The bankruptcy of the Islamic vs secular state debate
Those who ignore ― whether deliberately or otherwise ― the civilizational, historical, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of Islam risks projecting their own prejudices and fantasies onto their understanding of Islam wherever they employ the words “Islam” or “Islamic” in their utterances or writings, thus betraying their superficial grasp of the religion which they (falsely) claim to represent.
Imran Mustafa and Wan Mohd Aimran Wan Mohd Kamil, The Malaysian Insider
We read with interest the article by Dr Farouk Musa entitled “Arguing for a secular state” published on August 22 in The Malaysian Insider.
The idea of the Islamic state, as mentioned by Farouk, is indeed a modern creation. It did not appear, or even conceivable, prior to the total fall and destruction of the Caliphate, as Muslims have always understood polity and politics to be intimately linked to some form of authority which upholds systems that are congruent with principles in Islam.
This is of no surprise, as there had never been any point in Muslim history in which there was a total loss of sovereignty in almost all Muslim lands, and of which Muslims can do nought but watch as their precious way of life, their entire being, were unrecognizably altered to fit a system whose history and philosophy they did not share.
In fact, according to Shaykh Seraj Hendriks, a Mufti in South Africa, the adjective “Islamic” was never truly used for organisations or entities prior to the fall of the Caliphate, including “Islamic Renaissance”, whatever that might mean. Indeed, the use of the adjective came first in Muslim majority countries, rather than non-Muslim countries, indicating the severity of the trauma that the Ummah suffered at that time.
A tangential but crucial point that needs to be made on the meaning and scope of the word ‘Islamic’ is that it should be not understood simply as a prefix, the addition of which automatically transforms the subject-matter into agreement with the requirements of the religion of Islam.
This is especially true if one reduces and restricts the meaning of the word ‘Islam’ and ‘Islamic’ to an external show of piety without a conscious and knowing submission, or to a private choice without an outward and social manifestation of religious belief, or to an intellectual form of religious understanding severed from its spiritual and intuitive wellsprings, instead of conceiving the word ‘Islam’ or ‘Islamic’ as standing for a religion founded upon Divine Revelation, transmitted by Holy Prophets and Messengers (upon them be peace!) and nurtured by learned scholars and men and women of spiritual discernment and of pure and upright character.
Those who ignore ― whether deliberately or otherwise ― the civilizational, historical, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of Islam risks projecting their own prejudices and fantasies onto their understanding of Islam wherever they employ the words “Islam” or “Islamic” in their utterances or writings, thus betraying their superficial grasp of the religion which they (falsely) claim to represent.
Indeed, inserting the word “Islam” or “Islamic” into the name of one’s movement or organization does not necessarily mean that words and deeds of the movement or organization will be in harmony with the teachings and practices of Islam nor does it guarantee that everything it stood for faithfully represents the religious and intellectual traditions of Islam, especially if those in movement or organization of such kinds are themselves confused about the fundamental elements of the worldview of Islam and completely unmoored from the living tradition of Islam as constituted by its scholars and saints, in addition to men and women of spiritual discernment.
In evaluating the validity and soundness of the proposals made by such movements or organizations pertaining to the direction and future of the Ummah, one doth well to remember that even the devil can quote Scripture.
A sensitivity towards history
The study of history is only as useful as it contributes to a true and correct perspective of the present, upon which a proper and clear path to the future may be charted. This alone should be sufficient in justifying the need for a sensitive awareness of the historical context and a critical assessment of historicity whenever one wishes to discuss ideas and theories, peoples and nations.
The attitude that readily marginalizes the historical perspective and analysis on the assumption that everything that has happened are of no value to our predicaments today and which pretentiously declares the obligation to respect and care for our intellectual inheritance amounts to a form of ‘medievalism’ which is regressive and archaic, is predicated on a shallow concept of what being medieval represents and entails.
There is, in fact, nothing wrong with being ‘medieval’ ― some of the best buildings in the world are medieval buildings, as are some of the best poetry. One only needs to point to the great Gothic churches of Europe; to Chaucer and Rumi as obvious examples.
In fact, the Mu’tazilites, whom Farouk is fond of mentioning, were also ‘medieval’ rather than classical, being influenced primarily by Plotinus, a neo-Platonist, due to a misattribution in the title of the book, “The Philosophy of Aristotle”.
The same is also true of Muslim thought and matters of fiqh (jurisprudence). One cannot, for example, take a text such as al-Mawardi’s al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah out of context and assume universality ― this is in fact an inversion of fiqh, which literally translates to understanding.
One also cannot, by virtue of the same reasoning, throw away such works due to some misappropriation of some quarters in society. What is required, obviously, is a proper understanding of the historical context and a critical examination of the text. There can be errors in reasoning, and we shall deal with this in due course, but it is the principle still stands, nonetheless.
Therefore, when discussing the so-called “Islamic state” and the way it was understood by past Muslims, one needs to look at how medieval Muslim polities operated, and whether or not such contexts and elements that existed then still exist in the same form today. Then, a critical evaluation and interrogation of the current, accepted system need also be made in order to best fit the purposes of the din, which is ultimately, submission to the Almighty.
Now, traditional Muslim polities are known to be relatively decentralised. In fact, the appropriation of the hudud laws in traditional Muslim societies have been mainly local, even though the Qadis might be appointed by the government. The fact that Qadis are normally local means that they would normally understand the local context, and therefore are able to exercise discretion in the way the Law is exercised.
There is, after all, a distinction made within Islamic Law between hudud and ta’zir, and it was also related by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf that the dishing of punishment, whether hudud or ta’zir, very much depended upon the understanding of the local qadi of both the Law, which requires an understanding of the Principles of Jurisprudence (Usul al-Fiqh) as well as the local context.
Therefore, the objection that, “The formulation, adoption and implementation of legislation are always matters of human judgment and reasoning. Therefore their intended implementation is subject to human error and fallibility and can always be challenged and questioned”, has always been understood within the Muslim intellectual tradition, and jurists traditionally have been acutely aware of their own fallibility as human beings; hence all treatises on fiqh always ends with the phrase “Allahu a’lam” or “God Knows Best”. Indeed, to a certain extent, this is no different than today’s justice system, whereby cases of miscarriages of injustice is not unknown to have occurred.
If it argued that the mere fact that somebody is a human being automatically renders his judgement and conclusion on matters of religion suspect in terms of its validity and truth, then is not the questioner himself open to similar charges of human fallibility?
After all, if the mere fact that a scholar is also a human being impairs him from giving valid and correct solutions to a particular religious problem, how can it be guaranteed that those who are challenging the scholar will be immune from the same failings, especially if the intellectual and spiritual qualities of the challenger is nowhere near compared to the scholar against whom he rails upon?
Therefore, in brazenly imputing the fallibility of the learned of the past due to the self-evident fact that there are merely human beings, the challenger leaves himself open to the same charge of fallibility by others, which then calls into question the validity of his challenge in the first place since he too is a mere human being.
Now, in the specific case of hudud, the intrinsic flexibility and robustness of the system which takes into account the diversities and weaknesses of human reasoning was radically altered with the permeation of Western ideas of nation states into the minds of the Muslims at the turn of the 20th century, which among other things, calls for a singular and uniform codified law within the political boundaries of the state.
The reduction of legal principles to strict and clear rules in a legal code disrupts and impairs the ability of the jurists to exert his or her own opinion to the fullest, disempowering them by shifting the judicial-legislative powers to a centralized state bureaucracy.
An example of this occurred when the Ottomans, as part of programmatic response to external Western threats, initiated a series of internal reform in the early 19th century, the most significant being an attempt to codify the Syariah, which involves compiling large amounts of authoritative Hanafi legal rulings and codifying it into a single body of work. As Noah Feldman explained in his book, “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State”:
“This Westernizing process, foreign to the Islamic legal tradition, sought to transform Syariah from a body of doctrines and principles to be discovered by the human efforts of the scholars into a set of rules that could be looked up in a book.”
What transpired was that the jurist were, to a very large extent, forced to make their own rulings based on previous ones (simple precedents), thereby removing their traditional flexibility in applying principles of justice and significantly diminishing their role as the source of legal authority.
This, coupled with the breakdown of the Millet system ― which divided the population of the vast Ottoman Empire into several quasi-autonomous groupings according to their religious affiliations, with each groupings enjoying comparative legislative, judicial, fiscal and religious freedom, thus granting security, stability and self-confidence to the members of each grouping, securing the preservation of religious and cultural identity across successive generations within the same religious community ― due to the rise of nationalism, were among the factors which contributed to the failure of the multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious Ottoman system.
As the 19th century progressed into the 20th century and the idea of nation states with their fixed borders and single codified law became the norm, the conception of what a “state” is and of “Islamic law” crystallised around these accepted models of “nation states” and now should be and, indeed are, critically evaluated so as to test its validity in light of the intellectual and religious traditions of Islam and more importantly, to determine the extent to which it can be made to serve the needs of Muslims living in the modern world.
