THE HALA FOUNDATION FOR ARAB-AMERICAN LEADERSHIP

Islam and the Challenges of Democracy: April 1994.

The subject of Islam and democracy is at the core of the debate between regimes and Islamist movements in the Muslim world. Both use it, in fact to manipulate it, to further their purposes: to rally support of the population, to counter their image in the West that they are anti-democratic, and to allay the "fears" of the West, especially the United States, as their intentions. Both try to affect US foreign policy, to exploit to their own advantage the new American activism for democracy, and to steer to their benefit the answer to the question of when, and under what conditions, will the Muslim world join the democratic revolution.

In the past few years, as a result of events in the former Soviet Union, developments in Latin America, the growing movement towards privatization and the free-market economy, and the Gulf War, interest in the question of "Islam and democracy" suddenly has grown in the United States. Scores of seminars and conferences to debate the issue were organized. Tens of books, pamphlets and monographs were published. Some, of course, jumped into clamor in their long-held and characteristically patronizing Orientalist premises about the despotic nature of Islam and its basic incompatibility with democracy. Others, students of the subject, knowing full well the misunderstandings which surround Islam in the West, and how the behavior and pronouncements of some Islamists and fundamentalists were going to reflect on the perception of Islam, became defensive where they could and should have been critical. Many of us turned apologist.

It has become imperative, therefore, in a discussion of Islam and democracy to start by asserting that whatever the merit of the case theoretically, it does not reflect in any way on our position toward the behavior of some of the Islamist parties in their bid for power. To condemn unequivocally the killing of bareheaded women in Algeria, to condemn the targeting of intellectuals in Algeria, Egypt and wherever else it is taking place, to condemn vehemently the insensitivity to minorities in the Sudan, should be posited as an axiom before addressing the question of Islam and the challenges of democracy.

It is also necessary to reiterate certain basic premises, most importantly that there is no monolithic interpretation of Islam, that liberal interpretations are just as valid as conservative interpretations and that the freedom to interpret is open to every Muslim. To quote no less an authority than Hassan Turabi: "Private individuals in Islam don't enjoy freedoms, they assert them, they have to enjoy those freedoms, they have to speak their mind? You have to worship God by thinking originally and contributing. And you have to express that contribution, and you have to do it even if the other party, even if the government, doesn't like it. And you are a better Muslim if you present a dissenting view rather than a conforming view. This is the typical Islamic education."

If such freedom of thought and debate is at the core of Islam, and I believe it is, why is it then that the last voice of independent thought in the Sudan, the newspaper International Sudanese, was shut down and its editor Muhammad Taha Muhammad Ahmad, beaten up by the guards of Hassan Turabi?s son? Or is it that there is a limit to what one can question? And why is it that the Sudanese government threatened Professor Biro for criticizing the fact that, under Sudanese law, "absolute" crimes such as adultery, robbery, apostasy and theft carry mandatory sentences of death, and mutilation or flogging inflicted even on children as young as seven? Turabi himself, at the University of South Florida, said that, at the time of the Prophet, the apostate "was left alone" and, although this changed later, should be "allowed to repent, give him some time, and if he doesn't we then put him to death? Not just the religious freedom of non-Muslims, but even the freedom of Muslims who have different views is going to be guaranteed." How come sentences can be changed from the time of the Prophet towards more excessive punishment, not the other way around?

Killing and otherwise silencing the opposition to conservative, fundamentalist and Islamist interpretations has gone on for too long. Other Muslims or students of Islam have been put on the defensive. Islamists and fundamentalists have set the agenda and the methodology of the debate. Liberal Muslims have, in general, felt insecure on Muslim grounds. Most of them were Western-educated, knew little about Islam and did not really feel the need to learn because they assume that the domains of the political and the religious were clearly delineated by the traditionalists of the 19th-century. Politics and religion were thought to be two totally different disciplines. Liberal compatibility of Islam with democratic forms of government was then addressed very seriously, and many thought resolved, by highly respected Muslim scholars. In fact, in the 20th century, many Arab and Muslim countries -- Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and others ? had democratic experiences, with parliamentary systems of government, separation of powers and human rights activists, and no one questioned the compatibility of these governments with Islam. Some Muslim countries experimented with various forms of socialist governments, without any questions about Islam either.

In fact, until the late 70s, few Muslim intellectuals considered it relevant to discuss the subject of Islam and democracy. It was assumed that the trend all over the Arab world was towards modernization and that the role of religion and politics was marginal, if not disappearing altogether or it the relevance of religion to politics it was argued was withering away. In the 70s, one would have been able to give many indices to support this argument. Things, however, have changed and it has been stunning to rediscover the potency and appeal of the fundamentalist religious movements in our midst. A case can be made but one reason for the rise of fundamentalism and Islamist thought is the intellectual laziness and the political self righteousness of the secular forces in the Arab world, the closeness of some of the undemocratic regimes in power and the justification of their suppressive policies, and the obliviousness of others to the real needs of their people.

The newly-discovered realities make it imperative, therefore, to address political Islam head-on. It is in this context that the question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy becomes pressing. But what is the question? When one says Islam and democracy are not incompatible, one could mean three things: one, that an Islamic state can be democratic; two, that Muslims can live and practice their Islam fully in a democracy; or three, that the Islamic culture is a facilitator, not a hindrance, in the process of democratic change.

A distinction should be clearly made at all times between the formalistic institutional aspects of "democracy," such as elections and separation of powers, and the substance of the term "democracy," i.e. its denoting freedom, legality, enfranchisement, empowerment and secularism.

Muslim scholars from Muhammad ?Abduh to present day theoreticians of modern Muslim movements, such as Hassan al-Turabi, and mainly addressed the first question, i.e. whether an Islamic state can be democratic, and have to a large extent considered only the formalistic aspects of democracy. They combined Islamic concepts of bay?ah, proclamation of allegiance, and shura, consultation, to deduce an Islamic tradition of constitutional government. It added to these two concepts the Quranic injunction "Oppose yourselves, O Muslims, to the perpetuation of evil and help to promote the good!" This further asserted the right of the community to participate in government, in fact, an admonishment to be politically involved.

Muslim scholars argue that "absolute tyranny" is "prohibited by Islam" and is "contrary to the ways of God." To illustrate, ?Abduh quoted the second Caliph ?Omar as saying to his followers after being declared Caliph: "whoever finds me deviating should straighten me." Some of those present were quoted as replying: "If we find you straying, we will use our swords to bring you back to the correct path." This was taken as another proof that Muslims should participate actively in political life and should not tolerate despotism.

Of course, one can counter-argue that much of this is not precise. One can easily point to the fact that, in Islamic traditional practices, consultation is limited to ahl al-hall wal-? aqdh, literally "people who blind and unbind," i.e. "people of consequence." It refers to the well-known and well-respected, the "weightier part" of the community, not to the people at large. Moreover, "consultation" is by definition not binding, since the final decision is left to the ruler. It is "a feature of government for the people" that does not include the concept of government "by the people." As to the bay?ah, deriving from it any advocacy of parliamentary elections would require a long stretch of the imagination and exercise in semantic acrobatics. The injunction to "oppose the evil and promote the good," is obviously meant for the individual in his social behavior and his interaction in the religious practices of the community. It was not intended to establish a political right. In fact, it was and is often used as an incitement to vigilantes to take the law into their own hands; it is used by the morality police in Saudi Arabia, and in Algeria, to justify the killing of women by those who understand Islam as imposing the veil on women.

On individual freedom, interpretations were even more controversial. Maintaining that freedom is essential to Islam, Muslim scholars quoted Caliph ?Omar?s celebrated question, "whence have you enslaved people when their mothers bore them free?" and compared it to the opening words of Rousseau's Social Contract: "Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains." Concluding such a comparison between Arab and French political traditions, Shaykh Rifa?ah Rafi? al-Tahawi said: "As pertains to the basic principles of freedom, equality and justice the two traditions are in fundamental accord." This claim of al-Tahawi is very tenuous. For, obviously, Caliph ?Omar was referring to the institution of slavery and its non-conformity with Islam. He was not talking about individual freedoms. As most authoritative students of Islam would agree, Islam's emphasis is on the community rather than on the individual. The welfare and the happiness of the Muslim community at large supersedes individual concerns.

Al-Kawakibi, the most vocal champion of freedom in this reformist tradition, enumerated the freedom "to teach, to speak out and publish, and the freedom to carry out scientific research, in all domains, including that of total justice, so that no man would fear a tyrant or usurper," and said that restrictions on these freedoms should not be accepted. He glorified freedom as "the tree of eternity, fed and preserved by the blood given in its defense." God had created men "free and equal by nature, and in their needs." Limitations on freedoms and all inequalities were man-made and should not be tolerated, no matter what authority was claimed for such practices.

Al-Kawakibi?s main thrust is that despotism abridges man's freedom and dignity. He vehemently criticized men of religion who encouraged rulers to curtail the freedom of the people to participate. Government, he stated, was created to serve the people. He emphasized the Prophet's saying: "Everyone of you is a shepherd and each of you is responsible for his sheep." This proves, in his opinion, that Islam has established total equality amongst Muslims as pertains to the responsibility and a duty to participate in decision-making. He invoked the Prophet?s saying that "people are equal like the teeth of a comb," to determine that Islam preaches total equality. The form of government which naturally follows such Islamic principles, in his opinion, is "legislative democracy," where people partake in the decisions affecting their lives. Legislative power should be in the hand of the ummah, and the ummah "is free from error in its consensus," he declared. The ruler has only the power of execution. Justice is the bulwark of such a government.

Of course, there are many theoretical problems with these assertions. Of course, Muslim reformists extended liberally the meanings of words to develop a constitutional theory in Islam. Yet, the importance of these formulations remains even if they do not show that Islamic traditional institutions conform fully to forms of democracy in the West. For, to show that there is no contradiction between Islam and democratic government constitutes, in itself, an important theoretical contribution upon which one can build to pressure for constitutional government.

Even if Islam did not impose on Muslims any particular form of government, it imposed the shari?ah, a set of laws pertaining to questions of marriage, divorce, inheritance and the like which practicing Muslims believe they need to obey to fulfill their Islam. Herein lies the main problem between Islam and democracy. On the one hand, secularism is essential to the concept of democracy. Its thrust is a system of justice which applies uniformly to all citizens of the nation, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. On the other hand, there is no scholarship in Islam which one can invoke to argue that the shari?ah is not essential to Islam. Even liberal Sunni Muslims would refuse to consider the question and would argue that asking them not to abide by shari?ah laws is asking them to become non-Muslims. Some, for example, have argued that, since it is the majority which rules in the democracy in countries where the majority is Muslim, the shari?ah should be the law of the land. Furthermore, the argument continues, Western legislation is the product of Western culture and Western experience and thus particular; likewise, the shari?ah is the product of Muslim experience. And, if there's any superiority between the two systems, the shari?ah is superior because it is God's dictate. Hence, Christian and other minorities would gain, not suffer, if they were subject it to it.

In a seminar organized in Beirut in 1980 by the Institute of Arab Studies on the subject of Arab nationalism and Islam, one liberal Muslims emphatically asserted: "Islamic jurisprudence is the legal heritage of this ummah no matter what religion or sect one belongs to." From that same perspective the Christian participant exclaimed: "Why don't we adopt the shari?ah as the secular law?"

The most recent scholarship on this subject likens the shari?ah to the U.S. Constitution. ?Azizah al-Hibri argues that "societies historically coalesce around some basic sets of deep values and beliefs that defined them as a group." This is the Constitution for the United States or the Magna Carta for England. For Muslim societies, it is the shari?ah. The very important distinction between the two neglected by al-Hibri is that there is a mechanism to amend the Constitution and there is no such mechanism concerning the shari?ah, which is, at most, amenable to interpretation and never to change.

At the root of the conflict with democracy and the problem of minorities in the Muslim world is the centering of Islam on the shari?ah and the importance of adhering to it. For, if the shari?ah is exalted is perfect and made the basis of legislation, how can there be equality amongst the citizens of one nation when there is no uniform system of justice -- for non-Muslims cannot be subject to the shari?ah -- and no uniform applicability, even amongst Muslims for the shari?ah itself is interpreted differently by different religious sects?

This problem is bloodily debated in the Sudan and is still a lingering problem in every Muslim country with a non-Muslim minority. The reverse problem, namely how can there be universal legislation in the state, when a part of the population is religiously bound to obey non-secular rules and regulations, is the problem which faces the Lebanese.

What to do? I would like to submit that in advocating democracy and secularism we should respect such deep-seated beliefs rather than confront them. Most Muslims feel that this subject of the shari?ah touches the essence of their religion. Devising a secular system which accommodates them on that issue is, in my opinion, abiding by one of the most important tenets of secularism, namely the acceptance of the spirit of relativism and as opposed absolutism in political temporal matters. This is a challenge if we want to rally them to the cause of secularism. Some have proposed programs whereby a secular legal system would be enacted which would be universally applicable to all and yet allow Muslims the freedom to choose to abide by shari?ah laws in the matters pertaining to personal status. While this would, of course, be a lowering of the expectations of those who advocate total secularization, it would still be the basis of a workable formula.

In that respect, one question should be considered. Would the fact that the Muslim population abides by personal status laws that are different from the rest of the population prevent us from creating an integrated democratic society? Muslims argue that secularism thus understood is a particularly Western concept arising out of historical situations where the state sought to acquire powers traditionally exercised by the clergy and to incorporate into the polity groups which did not adhere to the dominant faith. In Muslim societies this is not a problem. The challenges are different and the solutions need not be a copy of the solutions devised for different sets of problems. To devise such innovative democratic solutions which would attempt to reconcile the particularities of Islam with the universalism of their quest is the task which should occupy Muslim intellectual democrats if they want to take back the initiative and regain their relevance in their societies.

Monograph presented at the 19th Georgetown Symposium in April 1994.