A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE CLAREMONT SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
FACULTY IN THE CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
IN ISLAMIC STUDIES
BY
Ridvan Ryan uysaler
CLAREMONT, CALIFORNIA
APRIL 2021
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I- WHAT IS ISLAMIC AND WHAT IS NOT?
CHAPTER II- THE BIRTH OF POLITICAL ISLAM AND “THE ISLAMIC STATE”
CHAPTER III- CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC STATES
CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
At this age, Islam as a faith is going through a pivotal introspection since its beginning fourteen centuries ago. After the collapse of the last Muslim Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate which was established after the Prophet (PBUH) and lasted thirteen centuries without interruption, the umma got scattered all over the place like a herd of sheep attacked by a pack of wolves. I intentionally used Muslim Empire rather than ‘Islamic’ Empire because this very term, ‘Islamic’ will be the focus of this paper. Almost all the Muslim lands were colonized by Western powers except the cradle of the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia. Although Turkey was not colonized militarily, it was colonized culturally just like the rest of the Muslim nations. This cultural colonization deeply traumatized Muslim nations. Their bond with their histories and thus -in their perception- with the glorious Islamic Civilization has been broken; they have lost their identities and could not come up with a new identity yet.
In this paper, I will try to shed some light on Turkey’s and also other Muslim-majority nations’ soul-searching and what is meant by the term “Islamic” as it is used prevalently today in the context of an ‘Islamic state’. What should be the relationship between Islam as a ‘faith’ and state? In a Muslim society, is it possible to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s?”[1] How should we understand the verse “And to God belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and Allah has power over all things?”[2] This verse is generally used by political Islamists as a slogan that is seemingly in contradiction with the statement that is part of the Turkish constitution and also hangs on the wall of Turkish Grand National Assembly, “Sovereignty unconditionally belongs to the nation.”
I will also try to answer the questions such as “what is Islamic Law or Shariah,” “is it possible to establish an ‘Islamic state’ where the law will be Sharia, the divine law,” as in the Islamists perception. I also want to tackle the question of “what makes a specific judicial ruling ‘Islamic’ and what makes a state ‘Islamic.’” I will look at the constitutions of the ‘Islamic’ Republics of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and elaborate on whether they are living up to their ‘Islamic’ reputations.
Turkey’s Journey to Islamism
With the impact of colonialism, in almost all Muslim nations, societies are broken into two segments: culturally Westernized minorities and conservative masses who see the West as the source of all sorts of evil and for their misfortunes. The secular segment is looking up to the Western civilization as a salvation and a solution for all their socio-economic problems. Meanwhile the conservative masses are hoping to bring back ‘the Sharia’ in order to revitalize their longed-for, past glorious civilization which now only reverberates in their memories as a mystic myth rather than an actual and factual history. They are striving to establish their utopic ‘Islamic’ states so that they can teach the descendants of ‘the barbaric Crusaders’ what true civilization really is. “But you killed the Indians” is a political joke in Turkey. When Turkish politicians are criticized for human rights abuses, instead of taking responsibility; they deflect and point out to the West, accusing them for the genocide of the Native Indians, or the French genocide in Algeria or atomic bombs exploded in the Second World War, or for something else, but they never take any responsibility for what they do.
Turkey is unique among the Muslim-majority countries in that it was never colonized militarily. As the Ottoman Empire ended in 1923, completing its natural lifespan way beyond what Ibn Khaldun determined for empires[3], a new promising state was established with the participation of all segments of society. However, that hope did not last long. As soon as Kemal Ataturk secured his control over the parliament and increased his popularity in the Independence War against Greeks as the Chief Commander and the head of the state, he took Turkey down to a different route. In the first constitution ratified by the parliament in 1921, Islam was declared to be the religion of the state and the Caliphate was recognized by the constitution. Additionally, the language of the constitution was more inclusive towards Kurds, the second-largest ethnicity that constitutes 15-20% of the population. However, in 1924, first, the office of Caliphate was abolished, and then with another revision in 1928, the statement of “religion of the Turkish Republic is Islam” was removed from the constitution.
This was quite a shock for the Turkish nation as well as for the larger umma. Until then Ottomans held the Office of Caliphate since 1516, when the Ottoman Sultan, Yavuz Selim ended the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517) in Egypt, assuming its lands and the Caliph title, the Mamluk Sultan carried. So, in the span of a few years, not only the cradle of the Caliphate voluntarily abandoned the Office that was recognized by all Muslims globally, but it also became a strictly secular state despite its mostly religiously practicing society.
The new Turkish Republic turned out to be an autocracy with French-style secularism forcing the European lifestyle as well as European legal codes in their entirety onto the conservative Turkish Muslim society. As Asli Bali states in her talk at Yale Law School, French laicism is based upon the notion of protecting politics from the influence of religion; as opposed to Anglo-Saxon secularism which aims to protect religious freedom from the government’s influence.[4] The laicism adopted by the Turkish government was even stricter than French-style secularism because the government established a state department in order to unify and control all the religious affairs in the nation and undertook crafting a limited version of Islam as the nation’s religion. The government also abolished all the religious orders and tariqas, assuming their property. By law, the adhan was forced to be called in Turkish instead of Arabic from 1932 to 1950. Additionally, the European dress style was enforced on government workers by law. As a remnant of those days, there is still a statute in the legal codes today that mandates public workers to wear fedora hats, which of course is not enforced.[5] In the following years, dozens of people were executed by the revolutionary courts for violating this law.[6] With another law, niqab and burqa were prohibited.
In 1928, the alphabet was also changed from Arabic to Latin, a drastic change after centuries of Turkish being written in the Arabic alphabet since the tenth century, when Turks first encountered and converted to Islam in Middle Asia. Also, a government agency was formed in order to ‘purify’ Turkish by getting rid of Arabic and Persian-oriented words from Ottoman Turkish by making up new words. This meant that new generations would not be able to read any of the literature that was created by two great civilizations, the Seljuks and Ottomans, accumulated over a millennium. Unfortunately, these top-down so-called modernization efforts caused the Turkish nation to lose its cultural memory and fractured the society to its core – into seculars versus conservatives, educated versus uneducated, enlightened versus backward. Up until the 1980s, for the majority of conservative masses, education meant losing all your religious and cultural values.
Out of the war-weary conservative Muslim masses, a modernized, secular, Western-educated, elitist minority emerged with the reigns of the government in their hands. For this secular minority, religion was the symbol of backwardness, and its role was supposed to be restricted merely to the cultural sphere and utilized as needed, such as in funeral ceremonies or patriotic speeches.
For the Turkish secularists on the far left (it is rather flat-out fascism but conveniently named as left in Turkish politics), Ataturk is a God-sent savior. For them, if Turkey could go back to the 1930s, where all the religious orders and tariqas were banned, all the problems of the society would be solved. For them, religion and Ottoman Empire symbolizes backwardness. As Nicholas Danforth describes it,
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk built his new national republic on a vigorous rejection of the Ottoman past. He condemned the Ottoman sultans as foreign interlopers, accusing them of promoting religious bigotry, suppressing their people’s Turkish identity, and cravenly collaborating with European powers. Completely ignoring the Ottoman past, Ataturk gave his people a glorious and invented history of Central Asian Turks to serve as a basis for their national pride.[7]
Yet Republicans did not entirely refrain from using the legacy of the Ottoman Empire in their nation-building efforts, especially its glorious era until the seventeenth century before its stagnation and downfall. They associated anything that was to be proud of in the Ottoman era with its Turkish roots and Turkishness and any of its sins with its ties to religion and the influence of European powers and minorities in the Empire.
Things changed at the end of the 20th century when Justice and Development Party that has political Islamist background won the election against all odds. “Beginning in the 1990s, a newly pious, newly democratic Turkey ‘reconnected’ with its Ottoman ‘roots’, finally embracing the national history Ataturk had denied them. This trend culminated, of course, in the full-blown, Islamically rooted Ottoman nostalgia – not to say Ottomania – of today.”[8]
Turkish secularists generally named as Turkish left are content with Islam as long as it remains as a cultural motif in the lower stratum of the society and within the walls of historical mosques and funeral ceremonies, but to them Islam as a religion that shapes the morals of the society and the law of the land is evil. They refer to it as “the Sharia” which to them means stoning people to death, chopping off hands and heads, marrying nine-year-old girls to old men, and so on. The Turkish left is also quite nationalistic, rather racist. Up until the 1980s, the government did not recognize Kurds as an ethnicity or Kurdish as a language, not in Turkey nor in the bordering states. Writing, speaking, singing in Kurdish was banned and punished harshly. Up until this day, there is no public education in Kurdish for 15 million Kurds in Turkey and private education is very limited due to the government’s pressure.
This very ideology created today’s Turkish political Islam as a reaction to itself. Although political Islam claims to be the exact opposite of Turkish secularism, it shares the same features as its nemesis, Kemalism. Although Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced his political Islamist past when he established Justice and Development Party, he turned back to his roots at the beginning of his third term. Just like Ataturk did a century ago, once he secured his position within the party and consolidated his popularity among the conservative masses, he took Turkey to a different path, a path to the ‘Islamic State’ that would be a reincarnation of the Ottoman Empire in his supporters’ eyes. However, instead of the Ottoman Empire, it was the Kemalist republic that incarnated under the disguise of Islam.
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS ISLAMIC AND WHAT IS NOT?
In order to answer this question, there are three things we need to elaborate. First, Islam and islam are two different concepts. As a belief, islam is the generic name of the true religion of God in general, since the first human and the first Messenger, Adam till the Last Messenger, Muhammad (PBUT). In the times of jahiliyyah (time of ignorance)[9], where and when a messenger was absent or the last messenger’s message was corrupted, monotheism, merely believing in the existence of God and hereafter can also be considered as islam. On the other hand, uppercase “I” in Islam is the name of the latest version of islam that was renewed and reconstructed by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The verses in the Quran such as “Verily! Those who believe and those who are Jews and Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and do righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve” (2:62, 5:69) show the inclusiveness of Islam in this respect.
According to the famous hadith, where Angel Gabriel testified in front of the Prophet and His companions, Islam can be defined as a set of beliefs and actions/rituals accompanying them. As it can be seen in this verse and many others throughout the Quran, in Islam (and islam) faith is always associated with actions, good deeds, (aʻmāl al-ṣālihāt) as a manifestation of faith. Also, the verses “So whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it” (Quran 99:7-8) declare that regardless of their belief, servants of God will see the result of their smallest actions whether good or bad. So, it is very important to keep this inclusive aspect of Islam when attributing Islam to actions. In general, any good deed [a’māl as-sālihāt] must be considered Islamic, regardless of its application during the time of the Prophet. For example, Hilf al-Fudul (League of Virtuous) was a committee formed by polytheist Meccans in order to establish justice in the Meccan society before Islam. In a hadith, the Prophet says “Certainly, I had witnessed a pact of justice in the house of Abdullah ibn Judʻan that was more beloved to me than a herd of red camels. If I were called to it now in the time of Islam, I would answer it.”[10] Since it was formed before Islam it cannot be deemed as Islamic, but it certainly is islamic. We can say any action that can be considered as a’māl as-sālihāt such as upholding justice, feeding the poor, supporting orphans, giving charity, honoring your guests, spreading peace in the community, etc, must be deemed as islamic regardless of who is doing it and must be supported.
The second aspect of the issue is the difference between the immutable articles of the faith (al-thābit) and changeable practices and applications (al-mutaghayyir) that are bound to be revised based upon time, place, and conditions in history. Generally, the term sharia refers to the immutable theological foundations of the faith along with rituals and permissibles, and prohibitions. On the other hand, Islamic fiqh refers to the canonical body of judicial rulings and personal opinions of the scholars derived from the fundamental principles and maxims outlined in the Quran and hadiths. As Tariq Ramadan argues,
Principles can be immutable, absolute, and eternal, but their implementations in time or in history-historical models-are relative, changing, and in constant mutation. Thus, the principles of justice, equality, rights, and human brotherhood that guided the Prophet of Islam indeed remain the references beyond history, but the model of the city of Medina founded by Muhammad in the seventh century is a historical realization linked to the realities and requirements of his time. Muslims must, in the course of history, try to remain faithful to those principles and strive to implement them as best they can according to the requirements of their time, but they cannot merely imitate, reproduce, or duplicate a historical model that was adapted for a particular time but no longer corresponds to the requirements of their own.[11]
The real question is which provisions of the Quran and Sunnah are immutable and which provisions are mutable. Scholars of fiqh in general agree that legal rulings can be modified according to changing circumstances. There are several examples of naskh in the Quran where new ayahs abrogate the previous ones. According to Hashim Kamali,
The question arises as to whether a text can be modified on other grounds such as ijtihad, man-made legislation. If the text is on devotional matters (ibadat), the general view is that it cannot be changed. But if it concerns worldly transactions, the majority of jurist have held that it is open to interpretation and ijtihad. The jurist may consider the meaning of the text, the effective cause (illah) on which it was originally founded, and the welfare (maslahah) of the community so as to construct a fresh ijtihad.[12]
The ijtihads about adultery is a good example for this. Although the punishment for the adultery in the Quran is one hundred lashes[13] if it is proven with the testimony of four witnesses[14] for both man and woman; ijtihads regarding what should constitute adultery are so cumbersome that it is almost impossible for witnesses to observe an act of adultery unless it is made open in the public. Besides the technology today automatically abrogated the nature of witnesses where one camera recording can be a more valid witness than four people.
One of the prominent contemporary Shi’i scholars, Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad argues that for the most part, Islamic law is historically a customary (urfi) law developed to address the needs of the society in time. He emphasizes the importance of nasb (abrogation) of rulings giving the example of the testimony of women in the Quran. According to Damad, the main objective of Islamic law is the substitution of the common good for the community and avoiding harm. He draws attention to the position of women in family and society in the old times versus modern times. He wrote “in the past times when social and economic life was much different and women were housewives, essentially consumers confined to the home without economic responsibility or the need to earn a living, this Quranic phrase had a particular meaning. Does cohabitation ‘in accordance with that which is recognized as good’ have the same meaning today.”[15] If the verses regarding women’s rights, slavery, and inheritance law in the Quran are interpreted under the light of this approach, Muslim jurists can develop modern rulings upon the Islamic maxims for Muslims.
The third angle of the question is the culture versus religion dilemma. Culture is defined as “an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.”[16] Culture is a living phenomenon constantly changing like languages and deeply affects societies’ worldview. There is a strong interaction between culture and religion and sometimes it is very hard to decide whether a practice is part of the religion or culture. In his book, What is Islam, Ahmad Shahab tries to explain how these two concepts are blended with each other. Asking the question “what does a North African Muslim have in common with a Muslim from Java?” he states, “the greatest challenge to a coherent conceptualization of Islam has been posed by the sheer diversity of -that is, range of differences between- those societies, persons, ideas, and practices that identify themselves with Islam.”[17] In regards to the city/state of Medina, Tariq Ramadan states, “To confuse eternal principles and historical models is simplistic and, most of all, particularly serious: idealizing something in a moment in history leads to the thoughtless and guilty denial of that history and reduces the universality of Islam’s principles to the dream of an impossible return to the past, to an irresponsible nostalgia of origins.”[18]
If we try to answer questions such as ‘how Islamic is the Islamic law?’ or ‘how Islamic is the Islamic State?’ in the light of the above points, we see that in many cases it is not easy to discriminate between culture and religion and what is thabit, immutable and what is muteghayyir, changeable. For Ramadan, literalist approach of the contemporary Islamists is reductionist and restricts interpretation of the revelation, making it impossible to give adequate answers to contemporary challenges. The main reduction they make is “the failure to distinguish between that which, in the Revelation, is immutable (thabit), absolute, and transhistorical, and that which is subject to change, linked to the temporal evolution and environmental changes (mutaghayyir). Several principles or practices remain fundamental- and are absolute, true, and/or to be implemented regardless of time or place.”[19]
For example, was the State of Medina an Islamic concept as political Islamists claim, or was it just a historical reality nothing to do the with the essence of the religion? The Prophet automatically had to assume the political leadership, because there was not an established government in Mecca nor Medina. It is also hard to claim that, under the leadership of the Prophet, the Medinan community constituted a state, for it did not have the most basic institution of a state that is bureaucracy. Let us say, had Islam emerged in a city where there were an established state and state culture such as Damascus under Christian Roman rule, how would the state versus religion affairs be conceptualized?
I believe the biggest challenge arises from the legal provisions set forth in the Quran and the hadith. According to orthodox Islamic creed, the Prophet’s sayings and practices also constitute part of the religion to the second degree after the Quran. When adjudicating legal rulings, scholars of fiqh must decide whether a practice or command of the Prophet was a requirement of the religion or it was just the Prophet’s personal opinion, or it was merely a cultural custom that had nothing to the with the religion. During the time of the Prophet, his companions did not shy from asking him whether his decisions about worldly affairs were divine commands or merely his personal opinions. A well-known example of this is the hadith about date-palm grafting. In an authentic hadith from Sahih Muslim, Prophet told his companions that he did not find grafting female trees with male ones to be of any use. When he was informed that the yield was dwindled, he said, “If there is any use of it, then they should do it, for it was just a personal opinion of mine, and do not go after my personal opinion; but when I say to you anything on behalf of Allah, then do accept it, for I do not attribute a lie to Allah.”[20] So, trying to imitate the Prophet’s practices and adjudicating legal rulings based upon his traditions in worldly affairs might be quite misleading. Furthermore, claiming those rulings as “Islamic,” and the will of God is a slippery slope. That’s why most jurists mention it is merely their opinion when adjudicating a ruling and do not claim what they say is the absolute truth before God.
I believe the concept of ‘Islamic Law’ is a misleading phrase just like ‘Islamic State,’ as they are being used in the popular sense both by the supporters and by the adversaries of those concepts. In the Quran, there are very few verses that constitute a legal ruling. “Verses relating to penal code are 30 out of a total of 6,236, and even in this small area, the tendency is to avoid the application of ultimate penalties stipulated.”[21] ‘Islamic Law’ or the fiqh can possibly be called Islamic, as well as islamic and at the same time universal, because the canonical body of rulings is adjudicated based upon a set of moral, ethical, and judicial maxims and principals set forth by the Quran and Sunnah in a systemized way called ‘usul al-fiqh,’ but they are not ‘Islamic’ in the sense that they are part of the religion.
My objection for the terms ‘Islamic State’ or ‘Islamic Law’ does not mean that Islam must be absolutely kept out of the public sphere and should not influence state politics and the legal system at all. In his book Islam and Secular State- Negotiating the Future of Sharia, Abdullahi Ahmed En-Naim proposes a healthy relationship between religion and state and law. Defending the concept of the secular and religion-neutral state as opposed to Islamic State or Islamic Law, An-Naim writes, “when observed voluntarily, Shari’a plays a fundamental role in shaping and developing ethical norms and values that can be reflected in general legislation and public policy through the democratic political process.”[22]
CHAPTER 2: THE BIRTH OF POLITICAL ISLAM AND “THE ISLAMIC STATE”
Where did the concept of ‘Islamic State’ come from? In history, were Muslim empires ‘Islamic states’ or did they just happen to be empires established by Muslims? Wael Hallaq argues “there never was an Islamic state… Therefore, to resort to such a usage as ‘Islamic State’ -as an entity having existed in history- is not only to indulge in anachronistic thinking but also to misunderstand the structural and qualitative differences between the modern state and its predecessors, especially what I have called Islamic governance.”[23] What Hallaq describes as ‘Islamic governance’ is the paradigm of the Muslim States in history where ‘Islamic Law’ was practiced as a set of moral maxims and principles sustained by legal concepts. In those states, both in jurisprudence and politics, Islamic maxims and worldview played a crucial role in shaping the state politic, yet they were not ‘Islamic States’ as in the political Islamists’ perceptions. For example, the United States is not a Christian state, but it was founded upon Christian ethics and/or universal values. The proximity of e.g. Ottoman Empire to Islam was undoubtedly more substantial than the United States’ proximity to Christianity, yet Ottoman Empire was not an ‘Islamic State’ as Islamists perceive it to be. Because “in the state culture of the Ottoman Empire, priority was always the political requirements, and the religion was an institution under the authority of the state.”[24]
The nation-state is a modern phenomenon that came into being as a result of the European Enlightenment. As Phillip Roeder states “the American Declaration of Independence and The French Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen ushered in an age of nationalism that led to the conscious creation of nation-states. A total of 191 new or reconstituted states joined or rejoined the international system, most with the claim that this represented the sovereign prerogative of a people to be self-governing.”[25] Therefore the concepts of modern nation-state and states or empires of the past are totally different concepts. The previous states throughout the human history did not have concrete borders or the concept of citizenship as the nation-states have today. People did not require passports to travel from one sovereignty to another. Borders were determined based upon tribes alleging loyalty to kingdoms rather than geological landmarks. The concept of nationality was also quite fluid. Royal families intermarried regardless of nationality. Therefore, any comparison with the historical Muslim kingdoms or empires with modern states will be quite misleading.
Throughout Muslim history, except for the time of the Prophet and following ‘Righteously Guided Caliphs’ (Khulafa al-Rashidun), the political authority and religious authority were always separate from each other. Although all the rulers sought legitimacy from religious authorities and the ulema played an unofficial role of control over state politics, political authority was independent of the religious authority. As an institution, the caliphate was a political institution attributed to the political leader of the most influential Muslim state. It was represented by the Sultans of Umayyads, Abbasids, Mamluks, and lastly by Ottomans and abrogated by the newly formed Turkish Government in 1924. Religious authority was either represented by an independent body of scholars, called ulama, or as in the case of Ottomans, by an institution under the state called ‘Shaykh ul-Islam.’ In this respect, all of the Muslim states in history were rather quasi-theocratic, or as Wael Hallaq describes them, sovereignties with ‘Islamic governance.’
During the time of the Prophet, religion and the state were inseparable but, as Hamid Mavani argues “there was an explicit separation between the acts of worship (ibadat)/creed (aqida) and human interrelations (muamalat). The formal was unchangeable, immutable, and transhistorical, whereas the rules of conduct and social behavior were open to public negotiation in a space that is open to civic pluralism.”[26] Another factor that needs to be considered is when the Prophet started his mission, there was not a state in the first place. The Prophet naturally had to assume the role of the political leadership because there was no other political entity or authority. As mentioned in the second chapter, had Islam started in an established civilization such as Roman Empire, the relationship between state and religion would have shaped in a totally different sphere.
In the classical texts, there is not much literature about state governance or politics. As Anwar Syed states “Al-Mawardi (d. 1058), the foremost social scientist, and jurist of medieval ages, and a judge, and a diplomatist was probably the first of the medieval writers on politics to have introduced, or revived, the idea of an elected head of government.”[27] In his famous book, The Ordinance of Government (Al-Ahkam Al-Sultaniya v-al-Wilayat al-Diniyya), he discussed the qualifications of the caliphand his responsibilities as well as the responsibilities of his amirs, wazirs, and other deputies. In the first chapter where he attempts to establish the caliphate’s legitimacy in Islam, he argues “Imamate is prescribed to succeed prophethood as a means of protecting the deen and managing the affairs of this world” without any reference to the Quran or Sunnah, stating that “there is a difference of opinion as to its obligation, that is, as to whether it is obligatory for rational reasons or because it is prescribed in the sharia.”[28]
Subsequently Al Mawardi defines the qualifications of the imam as,
- Justice together with all its conditions,
- Knowledge which equips them for ijtihad, in unforeseen matters and arriving at relevant judgments,
- Good health in their faculties of hearing, sight, and speech,
- Sound in limp, free of any deficiency which might prevent them from normal movement,
- Judgment capable of organizing the people and managing the office of administration,
- Courage and bravery enabling to defend the territory of Islam and to mount jihad against the enemy,
- Of the family of Quraysh, because of the text (of prophetic hadith) on the matter and by virtue of consensus.[29]
Mawardi argues that believers are obliged to obey their leaders regardless of their corruption, referencing the ayah, “O you who believe, obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those in authority amongst you (Quran 4:62),” along with a hadith from Abu Huraira where the Prophet was related to say,
After me, governors will rule over you and those who are upright will rule you with uprightness and those who are corrupt will rule you with their corruptness: listen to them and obey them in everything which is compatible with truth. If they are correct in their dealings, then it will be to your benefit and theirs and if they act incorrectly that will still be to your benefit (in the next world) but will be held against them.[30]
However, Mawardi’s position is quite weak in several aspects. First of all, his claim that the caliph must be of the Quraysh descent is against the notion of equality of humans before God. Although he mentions opposite views, he insists that there is consensus about this. Secondly, in his vision, he integrates political leadership with religious leadership, however, except for the time of the Prophet and following four ‘Righteously Guided Caliphs,’ it was not the case. Religious authority was represented by the ulama, especially by the founders of four madhab imams for Sunnis and by the descendants of Ali Ibn Abi Talib for Shi’a. Additionally, the closest companions of the Prophet did not understand the aforementioned ayah and hadith from his perspective that several political and military conflicts outbroke during the time of Uthman and Ali. Muhammad H Kamali criticizes Mawardi for trying to polish the Abbasid Caliph’s image that was tarnished against the political power of the time, the Seljuk Dynasty. Hashimi argues, “Mawardi wrote at a time when the emirs and military rulers of outlying provinces had taken over much of the effective power of the caliph in Baghdad. In an attempt to vindicate the caliph, al-Mawardi emphasized the caliph’s role as the patron of religion and shari’a.”[31]
The roots of contemporary Islamism and the concept of the modern Islamic state can be traced back to the post-colonialism era. In the Muslim-majority lands, the awe of Western powers created a modernization movement through secularization. In collaboration with the colonial powers, the secularist movements set off to establish secular nation-states by rejecting the rich glorious Muslim heritage of those nations. Blindly imitating the Western Renaissance, secularists believed that modernization was only possible by diminishing or even erasing the influence of religion in public sphere. On the other hand, for Muslim scholars, these attempts of modernization at the expense of Islamic values created a dilemma. As Jeffrey Halverson points out, “a minority of Muslim thinkers who equally admired and envied the advances and the dominance of the West, saw an unacceptable emptiness in the materialism and ‘immorality’ of its foreign systems and ideologies. These Muslim thinkers refused to relinquish their pride in the superiority and virtue of Islam, as well as their Islamic identities, by trying to align Islam with the new discoveries and advances of the modern age.”[32]
An eminent world historian and scholar of Islam, Marshal Hodgson argues that “the modernization of Muslim societies, in contrast to that of Europe, has been marked by a radical social and intellectual rapture with its past that had profound consequences for the political development of Muslim world during the twentieth century.”[33] Kemal Ataturk (1881-1838) in Turkey, Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) in Egypt, and Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1918-1980) in Iran undertook state-led modernization projects by establishing ultra-nationalist, ultra-secularist, autocratic regimes in their countries. These pro-Western secularist regimes saw Islam as an obstacle for modernization for their countries and tried to limit its influence in the public sphere as much as possible. They tried to coerce secularism and cultural Westernization upon their religiously conservative nations.
For example, in Turkey, European dress style was enforced on government workers by law. Furthermore, in books and newspapers, European dresses styles were portrayed as a symbol of modernization. In 1980s, I remember, on the wall of my elementary school classroom, there were pictures comparing traditional Ottoman era dresses with Western dresses in order to demonstrate achievements succeeded by Ataturk’s revolution. On the posters, Western dresses were representing development and enlightenment whereas Ottoman dresses were representing backwardness. Ironically, in our conservative town, the majority of the people were still wearing traditional dresses that were portrayed as ‘backward’ in the posters. On Netflix, I came across an Egyptian series called The Secret of the Nile[34] which shows the lifestyle of secular Egyptians in the 1950s. If the characters were not speaking Arabic and their skin color was not darker, the scenes could be easily mistaken for events taking place in London or New York. The social trauma caused by the sharp cultural fraction or rather fractionalization between culturally Westernized minority and religiously conservative masses can still be felt in these countries today. Despite the Islamist government for the last two decades, even today, Turkey’s globally famous TV shows portray a totally different lifestyle than what the majority of Turkish people experience in their daily lives. In the most TV shows and movies, the characters dress quite revealing even with Western standards, drink alcohol all the time, and religion is entirely ignored in the social life.
Thus, political Islam and the concept of ‘Islamic State’ was born as a reaction to those state-led secularization efforts. In his book Islam Secularism and Liberal Democracy, Nadeer Hashemi examines the reasons behind the discontent of conservative Muslim societies in Muslim majority nations and asserts that the development of an indigenous theory of secularism will significantly increase prospects for liberal democracy. Hashemi indicates “in contrast with the West, where modernization is broadly associated with democracy, human rights, and pluralism -in short, social justice- in Muslim societies, with a few exceptions, modernization has been synonymous with dictatorship, repression, and corruption -in short, social injustice.”[35] Islamism was not only a social revolt against the coercion of secularism in its extreme form by those states, but also it was a fight for social justice.
The birth of concept of ‘Islamic state’ can be traced back to Egyptian activist, Hasan Al-Banna (1906-1946). Undoubtedly, Al-Banna was the most influential Islamic revivalist in the twentieth century not only in Egypt but also around the Islamic world. In 1928, as young as 22 years old, influenced by the anti-Western ideas of Jamal Al-Din Afghani (1838-1897) and Muhammad Abduh (1849- 1905), he achieved to start the largest Islamic revivalist movement in the Islamic world that would profoundly influence the Egyptian society and state up until today.
Al-Banna believed that “Muslim weaknesses and vulnerability to European domination stemmed from Muslims’ deviation from ‘true’ Islam. To revive Egypt, Muslims had to recommit themselves to understanding and living according to Islam as defined by the Quran and Sunnah, and as exemplified by the first generations of Muslims, the salaf.”[36] Like all other Islamists, Banna had a very negative image of Western civilization. He saw the West and modernization as the mother of all evils in the Islamic world. Although he was an activist rather than a thinker like Muhammad Abduh or Afghani, his preaching profoundly influenced the scholars who came after him like Sayyid Qutub (1906-1966) and Mawdudi (1903-1979). Jeffrey Halverson indicates an interesting fact about Islamism that,
The most notable Muslim leaders and activists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have generally not come from among the ulama, but from ‘laity.’ Omar al-Tilmisani was a lawyer, Mawdudi a journalist, Sayyid Qutb a writer and educator, Hasan al-Banna a primary school teacher, etc. These are not figures with formal religious education in the sciences of usul al-fiqh, ilm al-hadith, or usul al-din, from traditional institution of learning like al Azhar or Qarrawiyyin in Fez.[37]
Asef Bayat defines Islamism as “ideologies and movements that strive to establish some kind of an ‘Islamic order’ -a religious state, Shari’a law, and moral codes in Muslim societies and communities. Association with the state is a key feature of Islamist politics- one that differentiates it from other religiously inspired but apolitical collectives.”[38] Although as an activist Hasan al-Banna inspired his successors for the concept of an Islamic state, Sayyid Abu’l Ala Mawdudi can be considered as the founding father of Islamist ideology and the concept of Islamic state. “Over a career extending from the 1920s to the late 1970s, Mawdudi both formulated and popularized key themes in Islamist discourse.”[39] Like Al-Banna, Mawdudi also believed that an Islamic state was supposed to be established in India. However, after the split of Pakistan from India, he chose to live in Pakistan and through his movement, Jamaat al-Islami, he advocated for the implementation of Islamic Law and the establishment of an Islamic state. According to Euben & Zaman,
His conception of the Islamic state rests on the conviction that affirming the oneness of God-tawhid, is not a merely a theological tenet but also an eminently political imperative. It entails recognizing the full legal and political implications of the sovereignty of God: God alone is the source of the law, all people must submit to this law, and the sole mandate of the Islamic state is to implement this law. Islamic norms exist not merely to be followed by Muslims on their personal initiative and in their personal lives but to be put into effect through the coercive power of the state.[40]
Therefore, the very foundation of the concept of an Islamic state is not only in conflict with the realities of the Islamic civilization in history, but also it is erroneous in itself, on many levels. Coercing people to live their lives according to Islamic norms is in clear contrast with the notion of this world being a test for the servants of God and the Quranic declaration of “there is no compulsion in religion” (Quran 2:256). For example, government regulations such as prohibiting alcohol consumption, enforcing hijab for women, mandating five daily prayers, punishment for leaving Islam, etc, will not make people who do not want to follow these rules more pious, it will only make them hypocrites.
Another fallacy of Mawdudi’s concept of the Islamic state is his notion of Islamic law. The notion that the Islamic state will implement Islamic law comes with many complications that are impossible to overcome. As I tried to explain in the previous chapter, Islamic law is not divine, and it has many different interpretations that are oftentimes contradictory to each other. When it was created in the first centuries of Islam, it was inherently evolving which allowed the rise of a magnificent civilization out of the desert. It was pluralist, inclusive, and adoptive. Its stagnation brought the stagnation and later downfall of the Islamic civilization. As Ahmet Kuru argued in his book Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment- A Global and Historical Comparison,[41] the biggest factor behind this very stagnation was state’s patronizing and thus full control of academia and entrepreneurship. Mawdudi is proposing this very cause behind the downfall of Islamic civilization as a cure.
Furthermore, sovereignty belongs to God -in the political sense- and God alone is the source of law are a very shallow and simplistic understanding of shari’a. Turkish Islamists fiercely used to challenge the statement on the wall of the Turkish Assembly that says, ‘sovereignty unconditionally belongs to the people,’ because, in their perception, for Muslims, ‘sovereignty belongs to Allah.’ However, once they came to power, they abandoned their rhetoric and started to claim that they are acting based on the will of the people. In Islam, particularly in Sunni Islam, nobody or no institution/state can claim that they are acting on behalf of God. Since God does not speak to us in our language, and Quran and Sunnah cannot address all socio-political problems, somebody will always need to interpret the Quran and Sunnah. So, interpreting “Sovereignty belongs to God” as a reason for an ‘Islamic state’ has no feasibility.
Mawdudi also introduced the concept of Theo-Democracy[42] which is an oxymoron by itself. Given that theocracy is exclusivist by definition, not only towards other faiths but also different interpretations of the same faith and can never exist with Democracy. Although he claimed he supported democracy, his democracy notion was twisted. In his explanation of Islamic Law, he superficially argued that minorities will enjoy the freedom of faith, yet when it comes to a different school in Islam or a political rival who interprets Islam a little bit differently, his tolerance for freedom of faith disappears. His ruling against Ahmadiya is a good example for his perverted democracy vision. A typical political Islamist Erdogan once said at the beginning of his career, “Democracy cannot be a goal for us, it is just a means. We will ride it until we reach our destination.”[43]
The second most influential theorist of the political Islam is undoubtedly Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966). He can also be considered as the father of radicalism in Islam in the modern world, as we understand it today. According to Mavani, Qutub’s ideas played an important role in the resurgence of modern Khariji thought that manifested itself in radical groups such as the Taliban, Al Qaida, Boku Haram, ISIS, etc.[44] Sayyid Qutb borrowed the terminology of jahiliyyah from Mawdudi and applied it to all Muslim communities who did not understand and/or apply Islam to their lives as Qutb understood it.
The most common notions amongst radical groups such as ex-communication of other Muslims and fighting against and killing of non-Muslims can be traced back to his quotes such as “Anyone who serves anybody other than Allah makes himself out of Islam, no matter how strongly he declares himself to be in Islam. [45] There is no doubt that he was a pious Muslim in his personal life but attributing jahiliyyah to other Muslims and excommunicating them while they claim to be Muslim is an un-Islamic notion according to all classic scholars of Islam. Also, in his famous exegesis of the Quran, Fi Zilal al-Quran (Under the Shadow of the Quran), he interprets the ayah 9:29[46] without considering the asbab al-nuzul (the reasons and conditions of a particular revelation) like all classic commentators did and he entails a worldview of perpetual war against non Muslims and even Muslims who do not practice Islam in his way. For him, “As Islam works for peace, it is not satisfied with a cheap peace that it applies only to the area of the people of the Muslim faith live. Islam aimed to achieve a sort of peace that ensures that all submission is made to God alone.” [47]
] According to this understanding, Muslims must be in war against non-Muslims until they are subdued or converted to Islam which was obviously not the case in the history of Islam.
In his Milestones, Qutb argues that anything non-Islamic ancient or modern must be considered as Jahiliyyah and needs to be considered as evil and corrupt[48] and following sharia as a complete system extending into all aspects of life would bring every kind of benefit to humanity, from personal and social peace to the treasures of the universe.[49]
For Islamists, it took some time to accept and adapt to democracy as it became widely popular in the Muslim societies in Egypt and Turkey. However, their acceptance of democracy is a conditional one, as long as the society votes for what is ‘Islamic.’ For Yusuf al-Qardawi (b. 1926), the most prominent scholar of political Islam today states, “For our discussion of democracy assumes a Muslim society, most of whose members ‘do realize,’ ‘do use their reason,’ ‘do believe,’ and are ‘grateful.’ We are not talking about a society comprising those who renounce the truth and go astray from the path of God.”[50] Their democracy is certainly not for a pluralist society, but only for a homogenous society where everybody will think alike, vote alike, and worship alike as in the ‘nation-states’ of their rivals, the ultra-secularist establishments in Egypt and Turkey. Their democracy is certainly not for a pluralist society, but only for a homogenous society where everybody will think alike, vote alike, and worship alike as in the ‘nation-states’ of their rivals, the ultra-secularist establishments in Egypt and Turkey.
One of the ayahs that is interpreted by Islamists regarding politics is the ayah “O you who have believed, obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those in authority among you” (4:59). In the ayah, Islamists generally perceive the term ‘ulul amr,’ (those in authority) as political leaders. However, many scholars such as the prominent Turkish exegetist, Elmalili Hamdi Yazir says: “As much as this term includes rulers and superiors, it also implies the notion of having authority to command fully and being the source of the ruling. Scholars among the ashab and tabiun interpreted it as the following: 1-these are the Righteously Guided Khalifs, 2-these are the military commanders, 3-with the implication of Nisa 83[51], these are the fuquha who has authority to adjudicate. According to this opinion, the meaning of the term is not limited to military or governmental issues but also jurisdiction as well.”[52] As Hamdi Yazir points out, in the ayah (4:88), the term ulul amr is clearly used for learned ones, or ulama.
Indeed, the concept of the Islamic State is no different than an autocratic form of European-style nation-state with a twist of Islam that also venerates the state’s authority and has little regard for citizens’ rights against the state. Like in all nation-states, patriotism, love, and sacrifice for the motherland are common themes attached to the concept of Islamic state. A weak but well-known hadith, “Hubbul watan min al-iman” (Love for the motherland is from faith) is commonly used and abused by all Islamic states as well as by the secularist autocratic states in the Muslim world. As it can be observed in the example of Turkey, political Islamists’ notion of democracy is rather an autocracy where the religion is controlled and utilized by the state and freedom of thought and human rights are curtailed.
Rather than insisting on a delusion such as “Islamic State” that contradicts with the historical facts and the essence of Islam in which freedom of faith and worship are guaranteed, Muslims must strive to establish a balanced relation with the religion and state politics in such a way that those two institutions will not dominate each other. As Fethullah Gulen puts it in his latest article in La Monde,
The “state” is a system formed by human beings in order to protect their basic rights and freedoms and maintain justice and peace. The “state” is not a goal by itself, but an agency that helps people pursue happiness in this world and in the afterworld. The alignment of the state with a set of principles and values is a sum of the alignment of the individuals who make up the system with those principles and values. Therefore, the phrase “Islamic state” is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. Similarly, since there is no clergy class in Islam, theocracy is alien to the spirit of Islam. A state is a result of a contract among humans, made up of humans, and it can neither be “Islamic” nor “holy.[53]
CHAPTER 3: CONTEMPORARY ‘ISLAMIC STATES’
Contemporarily, many states call themselves ‘Islamic’ in their constitutions. Obviously, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan are the most famous or rather notorious examples due to their size, influence and how they apply Islam to their legal systems. Others include Malaysia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, and the other Gulf States. By contrast, Turkey is a secular state according to its constitution, but Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power since 2002. Despite Erdogan’s and his friends’ Islamist background, AKP was established as an inclusive, conservative but secular party at its inception, and kept its promise until 2011, during the first two terms of Erdogan. Yet, at the beginning of his third term, Erdogan turned AKP’s direction to political Islam and established his autocracy upon the promise that Turkey would be the leader of the Muslim world. In essence, Turkey’s situation is quite bizarre. On one side there is a secular constitution that is designed by secularists to control and use religion as a political tool. On the other side, there is an Islamist party in power constantly eroding the secular nature of the state and using divisive Islamist rhetoric to consolidate its base.
Although these states call themselves ‘Islamic,’ -or in Turkey’s case, considered Islamic- their structures are pretty much similar to the other nation-states in the world. In terms of democracy, human rights, rule of the law, and corruption, they are among the worst states in the world. According to Freedom House, only Pakistan is ‘partly free’ and Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are ‘not free.’[54] Additionally, according to the World Justice Project’s ‘Rule of Law Index,’ Turkey is in 107th place among 128 countries, Iran is in 109th place, and Pakistan is in 120th place. In his book, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment, Ahmet Kuru examines the causes of stagnation in the Islamic Civilization after the twelfth century and the causes of authoritarianism in the contemporary Muslim-majority countries. Kuru states,
Two-thirds of all wars and about one-third of all minor military conflicts in 2009 occurred in Muslim-majority countries. Muslim-majority countries have also experienced disproportionate rates of authoritarianism, which is a major factor leading to violence. In 2013, Freedom House classified less than one-fifth of the forty-nine Muslim-majority countries as electoral democracies, while classifying three-fifths of the 195 countries in the world as electoral democracies. Authoritarianism is also a multifaceted phenomenon; it is associated with several factors, especially socio-economic underdevelopment. Around 2010, Muslim-majority countries’ averages of gross national income per capita (GNIPC), literacy rate, years of schooling, and life expectancy were all below world averages.[55]
Among those four states mentioned above, Saudi Arabia does not have a constitution, it rather has a document called The Basic Law (or called Basic System of Governance) in which the first article states, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic State,” and that “the constitution of the State is The Holy Qur’an and the Prophet’s Sunnah (traditions).” Can the Quran be used for the constitution of a modern state is questionable and clearly in contrast with the Islamists’ claim that the Charter of Medina was the first constitution for the so-called Islamic State that they idealize in their vision. The constitution is defined as “an aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other types of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.”[56] If the Quran could be used for the constitution, why would have the Prophet needed to draft a charter on which all the segments of the community would agree on? Also, constitutions must have clear rules and principles that would restrict different interpretations as much as possible, however, the Holy Quran has many layers of meaning and vastly open to different interpretations which historically gave way to the growth of many sects, schools of law, and tariqas in Islam. The Quran clearly talks about its mission in several verses as a guidance for believers (2:2-3), as a mercy (6:155), as a light (14:5), as a healing (10:57) but as Mohammad Kamali points out, “There is no mention of state and government in the Qur’an or hadith.”[57]
The fifth article of the Basic Law states that the system of the government will be monarchial and “The dynasty right shall be confined to the sons of the Founder, King Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud (Ibn Saud), and the sons of sons. The most eligible among them shall be invited, through the process of “bai’ah.” From the very beginning, it is full of contradictions. It reads it is an Islamic Arab state. Islam is not exclusive to Arabs; it is beyond races and ethnicities. If a state claims to be ‘Islamic,’ as in the case of State of Medina, or Umayyad, Abbasid, or Ottoman Dynasties, or other states in the Islamic civilization in history, it should be open to the whole umma and all servants of Allah and give them equal rights. From this perspective United States seems to be more ‘Islamic’ because it does not prefer an ethnicity over another for its citizens. Saudi Basic Law says Quran and the Prophet’s Sunnah is the constitution. It says government will be monarchial and the right of the rule will be given to the progenies of Ibn Saud. Yet, Quran and Sunnah do not prefer a governance model for the umma and definitely, it doesn’t give the right to rule to the decedents of Ibn Saud. The Saudi government might be applying some cherry-picked laws from classical sharia books but the structure and the main principle of the Saudi State obviously have nothing to do with Islam. Article 6 reads “Citizens shall pledge allegiance to the King on the basis of the Book of God and the Prophet’s Sunnah, as well as on the principle of “hearing is obeying” both in prosperity and adversity, in situations pleasant and unpleasant.” Again, here it does not say what makes the King the rightful ruler for the believers according to the Quran or the Sunna. Thus, any sort of monarchy cannot be associated with Islam and called ‘Islamic” because the monarch will lack the legitimacy from Quran’s perspective. According to Sunni Islam, rulers, be it elected politicians or monarchs are neither the shadow of God nor the representatives of the Prophet. It is obvious that Islam is being utilized to provide legitimacy for the Saudi Dynasty.
Islamic Republic of Iran’s constitution[58] is no different than Saudi’s Basic Law in terms of its ‘Islamism’. The introduction part of the constitution states that “The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a declaration of the social, cultural, political, and economic foundations of the Iranian society based on Islamic principles and norms that reflect the heartfelt desire of the Islamic community” which sounds reasonable. However, it goes into discussing the Iranian revolution in-depth, venerating Imam Khomeini all over the text. It seems that the main theme of the constitution is the Iranian Revolution and Imam Khomeini’s ideology which seems to be in contrast with its claim to be Islamic. Islam is universal and divine, but there is nothing neither universal nor divine about the Iranian Uprising. It was a socio-political uprising against an oppressor and as in many cases, the oppressed became the oppressor once they gained power. In the introduction part, it reads, “After experiencing the anti-despotic constitutional uprising and the anti-colonial uprising for the nationalization of oil, the Muslim nation of Iran learned the invaluable lesson that the specific and essential reason for the failure of these uprisings was the non-doctrinal quality of the struggles.” Islam is likened here to a doctrine that is needed for the uprising to succeed against the Shah.
Again, in the introduction, it reads “The catalyst for the nation’s united movement was Imam Khomeini’s objection to an American scheme, ‘the White Revolution,’ which was a step toward strengthening the foundations of tyranny and increasing Iran’s political, cultural, and economic dependency on world imperialism.” The ideology in these lines is the same ideology behind Turkish Islamism; it is reactionary and defensive, it is defining itself with its enemy, and constantly needs an enemy to stay relevant. Under the title of Islamic Government, it discusses, “The struggle continued on this path until finally the discontent and intense anger of the people as a result of internal pressure and state suppression on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the exposure of these actions at the international level through the actions of the clerics and the students, seriously weakened the foundations of the regime.” The following sections are titled “The Anger of the People,” “The Price Paid by The Nation.” It is more like an indoctrination booklet rather than a constitution which in the essence should define the rights of its citizens and responsibilities as well as the boundaries of the government.
Under the section of ‘The Form of Governance is Islam, it reads, “Our nation, in the course of its revolutionary developments, has cleansed itself of the dust and impurities that accumulated during the taghuti past and purged itself of foreign ideological influences, returning to authentic intellectual standpoints and worldview of Islam. It now intends to establish an ideal and model society on the basis of Islamic norms.” This notion is the real problem with political Islam that who will decide what norms are Islamic and what norms are non-Islamic? Interpretation of the Quran, hadith, and ijtihads of the sahaba and early scholars are so diverse. Iran’s Shi’i ideology is so different than Saudi’s Wahhabi ideology where both ideologies claim to be based upon ‘Islamic norms.’
It also barely touches the concept of the umma, “Specifically, it strives to expand international relations with other Islamic movements and people in order to pave the way for the formation of a single, universal community, in accordance with the Qur’anic verse, “Verily, this Brotherhood of yours is a single Brotherhood, and I am your Lord and Cherisher: therefore serve Me (and no other),” yet even the language of this sections is quite hostile. You cannot see the concept of compassion anywhere in the text. It is quite autocratic, placing the ‘Guardian Council’ to the core of the government to guard the revolutionary ideology, pretty much the same as the Turkish constitution. But from other perspectives such as women’s rights or minority rights, it seems to be much more lenient than the Turkish constitution. It allows speaking and education in local languages, something that is not recognized in the Turkish constitution. Also, its emphasis on the rights of women is applaudable.
Pakistan’s constitution[59] is quite lengthy; it is 168 pages as opposed to 43 pages and 26 pages to Iran’s and Saudi Arabia’s constitutions, respectively. Again, it states the religion of the state as Islam in the second article. It is obvious that it was affected by British laws for it strongly emphasizes human rights and equality under the law. However, its statist nature is quite obvious. Article 5 talks about how loyalty to the state is every citizen’s duty and “Obedience to the Constitution and law is the inviolable obligation of every citizen wherever he may be and of every other person for the time being within Pakistan.” Interestingly, Article 6 talks about high treason which is always a loose cannon. Because treason does not have concrete meaning and highly open to interpretation, it is the number one excuse to silence the dissidents in autocratic states. Article 31 discusses how the Islamic way of life should be implemented in the community.
It also establishes a Sharia Court along with the Supreme Court which will make sure that all the laws and regulations of the State are in conformity with the Sharia.[60] If this court functions as it is described in the article it is quite possible that it will collide with the parliament and the Supreme Court. Pakistan is also notorious for its strict blasphemy laws. Also, “the arbitrary, discriminatory and oppressive application of blasphemy laws in Pakistan has been the cause of much discord and violence in recent years, affecting the non-Muslim population particularly harshly.”[61] The Federal Shariat Court is not a traditional assembly of ulama, that is using traditional ijtihad principles. According to Ihsan Yilmaz, “By using its constitutional powers, with its collective ijtihād, the FSC has been tackling the traditionally illiberal interpretation and application of Muslim laws in these areas. Regardless of the methodology and process of this ijtihādic endeavor, the output shows that the FSC has been either modifying the traditional ijtihāds or coming up with totally new ijtihāds to answer contemporary questions faced by Islamic law.”[62] Among these three states, I think Pakistan’s constitution seems to be the most liberal and inspired by Islamic principles as well as the British Bill of Rights.
The most significant feature of Pakistan’s Federal Shariah Court as well as the other institutions that are authorized to do ijtihad in the other Islamic states such as The Guardian Council in Iran is that they operate as a part of the government, under the political authority. However, historically ijtihad was made thus the body of sharia laws was created by the ulama that is independent of the government. In Wael Hallaq’s words,
“To tell the story of Shari’a, we must begin from the beginning, from the common social world. We must ask the question: If the Shari’a is not the work of the Islamic ruler or the Islamic state (which we a priori precluded), then what and who made it? The answer is that the Community, the common social world, organically produced its own legal experts, persons who were qualified to fulfill a variety of legal functions that, in totality, made up the Islamic legal system. The jurists of Islam lived with and in the norms and values of the common social world and on average hailed from the lower and middle social strata.”[63]
Hallaq discusses the characteristics of the modern nation-state in the context of law versus morality. He identifies five basic features of the modern state as: “1-its constitution as a historical experience that is fairly specific and local, 2-its sovereignty and metaphysics to which it has given rise, 3-its legislative monopoly and related feature of monopoly over so-called legitimate violence, 4-its bureaucratic machinery, and 5-its cultural-hegemonic engagement in the social order, including its production of national subject.”[64] He asserts that the modern state deems itself as the ultimate sovereign and lawmaker and expects ultimate loyalty and sacrifice from its citizens. However, in an ideal state that is founded on Islamic principles, the ultimate loyalty should only be to Allah. Subjects of Allah should not owe any devotion or loyalty to any ruler, politician, or constitution. The Quran and Sunna ordain believers to respect the rulers and governments as long as they are in conformity with the Islamic principles permeated from the Quran and Sunna.
Hallaq makes an excellent point that lawmaking is one of the functions of the modern nation-state and cannot be entirely independent of the executive branch of the same state and be delegated to scholars like it used to be in the first centuries of Islam. Nation-State is a sovereign entity of its own with its own interests. So, the judiciary of the nation state will always favor the state’s interests over its citizens’ rights.
The contemporary concept of an ‘Islamic State’ is a nation-state in essence and it can never be considered as ‘Islamic.’ Because it is local, it is limited to its citizens, and it is statist expecting ultimate loyalty from its citizens whereas Islam is universal, it regards the entire umma rather than the citizens of one state, and it deems the ultimate loyalty is only to Allah. Political Islamists are running after a shadow. As we have seen in Turkey, as soon as they come to power, they transform from the oppressed to the oppressor. Because it is not Islam or the Islamic principles they are after, they are simply after the power; and knowingly or unknowingly they are using Islam in their adventure.
CONCLUSION
I believe religion and state are two different spheres. The relationship between these two concepts has been a matter of discussion throughout human history. It is extreme and impossible to keep religion totally out of the social life as the secularists tried in the post-colonial era because religion naturally impacts people’s actions, morality, and worldview. On the other hand, theocracy, religion’s total control over the state begets tyranny, autocracy, and dictatorship where freedoms necessary for human welfare and scientific advancements, are restricted. When they are mixed with each immoderately, they corrupt and spoil each other.
Albeit, during the Renaissance, the West has relatively found a way to separate them from each other, clear lines have never been established. Therefore, it is crucial that a healthy relationship must be established between these two mediums which will allow the government to operate autonomously but at the same time, religion and religion-based ethics will have moral control over state politics. The bitter fruits of modernization; environmental catastrophe, the exploitation of poor nations, meaningless regional wars that are fueled by arm lobbies, cruel, ethicless, and greedy corporate culture in the West, the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor, etc. are all the result of this rupture between the state and religion. As Wael Hallaq puts it, legal versus moral are two different things and it must be the states’ goal for the interest of their citizens, to keep them hand in hand.
Furthermore, the concept of ‘Islamic state’ is just an illusion with no practical value. With the exception of the Rashidun era, where the tribal social structure was transforming into an actual state -and needs to be treated as a historical exception, – there are no examples of such an ‘Islamic state’ in Muslim history as the political Islamists envision it. The Rashidun era needs to be considered as an exception for various reasons such as the relationship of the Rashidun caliphs to the Prophet and the lack of an actual state structure even in the pre-modern sense. Additionally, I believe, to be able to move forward, Muslims must stop over-idealizing this era and acknowledge the unsustainability of that socio-political structure for it led to social unrest and civil wars within two decades. Rashidun era can be seen as a golden era because Islamic theology was successfully institutionalized in its original form after the Prophet, however pursuing to actualize the same socio-political conditions in the twenty-first century will let to political catastrophes that taint the image of Islam in the world such as Saudi Arabia or Iran.
It is a far-fetched claim that the Quran and Sunnah dictate believers to establish such a state. As believers, we can expect that the Islamic values and fundamental maxims of fiqh that are deduced from the Quran and Sunnah -and that are also coherent with the universal wisdom- be influential in state politics through civil scholarly activism (as it did happen in early Muslim states) and through a democratic course in a Muslim-majority or even Muslim-minority society, but coercing religion with the state power is a very bad idea which destroys both the religion and state. Coercion of religion upon society only creates hypocrites as well as state’s control over religion opens the door for abuse of religion for political and personal gains.
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[1] Matthew 22:21, ESV.
[2] Quran 3:189.
[3] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 138.
[4] Asli Bali, “Ataturk’s Legacy: Negotiating Laiklik [secularism] in Modern Turkey,” Yale Law School, video, 1:29, February 4, 2014. https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/yale-law-school-videos/asli-bali-ataturks-legacy-negotiating-laiklik-secularism-modern-turkey
[5] House Bill 671, Session 1925 (Turkey, 1925) reads: “All Representatives of the House and all other federal and local government workers are mandated to wear fedora which was recognized by the Turkish Nation. Nation’s official headwear is fedora, and all other hats are prohibited.” Accessed January 5, 2021, https://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/MevzuatMetin/1.3.671.pdf
[6] Ibrahim Ulker, “Istiklal Mahkemelerinin Kurulusu ve Calismalari,” Selcuk Universitesi Hukuk Fakultesi Dergisi, 23 (2015): 194.
[7] Nicholas Danforth, “Multi-purpose Empire: Ottoman History in Republican Turkey.” Middle Eastern Studies, 50 no. 4(May 30, 2014): 656.
[8] Danforth, “Multi-purpose Empire.
[9] Although jahiliyya is specifically used for the era in the Arabian Peninsula before Islam, here it is used to define any time in history where there was no divine guidance.
[10] Al-Bayhaqi, “Hadith 12859,” Sunan Al-Kubra, quoted in Omar Suleiman, 40 Hadiths on Social Justice, (lecture notes, Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, n.d.), accessed January 10, 2020, https://f.hubspotusercontent10.net/hubfs/4713562/40HadithLectureNotes/40onSocialJustice-Week-15.pdf
[11] Tariq Ramadan, Radical Reform- Islamic Ethics and Liberation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 19.
[12] Hashim Kamali, Shari’ah Law: An Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008), 26.
[13] Quran 24:2- “The [unmarried] woman or [unmarried] man found guilty of sexual intercourse – lash each one of them with a hundred lashes…”
[14] Quran 24:5- “And those who accuse chaste women and then do not produce four witnesses…”
[15] Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, “The Role of Time and Social Welfare in the Modification of Legal Rulings,” Shi’ite Heritage: Essays on Classical and Modern Traditions, ed. and trans. L. Clarke, (New York: Global Publications, 2001), 218.
[16] Edward Tylor, Primitive Culture (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1903), 1.
[17] Ahmad Shahab, What is Islam: The Importance of Being Islamic (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016), 6.
[18] Ramadan, Radical Reform- Islamic Ethics and Liberation, 19.
[19] Ramadan, Radical Reform- Islamic Ethics and Liberation, 20.
[20] Sahih Muslim 2361, Book 43, Hadith 184. Musa b. Talha reported:
“I and Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) happened to pass by people near the date-palm trees. He (the Holy Prophet) said: What are these people doing? They said: They are grafting, i. e. they combine the male with the female (tree) and thus they yield more fruit. Thereupon Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said: I do not find it to be of any use. The people were informed about it and they abandoned this practice. Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) (was later) on informed (that the yield had dwindled), whereupon he said: If there is any use of it, then they should do it, for it was just a personal opinion of mine, and do not go after my personal opinion; but when I say to you anything on behalf of Allah, then do accept it, for I do not attribute lie to Allah, the Exalted and Glorious.”
[21] Muhammad Abdel Haleem, Exploring the Quran (New York: I. B. Tauris $ Co. Ltd, 2017), 90.
[22] Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Islam and Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari’a (United States: Harvard University Press, 2008), 1.
[23] Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State- Islam Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 48.
[24] Gül Dağcı, Adnan Bal, “Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Din-Devlet ve Laiklik Tartışmaları,” Barış Araştımaları ve Çatışma Çözümleri Dergisi, 2, No 1, 2014, 42.
[25] Philip Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2007), 5.
[26] Hamid Mavani, “Contemporary Islamic Thought/Islam Secularism and Democracy” (online class lecture, Bayan Claremont, December 7, 2020).
[27] Anwar Syed, “Al-Mawardi’s Opinion,” Hamdard Islamicus, 32, no. 1 (20the most notable09): 95.
[28] Al-Mawardi, The Ordinance of Government trans. Asadullah Yate (London: Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996), 10.
[29] Al-Mawardi, The Ordinance of Government 27.
[30] Al-Mawardi, The Ordinance of Government 11.
[31] Mohammad H. Kamali, “Caliphate and Political Jurisprudence in Islam: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” The Muslim World, 106, Issue 2 (May 2016): 387.
[32] Jeffrey Halverson, The Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam (New York: Palgrave Macmilian, 2010), 61.
[33] Nader Hashemi, Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy- Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 134.
[34] Mohammed Shaker Khudair, The Secret of the Nile, Netflix, 2016.
[35] Hashemi, Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy, 133.
[36] David Cummins, “Hasan al-Banna,” in Pioneers of Islamic Revival, ed. Ali Rahnema (Zed Books: New York, 1994), 133.
[37] Jeffrey Halverson, The Theology and Creed in Sunni Islam (New York: Palgrave Macmilian, 2010), 146.
[38] Asef Bayat, Post-Islamism The Changing Faces of Political Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 4.
[39] Roxane Euben & Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009), 79.
[40] Euben and Zaman, Princeton Readings, 81.
[41] Ahmet Kuru, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2019).
[42] Haroon K. Ullah, Vying for Allah’s Vote: Understanding Islamic Parties, Political Violence, and Extremism in Pakistan (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 79.
[44] Hamid Mavani, “Contemporary Islamic Thought/Sayyid Qutb” (online class lecture, Bayan Claremont, October 12, 2020).
[45] Sayyid Qutb, “Milestones,” 69. https://cryptome.org/2017/10/Milestones-Qutb.pdf
[46] Quran 9:29 “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day, nor comply with what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth from among those who were given the Scripture, until they pay the tax, willingly submitting, fully humbled.”
[47] Sayyid Qutb, “In the Shade of Quran,” in Princeton Readings in Islamic Thought, eds, Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Q. Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 150.
[48] Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, PDF file, 148. https://cryptome.org/2017/10/Milestones-Qutb.pdf
[49] Qutb, Milestones, 102.
[50] Yusuf al-Qardawi, “Islam and Democracy,” in Princeton Readings in Islamic Thought, eds, Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Q. Zaman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 241.
[51] Quran- 4:83 “And when there comes to them something [i.e., information] about [public] security or fear, they spread it around. But if they had referred it back to the Messenger or to those of authority among them, then the ones who [can] draw correct conclusions from it would have known about it. And if not for the favor of Allah upon you and His mercy, you would have followed Satan, except for a few.”
[52] Elmali Hamdi Yazir, Religion of Truth and The Speech of Quran (Ankara, Akcag Publication, 2006), 83.
[53] Fethullah Gulen, “Islam is Compatible with Democracy, Despite Turkey’s Recent Example,” Le Monde, February 25, 2019.https://fgulen.com/en/press/columns/52602-fethullah-gulen-islam-is-compatible-with-democracy-despite-turkey-s-recent-example
[54] “Countries and Territories,” Freedom House, accessed January 12, 2020, https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores
[55] Ahmet Kuru, Islam Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1.
[56] The New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edn., eds, Erin McKean (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2051.
[57] Mohammad H. Kamali, “Caliphate and Political Jurisprudence in Islam: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” The Muslim World 106, Issue 2(May 2016): 384.
[58] “Iran (Islamic Republic of)’s Constitution of 1979 with Amendments through 1989,” https://constituteproject.org/constitution/Iran_1989.pdf?lang=en
[59] “Pakistan’s Constitution of 1973, Reinstated in 2002, with Amendments through 2018,” https://constituteproject.org/constitution/Pakistan_2018.pdf?lang=en
[60] “Pakistan’s Constitution of 1973, Reinstated in 2002, with Amendments through 2018,”
Article 203D/3: “If any law or provision of law is held by the Court to be repugnant to the Injunctions of Islam,- (a) the President in the case of a law with respect to a matter in the Federal Legislative List or the Concurrent Legislative List, or the Governor in the case of a law with respect to a matter not enumerated in either of those Lists, shall take steps to amend the law so as to bring such law or provision into conformity with the Injunctions of Islam; and (b)such law or provision shall, to the extent to which it is held to be so repugnant, cease to have effect on the day on which the decision of the Court takes effect.”
[61] Naeem Shakir, “Islamic Shariah and Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan,” The Round Table 104, no. 3 (2015): 307–317.
[62] Ihsan Yilmaz, “Pakistan Federal Shariat Court’s Collective Ijtihād on Gender Equality, Women’s Rights and the Right to Family Life,” Islam & Christian-Muslim Relations 25 no. 2, (2014): 181–192.
[63] Wael B. Hallaq, The Impossible State, Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 52.
[64] Hallaq, The Impossible State, 23.
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