by Kamran A. Bokhari
Q-NEWS
Dec 2003 – RAMADAN 1424
No.352
The United Kingdom has been dubbed as a hotbed of radical
Islamism outside the Muslim world. It is here among the Muslim
community in the United Kingdom that we find perhaps the single
largest gathering of radical and militant Muslim groups such as Hizb
al-Tahrir, al-Muhajiroun, and a host of other Neo-Salafist and Jihadist
outfits. It is rather ironic that those who would vehemently argue that
democracy is antithetical to Islam are able to propagate their ideas
within a non-Muslim democratic political system. This is not possible
anywhere else, most especially not in the Muslim world. It was just
recently, that Pakistan outlawed Hizb al-Tahrir along with a host of
other sectarian and militant groups. Even while advocating their preferred
mode of Islamist authoritarianism and rejecting democracy,
groups such as Hizb al-Tahrir unabashedly avail of all the freedoms in
the UK to advance their global agenda.
The essential problem with the argument of those Islamist individuals
and groups that claim democracy has nothing to do with
Islam is the way in which they define both Islam and democracy.
Most Muslim opponents of democracy construct their arguments on
two false assumptions. On the one hand, they assume that Allah has
provided a specific political system in the divine texts of the Quran
and the Sunnah. At the same time, they think that the only real
democracy is the western secular brand.
This article is an attempt to illustrate the intellectual discrepancies
inherent in the notion that ‘Islam is incompatible with democracy’, by
deconstructing the understanding that radical Islamists have regarding
both Islam and democracy. It will conclude with an explanation
of what does Islam, basically, say about governance, and how democracy
is nothing more than the best way, man has thus far devised, to
conduct governance while minimizing conflict.
Radical Islamists see Islam as containing within itself, a well defined
timeless system regarding government and politics. The
sundry groups that constitute the universe of radical and militant
Islamism disagree amongst each other about the political components
of Islam, however, they seem to agree on one essential thing - Islam
provides for a well-defined political system that is unchanging, which
with slight adjustments is applicable in all times and places. Most of
these groups refer to this system as the “Khilafah system”, and one
can find multiple tracts floating around in the public domain entitled
The Ruling System of Islam or something similar.
Even a cursory glance at the historical development of Islamic
political thought and practice is sufficient to make one realize that
there is no such thing as The Islamic Political System or The Ruling
System of Islam or The Khilafah System. Not only do we see an
enormous amount of variance in the way the different jurists
approached the subject of Islamic governance, but also in the practice
of the various caliphates from 632 to 1924. Furthermore, the
mere fact that all such theses are the ijtihad of individuals, clearly
underscores that there is no one particular system, which Islam prescribes.
In fact, there can be multiple ruling systems of Islam,
because the Quran and Sunnah do not privilege one particular system.
Instead, the divine texts contain only general principles regarding
the issue of governance, on the basis of which scholars in any
given spatio-temporal setting can construct political systems. Thus,
the various prescriptions in circulation are nothing but someone’s
interpretation, which at best can be referred to as ‘an’ Islamic system
pertaining to governance.
Moreover, concepts such as Islamic state, Islamic political system,
sovereignty of Allah or of the Shariah, or of the ulema, and so on are
also products of the modern age and did not exist in the “glorious
past”, to which the radicals advocate a return. Radical and militant
Islamists do not realize that this terminology is itself a synthesis resulting
from the Muslim encounter with the west in the crucible of
modernity after a long interregnum, during which Islamic discourse,
for the most part, remained frozen in time. Those who advocate
archaic political prescriptions do so by the process of selective incorporation
of medieval fiqh, because they have anachronistically constructed
false continuums. One such false continuum is the existence
of a single monolithic khilafah. This ad hoc cutting of time-bound
prescriptions of historical fuqaha and the subsequent pasting on to
altered contemporary realities in the here and now is because of the
undue privilege given to the ulema of the past.
Many Muslims overlook the fact that shariah and fiqh are not
synonymous. While the former is the law of Allah, the latter is a
human interpretation of that law. The principles in the Quran and
Sunnah need to be operationalized, which involves the human agency
of reason. Ignoring the impact of interpretation on knowledge formation,
radical Islamists view original texts as manuals containing step-by-
step procedures on how to establish an Islamic state. What needs
to be realized is that the Quran and the Sunnah are the primary
sources from which rules, processes, and systems need to be systematically
distilled. Therefore, those who insist upon the existence of
The Ruling System of Islam not only exclude Islam’s juristic heritage
but also treat specific conclusions drawn from interpretation as God sent revelations.
Not only do radical Islamists suffer from a misunderstanding of
what Islam has to say about governance, their tracts also betray
their simplistic conceptualization of democracy. Just as radical
Islamists engage in the gross essentialization of the notion of Islamic
governance, they exhibit a similar attitude toward democracy. For
them, democracy is also a well-defined system in which, according to
them, man as opposed to Allah enjoys the right to legislate.
Radical Islamists almost always quote Abraham Lincoln;
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, …” as THE
definition of democracy. They love to quote it, thinking that they have
clearly established what democracy really is. What they have done,
however, is only privilege a western form of democracy as the only
true democracy. Democracy in reality and in the words of W.B. Gallie,
“is an essentially contested concept,” which means that there is no
one brand of democracy that is more authentic than the other. Hence,
the argument about the Islamist rejection of “people make the legislation
in terms of what is right and what is wrong,” is moot.
Moreover, by arguing that democracy is majority rule they tend to disregard
the role of constitutionalism and rule of law.
Even in an Islamic state (man or men depending on whether it is
a democracy or an authoritarian type of an Islamic state) are sovereign.
The problem is how Islamists define sovereignty. The hyper-tendency
of Islamists to view almost everything as black and white
prevents them from understanding many complex concepts
such as sovereignty. A prominent American Muslim political
scientist Dr. Muqtedar Khan eloquently demonstrates
how the Islamist opponents of democracy have misunderstood
sovereignty. He argues that while Allah exercises de
jure sovereignty, He has allowed man de facto sovereignty
over practical matters. The proof of this is that he gave us
the choice to do haram or halal, and will judge us accordingly.
Allah through his Rasul (peace be upon him) made
the Quran and Sunnah as the primary sources of legislation
and not legislations in of themselves. However, it is up to
human beings to implement them or not, which in both
cases requires legislation. Texts are texts unless people choose to follow
them. Hence, man is sovereign. So, it is wrong to place this issue
in an either or type of argument. In the words of a brilliant
Palestinian scholar Raja Bahlul, an Islamic democracy may be a difficult
concept to accept, but it should not be rejected on the basis of
some perceived difference in the location of sovereignty, which is
clearly not an argument.
In essence, the problem of radical and militant Islamist political
ideologies is that they are constructed on the basis of literalist
readings of Islam and simplistic conceptions of democracy. The
expertise of most radical Islamist ideologues is in the natural and
applied sciences and not the social sciences. Thus, disproportionately
they are not just ill-qualified about Islam, but politics as well.
Furthermore, they also do not have any practical experience in
Islamic or democratic governance. The sad part is that their followers
view their ruminations as being equivalent to hukm shari’i.
Muslims need to become more sophisticated about specialisation of
knowledge. We should be able to understand that any hafidh,
mufassir, muhaddith , a’lim of a particular Islamic topic is not a
faqih or mujtahid capable of issuing fatwa. Moreover, even a mujtahid
is limited to engaging in ijtihad on the topics he or she has
been trained in. On top of all this, the bifurcation of educational
curricula in the Muslim world has led to the situation where disproportionately
those trained in ulum al-deen have little or know
understanding of ulum al-dunya and vice-versa. A very tiny minority
of people have been able to acquire the best of both worlds, and
hence moved beyond their original training. The vast majority of
scholars are stuck in the uni-dimensional nature of their academic
universes. A dangerous consequence of this situation is that we have
traditional ulema engaging in political activism and not being able
to offer the masses anything but slogans. They are unable to distill
public policy from their theoretical Islamic knowledge.
For Muslims, Islam is indeed a way of life prescribed for all
times and places. The divine texts, however, are limited in number.
The only way in which a limited number of texts can continue to
provide guidance over time is by being general in nature. In other
words, that there are eternal principles in the Quran and Sunnah in
so far as governance is concerned, but Allah has left to the believers
the mechanisms by which they can operationalize these principles.
There are serious doctrinal implications in the way radical Islamists
understand Islamic governance. If we accept the argument that there
is a single political system that Allah has ordained for the believers
for all times to come, then this flies in the face of social development
that has occurred over time. Such an understanding is not just superficial,
but it also contradicts the belief that Islam is a way of life for
all times and places. The only way in which Islam (given the fact
Allah meant for human beings to develop complex and dynamic
social organizations) remains as such is if Allah provided the fundamental
principles and left the issue of crafting implanting, and modifying
political systems up to the believer.
As for democracy, broken down to its essentials, it is nothing
more than the most efficient means of political management available
today. The political systems of all societies at a certain time
were autocratic in nature, which is why we saw kingdoms and
empires all over the world. This same political structure was the case
with the khilafah envisioned by radical Islamists. This is because the
structure of any polity has nothing to do with ideological and or
religious concerns. Political systems are the products of human
social and intellectual innovations. The state of tangible material
devices are dependent on the state of the available technology, similarly
socio politico-economic systems rely on the level of intellectual
and political sophistication enjoyed by a society. A small dose of
counter-factual history is enough to make one realize that had the
Muslim world not suffered from intellectual stagnation, it just might
be the case that it would have been the one to lead the path away
from authoritarianism to democracy, instead of the west. Then of
course, the democratic system(s) that would have merged would
have been in keeping with the Islamic ethos. The dilemma is that
radical Islamists and many ordinary Muslims view democracy as
being synonymous with western secularism. The two are entirely
different concepts and do not have a necessary relationship with one
another. What needs to be understood is that democracy is about
providing a constitutional framework, which would ensure, legitimacy
of the government, accountability, transparency, rule of law,
regulation of state-society relations.
Since, Islam has not provided any specific political system for
the believers to adopt, and democracy is nothing more than the most
proficient means of organizing the political affairs of a people, then
where is the haram or kufr in this? While, it is true that a workable
model of an Islamic democracy has yet to emerge, this is not because
Islam and democracy are antithetical to one another. On the contrary,
it is a function of the perpetuating condition of arrested political
development in the Muslim world.
Not only do radical Islamists suffer from a misunderstanding of what
Islam has to say about governance, their tracts also betray their simplistic
conceptualisation of democracy.