Esposito: Islam, state and politics

Society Religion & Philosophy
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Another interesting piece by John Esposito. Somewhere in the middle, the article states, “In an ideal vision of the Islamic state, the purpose of the political authority is to implement the divine message.” i think, if this “divine message” was effectively implemented, in a non-patriarchal context, then we would have a society where minority rights would be firmly entrenched, construction of temples and shrines etc would be permitted, and no woman would be treated as a third-class citizen. When we look at places like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, we realize we have a long way to go before achieving any of the above.

Role of Islam in State and politics, 29 August 2003, Gulf News

For several decades, religion has often had a high profile in the politics of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Governments have appealed to Islam to enhance their legitimacy and all kinds of political and social movements (reform and opposition) have used religion to legitimate their agendas and mobilise popular support.

This has led many observers to ask questions such as: Why does religion play such a big role in Muslim politics? Why don’t Muslims practice a separation of church and state? and why do Muslims reject secularism?

Why does religion play such a big role in Muslim politics?

Islam is an Arabic word meaning “submission.” A Muslim is one who submits to the will of God, one who is responsible not only for obeying God’s will but also implementing it on earth in both his or her private and public world. Being a Muslim means belonging to a worldwide community of believers (ummah).

The responsibility of the believer to Islam and to the Muslim community overrides all other social ties and responsibilities to family, tribe, ethnicity, or nation. Politics is therefore central, since it represents the means used to carry out Islamic principles in the public sphere.

The Holy Quranic verses have been used to guide Muslim political and moral activism throughout the centuries. Islamic reformers of the 21st-century, who believe that Islam, as a comprehensive way of life, should play a central role in politics, support their arguments with the Holy Quranic verses as well as the example of how Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and his companions led their lives and developed the first Muslim community. They see these primary sources and examples as a blueprint for an Islamically guided and socially just state and society.

Islam’s involvement with politics dates back to its beginnings with the founding of a community-state by Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) in the seventh century. Under his leadership, and later his successors or caliphs, Islam expanded from what is now Saudi Arabia into Islamic empires and cultures that stretch across North Africa, through the Middle East and into Asia and Europe.

Historically Islam has served as the religious ideology for the foundation of a variety of Muslim states, including the great Islamic empires: Umayyad (661–750), Abbasid (750—1258), Ottoman (1281–1924), Safavid (1501–1722), and Mughal (1526–1857). In each of these empires and other sultanate states, Islam informed the state’s legal, political, educational, and social institutions.

Today, Islam’s connection with politics varies by country and region, but there are several common reasons why religion is intimately connected to the state. First of all, by the 19th century most Muslim countries were in a state of internal decline, and they were vulnerable to European imperialism.

Muslims experienced the defeats of their societies at the hands of Christian Europe as a religious as well as political and cultural crisis. This crisis was deepened by Christian missionaries who attributed their conquests not only to superior military technology and economic power but also to the superiority of Western Christian civilisation and religion.

Because religion took on these political overtones on the part of Western colonialists, it is not surprising that some Muslims looked to the combination of religion and politics for a solution. Muslim responses to European colonialism ranged from resistance or struggle, justified as jihad in the defence of Islam against Christian onslaught, to accommodation and/or assimilation with the West.

Feeling of failure

Second, in the 20th century many Muslim societies experienced a widespread feeling of failure and loss of self-esteem. The achievement of independence from colonial rulers in the mid-twentieth century created high expectations that have not been realised.

Muslims have suffered from failed political systems and economies and the negative effects of modernisation: overcrowded cities lacking social support systems, high unemployment, governmental corruption, and a growing gap between rich and poor.

Rather than leading to a better quality of life, modernisation has been associated with a breakdown of traditional family, religious, and social values. Many Muslims blame Western models of political and economic development as sources of moral decline and spiritual malaise.

Third, when Muslims ask themselves what went wrong, for many the inevitable answer is that their societies have strayed from the straight path of Islam that had led them to great development and success historically. Therefore future success depends upon returning to a sociey whose politics are governed by Islam.

Why don’t Muslims practice a separation of church and state?

The Muslim vision of religion and politics is based upon a reading or interpretation of the Holy Quran as well as the example of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and the early Muslim community, in tandem with the Islamic tenet that spiritual belief and action are two sides of the same coin.

Christians often cite the New Testament injunction to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God as prescribing a separation of church and state. In contrast, Muslims believe that their primary act of faith is to strive to implement God’s will in both their private and public life.

Throughout history, being a Muslim has meant not only belonging to a religious community of fellow believers but also living in an Islamic state governed by Islamic law (in theory if not always in practice).

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Way of life

Many Muslims describe Islam as a "total way of life". They believe that religion cannot be separated from social and political life, since religion informs every action that a person takes. The Holy Quran provides many passages that emphasize the relationship of religion to state and society.

It teaches that God has given the earth as a trust to humankind (2:30, 6:165). Muslims see themselves as God's representatives with a divine mandate to establish God's rule on earth in order to create a just society. The Muslim community is seen as a political entity as proclaimed in Quran 49:13, which teaches that God "made you into nations and tribes".

Like Jews and Christians before them, Muslims have been called into a covenant relationship with God, making them a community of believers who must serve as an example to other nations (2:143) by creating a moral social order. "You are the best community evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong" (3:110).

In an ideal vision of the Islamic state, the purpose of the political authority is to implement the divine message. Thus the ideal Islamic state is a community governed by God's law (nomocracy), rather than a theocracy or autocracy that gives power to the clergy or ruler.

The state should provide security and order so that Muslims can carry out their religious duties, particularly doing good and preventing evil. Legal processes implement rules and judgments from the Shariah, rather than creating new legislation.

A sense of balance should exist among three groups: the caliph, who serves as the guardian of both the faith and the community; the ulama (religious scholars), who provide religious and legal advice; and the qadis (judges), who resolve disputes in accordance with Islamic law.

Over time, many Muslims came to believe that this ideal blueprint and perfect state had actually existed and should be returned to. Contemporary militant movements particularly look back to this utopia as an example to be emulated today.

While a minority of Muslims today believe that modernity requires the separation of religion and state, many Muslims continue to maintain that religion should be integral to state and society. However, there is no clear agreement – indeed, there is considerable difference of opinion – on the precise nature of the relationship of Islam to the state.

For some, it is enough to say that Islam is the official state religion and that the ruler (and perhaps those who fill most senior government positions) should be Muslim. Others call for the creation of an Islamic state.

But even here, there is no single agreed-upon model of government, as attested to by the diverse examples of Saudi Arabia's conservative monarchy, Iran's clergy-run state, Sudan's and Pakistan's experiments with military-imposed Islamic governments, and the Taliban's Afghanistan. And still others reject all these experiments as un-Islamic authoritarian regimes and subscribe to more secular or Islamic democratic forms of governance.

Why do Muslims reject secularism?

Muslim reactions to the term secularism have been influenced by Western history, politics, and religion, as well as fear that secularism leads to the marginalisation of religion. The term secularism has often been misunderstood and seen as diametrically opposed to religion.

European colonialism and attempts to introduce modernity were interpreted by Muslims as an attempt to impose Western secularism, separating religion from state and society and thus weakening the moral fabric of Muslim society.

While some Muslims, especially among the Western-oriented elites, believed that secularism was necessary to build strong modern societies, many others saw it as a direct challenge to Islam and its heritage, in which religion had for centuries been closely associated with successful and powerful empires. Secularism was equated with unbelief and thus seen as a direct threat to the religious identity and values of Muslim societies.

The problem was compounded by the fact that Muslim languages lacked a precise equivalent word for modern secularism. Few have understood that American secularism separated religion and the state to avoid privileging any one religion and to guarantee freedom of belief or unbelief to all.

Little notice was taken of the diverse forms that secularism has taken in modern Western secular countries like Britain, Germany, and Canada that have a state religion and provide state support for recognised religions.

The examples of France and Turkey, which have been anticlerical and have banned the wearing of Muslim headscarves in their schools, reinforce the belief that secularism means a state that is anti-religious rather than simply religiously neutral. On the other hand, in recent years many Muslims have called for a "true" secular state, one that does not privilege any religion but ensures freedom of religious belief and practice.

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Esposito’s series of articles re: Islam.

Role of Islam in the modern world as seen by the West, Gulf News

The history of Islam in the contemporary world, as throughout much of history, continues to be one of dynamic change. Muslim societies have experienced the impact of rapid change, and with it the challenges in religious, political and economic development. Muslims continue to grapple with the relationship of the present and future to the past.

However, in contrast to Judaism and Christianity, Muslims, due to centuries of European colonial dominance and rule, have only had a few decades to accomplish what in the West was the product of centuries of religious and political revolution and reform, a process that included the Enlightenment, Reformatiom, counter-Reformation, French and American revolutions.

Like believers of other faiths, the critical question today facing Islam and Muslim communities globally is the relationship of faith and tradition to change in a rapidly changing and pluralistic world.

There is a struggle for the soul of Islam today. Mainstream Muslims worldwide will need to more aggressively address the threat to Islam from religious extremists.

Their jihad (struggle) will be religious, intellectual, spiritual, and moral. But it must be a more rapid and widespread programme of Islamic renewal that builds on past reformers but follows the lead of enlightened religious leaders and intellectuals today more forcefully, and more effectively engages in a wide ranging process of reinterpretation (ijtihad) and reform.

There are formidable obstacles to be overcome: the conservatism of many (though not all) ulama, reform in the training of religious scholars and leaders, the countering of more puritanical exclusivist Wahhabi or Salafi brands of Islam, and the discrediting of militant jihadist ideas and ideologies.

Like the process of modern reform in Judaism and Christianity, questions of leadership and the authority of the past (tradition) are critical.

Whose Islam, who leads and decides? Is it rulers, the vast majority of whom are unelected kings, military, and former military? Or elected prime ministers and parliaments?

Is it the ulama or clergy, who continue to see themselves as the primary interpreters of Islam, although many are ill prepared to respond creatively to modern realities?

Or is it modern educated, Islamically oriented intellectuals and activists? Lacking an effective leadership, will other Osama bin Ladens fill the vacuum?

The second major question is “What Islam?” Is Islamic reform simply returning to the past and restoring past doctrines and laws, or a reformation or reformulation of Islam to meet the demands of modern life? Some call for an Islamic state based upon the re-implementation of classical formulations of Islamic laws. Others argue the need to reinterpret and reformulate law in light of the new realities of contemporary society.

Religious traditions are a combination of text and context – revelation and human interpretation within a specific socio-historical context. This has gone on for many centuries. All religious traditions demonstrate dynamism and diversity and that is why there are conservative elements as well as modernist or progressive elements in all religions.

Judaism and Christianity, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, have been used to legitimise monarchies and feudalism in the past, and democracy and capitalism, as well as socialism in the present.

The Gospels and Christianity have been used to legitimise the accumulation of wealth and market capitalism as well as religio-social movements like those of Francis of Assisi and, in the twentieth century, Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker Movement and Liberation Theology in Latin and Central America.

The process continues today regarding issues of gender relations, birth control, abortion, and social justice, yielding multiple and diverse positions. While using the same text and referring to a common history, people come out with different interpretations.

Islam, too, is an ideal that has taken many forms historically and has been capable of multiple interpretations, conditioned by reason and social contexts. For example, much of the debate over the relationship of Islam to women’s rights must be seen in terms not only of religion but also, as in other religions, of patriarchy.

The status and role of Muslim women in law and society was defined in a patriarchal past and by male religious elite, ulama, who were the interpreters of religion.

Like all the world’s major religious traditions, Islam has its extremist fringe. However, Osama bin Laden’s steady dose of proclamations and threats has assured that Islam, not just extremism or terrorism, receives “preferential” treatment.

The climate today is one in which questions can be asked and statements can be made about Islam, not simply the beliefs and actions of extremists, that would not be tolerated if directed at Judaism or Christianity.

The danger of this approach is to overlook the fact that militant jihad movements and terrorism are not just the products of warped individuals or religious doctrine, whether mainstream or extremist interpretations, but of political and economic conditions.

Western governments are challenged to balance long-standing relationships with regimes against the principles and values of self-determination, democratisation and the human rights they claim to stand for and support.

Governments in the Muslim world are challenged to promote and strengthen the development of civil society – the institutions, values, and culture that are the foundation for true participatory government.

They must be willing to allow alternative political voices to function freely in society and express their opinions and dissent through the formation of political parties, private associations, newspapers, and the media.

Islamic activists and movements are challenged to move beyond slogans to programmes. They must become more self-critical in speaking out not only against local government abuses but also against those of Islamic regimes in Sudan, Afghanistan, and such other countries, as well as acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam by extremists.

They are challenged to provide an Islamic rationale and policy that would extend to their opposition and to minorities the very principles of pluralism and political participation that they demand for themselves.

All are challenged to recognise that democratisation and the building of strong civil societies in the Muslim world are part of a process of experimentation, necessarily accompanied by failure as well as success. The transformation of the West from feudal monarchies to democratic nation states took time, trial and error.

It was accompanied by political as well as intellectual revolutions that rocked both state and church in a long, drawn-out process, among contending voices and factions with competing visions and interests.

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Reform should have started yesterday...

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if one can reform it then its not from divine power

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^ more the reason to reform Islam.