their history in order to endue them with modern meanings. It assumes that the problems Muslims suffer from are the existence of particular doctrines that made the West victorious. While such doctrines are not necessarily wrong, more than just a transfer is needed to induce any revival. Islamic political theory and the plights and politics of Muslims up till modern times largely owe to neglecting the importance of social development and political practice in the formation of a justly constituted authority. Because a text indicates more than one meaning in moderate Islamism, it could be argued that its relative and human meaning becomes restrictive. The human interpretation of “And consult with them” (Qur’an 3:159) is binding on both the ruler and the ruled. Any deviation from such an interpretation or in its implementation becomes sufficient ground for charges of illegitimacy and active opposition to the ruler.
Shura
has become for moderates and almost all of the Islamist movements the source of legitimization of any authority, while the continuation of legitimacy hinges on the application of the
Shari‘ah
and people’s approval. The historical experience of Muslims shows that by giving the state the power to employ and to execute
Shari‘ah
in the name of the
umma,
more substantial doctrines of
Shari‘ah
are overlooked in favor of a political interpretation of Islam. Thus, what is needed is to reform Islamic politics beyond just the re-interpretation of

doctrines, which again might ultimately be used by some political authority.

However, one cannot but commend moderate Islamists’ introduction of democracy as
shura
into the main political doctrines of contemporary Islam, at a time when one of the major practical difficulties of real politics is the authoritarian nature of politics exercised in the Muslim world. While the theoretical difficulty mentioned above is still being dealt with, the development

of an Islamicly argued democracy justified by textual authorities seems better than denying altogether the important role of democracy.

Moderate Islamists’ grounding of democracy in a metaphysically conceived composition reifies it into an act of worship. On the other hand, the application of
tawhid
in a democratically structured form makes it a justification for ruling. In this way, moderate Islamism transmutes the substantive
tawhid
into a form, and formalizes
shura
into a substantive principle. Therefore, the discourse is interpreted by its form. Moderate Islamism condenses thus the religious discourse into no more than a political footnote and makes creedal belief and unbelief into political belief and unbelief. Political belief depends on sound application of the
hakimiyya
(governance) of the Divinely ordained text. Political unbelief, conversely, results from depending alone on the
hakimiyya
of humankind.

In this fashion, moderate Islamism negates the usefulness of traditional jurisprudence and transforms a modern religious jurisprudence into an ideologically derived political discourse. In such an explanation of the true essence of Islam, one cannot fail to notice how politics informs all religious doctrines, even that of the metaphysical. Because no individual by themself can understand the real metaphysical meaning of a text, the only credible meaning becomes that resulting from politics, i.e. a consensual agreement, through
shura
. However, this cannot be properly conducted without the machinery of the state. For the rendering of categorical and lasting interpretation of a text requires a continuous ratifying process of all Muslim generations and the continuous existence of the Islamic state.