DANCING WITH DEMOCRACY:
A GLANCE IN MUSLIM STATECRAFT
Democracy is an infected wound that the Muslim
East has been carrying for centuries. Opposition forces have constantly
rebelled and tried to topple the leader, and he has always tried to obliterate
them. This dance between the rulers and the ruled is for the Muslim repressed.
The West is frightening because it obliges the Muslims to exhume the bodies of
all the opponents, both religious and profane, intellectuals and obscure
artisans, who were massacred by the caliphs, all those who were condemned, like
the Sufis and the philosophers, because, the palace said, they talked about
foreign ideas from Greece, India, and ancient Persia.
2. Since the beginning Muslims have given
their lives to pose and solve the question that has remained an enigma up until
the present: to obey or to reason, to believe or to think? The West with its
insistence on democracy seems to Muslims eminently foreign, because it is a
mirror of what frightens them, the world that fifteen centuries have not
succeeded in binding: the fact that personal opinion always brings violence.
Under the terror of the sword, political despotism has obliged Muslims to defer
discussion about responsibility, freedom to think, and the impossibility of
blind obedience. That was called the closing of the gates of ijtihad, “private initiative”.
3. Imam Malik Ibn Anas, the founder of the Maliki
school of theology, who is adhered throughout North Africa, died in the year
179 AH/801 CE, as a result of torture ordered by the caliph, Mamun: “The
governor of Medina summoned him and tried to make him take back his words. When
he refused, the governor ordered him stripped naked and whipped. His hand was
beaten so badly that his shoulder was dislocated.” Imam Malik refused to take
back his words. That was in year 147 AH. It is not important to know what his
words were: the essential thing is that they expressed his personal opinion
which was different from the caliph’s. Imam Malik never recovered from his
beating; he lived on as a cripple, continuing to write and to struggle, until
he finally died as a result of his injuries.
4. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
doesn’t frighten people because it declares that “the will of the people shall
be the basis of the authority of government” and that “everyone has the right
to take part in the government of his country.” It is frightening for Muslims because
it awakens the memory of the Kharijites, that rebel sect that emerged at the
beginning of Islamic history, which is linked in our memory to terrorism and
anarchy to establish human rights.
5. Side by side with the Sufis, who
philosophized about the need to reject the idea of blind submission, another
movement arose whose members were devoted to assassinating the imams who
displeased them. They are known in history as ‘assassins’. Throughout its
history Islam has been marked by two trends: an intellectual trend that
speculated on the philosophical foundations of the world and humanity, and
another trend that turned political challenge violent by resort to force. The
first tradition was that of the falasifa,
the Hellenized philosophers, and of the Sufis, who drew from Persian and Indian
culture; the second was the Kharijite tradition of political subversion.
6. The two traditions, the Sufis and the Kharijites,
raised the same issues that we are today told are imports from the West, issues
that Islam has never resolved: that of ta’at (obedience to the Imam), and that
of individual freedom. Political Islam resolved these issues neither in theory
nor in practice, for the idea of representation was never implemented, although
the idea that the imam is chosen by the community is deeply rooted in Sunni
Islam.
7. Beginning in the first decades after the
death of the Prophet, the Kharijites raised the question of whether one must
obey the Imam if he does not protect his rights. Should you blindly obey, or
can you trust your own judgment? The Kharijites answered by saying that you are
not obliged to obey; you can “go out” (kharaja)
from obedience. “Any person who goes out from obedience to an imam
whom the community has chosen is called khariji,”
explains Shahrastani.
The moto of the Kharijites, “La hikma illa lillah” (Power belongs only to God),
was used for the first time during the fourth caliph, Ali and led to his
assassination by terrorists sent by the Kharijites in 40 Hegira (661AD). This
same slogan has condemned hundreds of imams and Muslim leaders, the last of
whom was President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. Political dissidence is expressed in
Islam as condemnation of the leader. It is this rebel tradition that links
dissidence with terrorism.
8. The murder of imams began very early,
even before the caliphate of Ali. What began with Ali was political
terrorism—killing as a plan and a program. Those caliphs who died by
assassination and the manner in which they were killed is one of the most
fascinating.
1.
Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab: stabbed in 23/644. He was the second caliph to
govern after the death of the Prophet.
2.
Caliph Uthman: hacked to death by swords. Uthman was the third orthodox caliph,
who took power after Umar and was assassinated in 35/656.
3.
Caliph Ali Ibn Abi-Talib, the fourth caliph, assassinated by a Kharijites on
political difference.
4.
Caliph Marwan Ibn al-Hakam: smothered by his wife, Umm Khalid. Fourth caliph of
the Umayyad dynasty, died in 64/683.
5.
Umar Ibn Abd al-Aziz: poisoned to death, was the eighth Ummayad caliph; died in
101/720.
6.
Al-Walid Ibn Yazid: hacked to death.
9. Two
ways lay open to the Muslims: the way of rebellion taken by the Kharijites,
which leads to violence and murder; and the way of ‘aql, glorifying reason, which began with the Mutazila, the
philosophers who intellectualized the political scene. Instead of preaching
violence against an unjust imam like the Kharijites, the Mutazila held that the
thinking individual could serve as a barrier against arbitrary rule. Muslims
would use both these approaches at different times, both were extremely
important, recurring throughout the centuries. In the modern Islamic world only
the violent, rebellious way is being taken for freedom from colonial rulers and
after them from their agent despotic rulers. The rationalist tradition is
apparently not part of their Muslim heritage. That is why outlining it and
thinking about it is so critical.
The
Mu’tazila and Democracy
10. By introducing reason into political affairs,
the Mutazila forced Islam to imagine new relationships between rulers and
ruled, giving all the faithful an active part to play alongside the palace.
Politics was no longer just a Kharijite duel between two actors, the imam and
the rebel leader. A third element came on the scene: all believers who are
capable of reasoning. The two conflicting trends within Islam, Kharijite rebels
and Mutazila philosophers, appeared on the scene very early and continued,
under various names, to be active throughout Muslim history. Although their
approaches differed, they shared one basic idea: the imam must be modest and
must in no way turn to despotism. It was only on the subject of methods of
realizing this ideal of the imamate that they diverged.
11. In theory obedience is required only if
the imam follows the shari’a,
which leads to justice, harmony and prosperity. The obedience owed to the imam
must in no way be considered equal to that owed to God. The imam is never infallible
in Sunni (orthodox) Islam. While Shia imam is considered infallible.
12.
Abu Zahra has systematized the
various divergences that occurred in Islam with three categories: the political
category (he includes the Kharijites); the legal category, which established
four schools of law, the Maliki, Shafi’, Hanbali, and Hanafi; and the
intellectuals category (Mutazila), who focused on the very nature of belief,
like human destiny and the universe and its mysteries.
13. However philosophical they were, the Mutazila
found they couldn’t avoid politics.
The Abbasids adopted the Mutazila philosophy as their official doctrine for at
least a century, the century of openness. The period of Openness embraced all
human knowledge, including the scientific treatises and Greek philosophy then
translated into Arabic. All the great names of scientific and philosophical
learning belong to this era: al-Khwarizmi (d. 873), often called the first faylasuf (philosopher); al-Razi
(d.925), the great physician who was known in the West as Rhazes; al-Battani
(d. 929), the father of trigonometry; and the metaphysician al-Farabi (d. 950),
the author of al-Madina al-Fadila
(The Virtuous City).
14. But very early the Abbasid dynasty, which
took power carrying the torch of reason and mobilized the most brilliant minds
among the Mu’tazila to promote its propaganda, fell into palace intrigues. The
result was that the opening to reason, personal opinion, and the cult of
private initiative was condemned as a “foreign” enterprise. The falasifa were
hunted down and the freethinkers condemned as infidels and atheists. Thus in
order to serve the needs of the Abbasids, the shari’a was stripped to its questioning, speculative dimension.
The imam ruler became a violent, bloodthirsty despot, and only the Kharijite
rebel tradition managed to continue to assert itself as a voice of opposition.
The Muslim world crumbled on toward obscurantism, with its enlightened
intellectuals being systematically condemned and its people reduced to
intellectual apathy. From then on, fanatical revolt was the only form of
challenge, which survived with a truncated Islam.
15. It is that Islam of the palaces, bereft of
its rationalist dimension that has been forced on our consciousness as the
Muslim heritage today.
16. Most of the Muslim countries today do not
have so much a fear of democracy as they suffer from a lack of access to the
most important advances of recent centuries, especially tolerance in principle
and practice. The secular humanistic ideas—freedom of thought, the sovereignty
of the individual, the right to freedom of action, tolerance—were propagated in
the West through secular schools. With a few rare exceptions (notably Turkey),
the modern Muslim state has never called itself secular and has never committed
itself to teaching individual initiative. On the contrary, individualism always
held a rather ambiguous place among the “reformers” of the nineteenth century
nationalist movement. This movement, focused on the struggle against
colonization and therefore anti-Western, was obliged to root itself more deeply
than ever in Islam. Facing the militaristic, imperialistic West, Muslim
nationalists were forced to take shelter in their past and erect it as a
rampart—cultural hudud to
exorcise colonial violence. In fact, the
nationalists were prisoners of a historical situation that inevitably made
modernity a no-win choice. Either they might construct modernity by claiming
the humanistic heritage of the Western colonizer at the risk of losing their ummah unity or they could carefully
safeguard a sense of unity in the face of the colonizer by clinging to the
past, favoring the tradition of “obedience” and foreclosing all Western
innovation.
17. Alas, it was this second solution that the
nationalist politicians more or less involuntarily chose. The essence of the
two rationalist heritages, both the Muslim and the Western, was freedom of
thought, and freedom to differ. This was sacrificed to save unity. What the
politicians and reformers of the 1920s and 1930s didn’t clearly see was that by
shutting our reason, Muslims weakened themselves more than ever and became that
crippled, powerless mass that the Gulf War of 1990 spread before the world on
television.
18. Once colonization had ended after World
War II, the newly independent Muslim states did not renounce their vendetta
against reason. They fought against the advances of Enlightenment philosophy
and banned Western humanism as foreign and “imported” calling the intellectuals
who studied and tried to promote it, like Syed Ahmed in India and Taha Hussein
in Egypt, as enemy agents and traitors to the nationalist cause. At the same
time, they committed themselves to the massive importation of weapons from the
West. The Arab states allocate a higher percentage of their gross domestic
product to military expenditure than do the Western countries. This makes them
doubly dependent, since Western nations use the income from arms sales to
finance research and development and boost their aeronautic and space
industries.
19 The West creates its power through
military research, which forces underdeveloped countries to become passive
consumers. The weakness of the Muslim nations stems from the fact that they buy
weapons instead of choosing to do their own research in technology. Middle
Eastern states bought more than 40 percent of all arms sold throughout the
world during the 1980s.
20.
Among the nine purchasers of arms in the world in 1983, four were Arab
states: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Egypt.
What the rulers of these states ignore is that the age of fetishism is over,
and importing military hardware increases dependence. Power comes from the
cultivation of the scientific spirit and participatory democracy. Arms purchases have blocked the creation of
Arab intellectual and scientific power and its corollary, the diffusion via
public education and democratic culture. The power of modern West has been
built by state propagation, through public education, secular and scientific,
that the Muslim masses have never had the right to.
21. The majority of the colonized Muslim
countries never experienced that phase of history so indispensable to the
development of the scientific spirit, during which the state and its
institutions became the means of transmitting the ideas of tolerance and
respect for the individual. Above all else, colonial governments were brutal
and culturally limited. The nationalist governments that supplanted them were
just as brutal and just as hostile to the flowering of the scientific spirit
and individual initiative. This produced a virtual cutoff of the Third World
from the advances of humanism in the last centuries in both its aspects: the
scientific aspect (promoting the use of government resources to invest in
scientific research and encourage freedom to explore and invent), and the
political aspect (establishing representative democracy, with citizens’
exercise of the right to vote and to participate in political decision making).
The result was the rampant malaise that now besets the once colonized nations.
22. The Muslim mass, like the rest of the
citizens of the Third World, have never had systematic access to the modern
advances rooted in “the legacy of the Enlightenment, an ideological revolution
that led to the debunking of the medieval and reformational cosmologies and the undermining of feudal
forms of political authority and theistic forms of moral authority.”
23. The nationalist movements at the end of
the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Iran and
India tried to modernize Muslim culture without breaking with the past, which
was burdened with despotism and manipulation of the sacred. These movements
introduced institutions and concepts of West representing democracy, like
“constitution”, “parliament”, and “universal suffrage”, while yet failing to
educate the masses about the essential point: the sovereignty of the individual
and freedom of opinion that are philosophical basis of these institutions and
concepts. The nationalists failed to think the problems through. We must not
forget that the Arab world, like the rest of the Third World, saw the accession
to power of the military janta in the 1950s and 1960s after decolonization by
the West. The debate for modernization never became a social philosophy and
social philosophers were never invited to play the role of reformist. That role
went to the fuqaha, the
religious authorities.
24. Taha Husayn, (d.1972) one of our great defenders of the rationalist
tradition, was harassed during his lifetime and judged and condemned after his
death “as a manipulator of heathen, Hellenic idea … a collaborator devoted to French
thought and American thought”
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25. Muslims have been discussing democracy for
a century and a half. It came to them, paradoxically, in the baggage of the
French, Italian and English colonial armies, the armies that brought other
strange things, like the telephone, electricity, railway and automobile.
Although the Muslim states are found of these along with electronic
surveillance and sophisticated telecommunications systems, some of them
nevertheless feel the need to base their political legitimacy on the past. Why
does Saudi Arabia, which moved heaven and earth during two US administrations
(President Carter and President Reagan) to buy the AWACS missile system, feel a
stronger need to adhere to Islam than does Tunisia? What hides behind this
outcry for religion and culture that reverberates in the Arab and Muslim world?
One thing is certain. The call for Islam in the 1990s expresses diverse needs
that are not always archaic and are certainly not always of a spiritual nature.
26. There are some Muslim regimes that find
their interests better protected if they base their legitimacy on cultural and
symbolic grounds other than on democratic principles. The sacred, the past,
ancestor worship seem to be the chosen grounds in most cases. This category
groups together regimes as different as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the
Iranian regime of Imam Khomeini and his successors, the military regime of Zia
al-Haq in Pakistan, and the Sudanese regime that terrorizes its people in the
name of the sharia.
27. Considering how often Islam has been used
to rationalize the brutal policies of oppressive totalitarian regimes like the Taliban
in Afghanistan, the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, or the Faqih in Iran, it is
hardly surprising that the term “Islamic democracy” provokes such skepticism in
the West. Some of the most celebrated
academics in the United States and Europe reject the notion that the principles
of democracy cannot be reconciled with fundamental Islamic values. When politicians speak of bring democracy to
the Middle East they mean specifically an American secular democracy, not an
indigenous Islamic one. The dictatorial
regime in the Middle East and North Africa never seem to tire of preaching to
the world that their antidemocratic policies are justified because
“fundamentalists” allow them but two possible options: despotism or
theocracy. The problem with democracy is
that if people are allowed a choice, they usually choose regime change. So free democratic elections were suspended
in Algeria when it seemed imminent that they would be won by an Islamist party;
while in Egypt a permanent application of the country’s emergency laws (till
recently in 2011) had made free elections inconceivable. The current surge of revolutions which are
going on through Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Oman
and Jordan are all, but the expression of the age-old clashes between the
hereditary rulers and their democratically awakened people.
28. Ignoring for a moment the role these
autocratic regimes in the Middle East have played in creating Muslim extremism
through their anti-democratic policies, there exists a far more literary
dispute in the Western world with regard to the concept of Islamic democracy:
that is, that there can be no a priori moral framework in a modern democracy;
that the foundation of a genuinely democratic society must be secularism. The
problem with this argument, however, is that it not only fails to recognize the
inherently moral foundation upon which a large number of modern democracies are
built.
29. Turkey is a secular country in which
outward signs of religiosity, such as hijab, are forcibly suppressed. With regard to ideological resolve, there is
little that separates a secular Turkey from a religious Iran; both are
ideologized society.
30.
It is pluralism, not secularism, that defines demoracy. A democratic
state can be established upon any normative moral framework as long as
pluralism remains the source of its legitimacy. The State of Israel is founded
upon an exclusive Jewish moral framework that recognizes all the world’s
Jews—regardless of their nationality—as citizens of the state. England continues to maintain a national
church whose religious head is also the country’s sovereign. India was, until recently, governed by the
partisans of an elitist theology of Hindu Awakening (Hindutva). And yet, like
the United States, these countries are all considered democracies, not because
they are secular but because they are dedicated to pluralism.
31. Islam has had a long commitment to
religious pluralism. Muhammad’s (PBUH) recognition of Jews and Christians as
protected peoples (dhimmi), and his dream of establishing a single, united Ummah
encompassing all three faiths of Abraham was startling revolutionary ideas in
an era in which religion literally created borders between peoples. Despite the
ways in which it has been interpreted by militants and fundamentalists who
refuse to recognize its historical and cultural context, there are few
scriptures in the great religions of the world that can match the reverence
with which the Qur’an speaks of other religious traditions.
32 The foundation of Islamic pluralism can
be summed up in one indisputable verse: “There can be no compulsion in
religion” (2:256). The antiquated partitioning of the world into spheres of
belief (dar al-Islam) and unbelief (dar al-Harb), which was first developed
during the Crusades but which still maintains its grasp on the imaginations of
Traditionalist theologians, is utterly unjustifiable and historically
un-Islamic.
33. Grounding an Islamic democracy in the
ideals of pluralism is vital because religious pluralism is the first step
toward building an effective human rights policy in the Middle East.
34. The Islamic vision of human rights is
neither a prescription for moral relativism, nor does it imply freedom from
ethical restraint. Islam’s communal
character necessitates that any human rights policy take into consideration the
protection of the community over the autonomy of the individual. And while
there may be some circumstances in which Islamic morality may force the rights
of the community to prevail over the rights of the individual—for instance,
with regard to Quranic commandments forbidding drinking or gambling—these and
all other ethical issues must constantly be re-evaluated so as to conform to
the will of the community.
35. The respect for human rights, like
pluralism, is a process that develops naturally within a democracy. Consequently,
any democratic society—Islamic or otherwise—dedicated to the principles of
pluralism and human rights must dedicate itself to following the unavoidable
path toward political secularization.
36. From the time of the Prophet to the
Rightly Guided Caliphs to the great empires and sultanates of the Muslim world,
there has never been a successful attempt to establish a monolithic
interpretation of the meaning and significance of Islamic beliefs and
practices.
37. Ultimately, an Islamic democracy must be
concerned not with reconciling popular and divine sovereignty, but with
reconciling “people’s satisfaction with God’s approval.” And if ever there is a
conflict between the two, it must be the interpretation of Islam that yields to
the reality of democracy, not the other way around. It has always been this way. From the very
moment that God spoke the first word of Revelation to Muhammad (PBUH)—“Recite!”—the
story of Islam has been in a constant state of evolution as it responds to the
social, cultural, political, and temporal circumstances of those who are
telling it.
38. When fourteen centuries ago Muhammad
(PBUH) launched a revolution in Makkah to replace the archaic, rigid, and
inequitable strictures of tribal society with a radically new vision of divine
morality and social egalitarianism, he tore apart the fabric of traditional
Arab society. It took many years of
violence and devastation to cleanse the Hijaz of its “false idols.” It will take many more to cleanse Islam of
its new false idols—bigotry and fanaticism—worshipped by those who have
replaced Muhammad’s (PBUH) original vision of tolerance and unity with their
own ideals of hatred and discord. But
the cleansing is evitable, and the tide of reform cannot be stopped. The Islamic Reformation is already here. We
are all living in it.
39. The Arabic term ‘asriya is commonly used to translate “modernity” and
“modernism.” In Islamic discourse, modernity/modernism often includes
modernization, as well as scientific and technological development. But overall
Islamic discussions of modernity focus on the fundamental issues of
rationalism, secularism, and democracy.
This discussion will focus on Islamic discourse on rationalism and
secularism. It will demonstrate that, while there are no inherent barriers in
Islam to these elements of Western modernity, the expressions of these
phenomena are not necessarily identical in Western and Islamic societies. In
particular, Islam’s ideology and historical experience result in distinctly Islamic
approaches to secularism.
40. Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid
Qutb (d. 1966), describes modernity as responsible for stripping humanity of
its spirituality and its values and reducing human beings to the level of
animals—perhaps rational, but animals nonetheless. In his words:
‘There is no doubt that man has
attained great conquests by virtue
of science. He has made immense progress in the
field of medicine and treatment of physical diseases. In the same way, man
has also made tremendous progress
in the field of industrial products. But
despite all these, the question arises what man has actually got out of these struggles and progress? Have they caused any spiritual growth? Has he gained the wealth of peace, comfort and satisfaction? The answer to all
these questions is nothing but an
emphatic ‘No’. As a result of his material progress, instead of
getting peace and ease, man is
confronted [by] troubles, restlessness and fear.’
41. Although Sayyid Qutb’s analysis is
typical of modern Islamist discourse, other Islamic analyses reflect a more
nuanced view of rationalism. In Qutb’s
analysis, the root of this modern malaise is the replacement of the guidance of
revelation with the dictates of human reason. This negative appraisal of
modernity is predicated on the assumption that Western rationalism relies
solely on reason and rejects faith. As such, it is seen as excessive
intellectualism, the “de-spiritualization” of humanity. In Islamist discourse,
the antidote to this essentially inhuman rationalism is Islam’s deep
spirituality, which does not preclude reason but subordinates it to faith. In
this perspective, Islamic values keep reason in its proper place: in the
service of faith.
42. Aquinas held that human beings are
rational. Reason equips us to arrive at truth. Some truths can be reached
through ordinary experience and reasoning about that experience. Among these
truths are that God exists and that God is good and provides for us. But there
are important religious truths that cannot be arrived at through reason. These
have been revealed through scripture. We may then reason about these revealed
truths, and we will find that they are not contrary to reason. But we would
never have been aware of them had it not been for revelation. Therefore, reason
and revelation are complementary, and both are necessary for human life.
43. The
complementarity of faith and reason is also the traditional Islamic position.
The question of the relationship between revealed truth and truths attainable
by the human mind was already under discussion by the twelfth century Muslim
thinkers. Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), had argued that reason is
insufficient for human happiness; revelation is necessary because human reason
is inadequate to determine what is ultimately in the best interest of human
beings. Nevertheless, the value of reason in human life was a dominant value in
Islam from the earliest times. Fourteenth-century legal scholar Abd al-Rahman
Ibn Mohammed Ibn Khaldun, taking inspiration from al-Ghazali, claimed that
faith and reason are both necessary for a balanced human life. The ultimate
goal of the Islamic community is justice, he said. Scriptures tell us that God
established the Muslim community and commissioned Muslims—as his stewards—to
spread justice throughout the world.
44. The
role of reason in classical Islamic formulations does not differ significantly
from that in classical Christianity. Viewed in this light, it is clear that
reason and revelation are complementary in both Christianity and Islam. This is
true in classical and modern Christianity, as it was in classical Islam. But is
it true in modern Islam?
45. Islam has meant many things to many
people at different epochs and that no logic permits dismissal of any of these
views—not the superstitious worship of saint figures in abundant rural villages
spread from Morocco and Algeria to South-east Asia, nor the philosophical
inquiries of an Avicenna, nor the mysticism of cult groups—as un-Islamic.
46. History is, however, a great destroyer,
as Nietzsche observed. No ideals and no human actions have survived or can
survive the erosion of time. Most Muslims believe that the Qur’an is not a
created work. Rather, they believe that the Qur’an is coeternal with God and
hence beyond the reach of historical destruction. If Muslims came to understand
Islam as a part of human history, would not its claim to truthfulness be washed
away in the river of historical events?
47. Understanding Islam depends upon open
discussion of sensitive issues in both West and East. In the West it involves a re-examination of
the Orientalist tradition of Islamic studies, which has tended to portray Islam
as divorced from the Western tradition by regarding it primarily as a set of
texts and practices extracted from the dynamic of history; by implication,
genuine understanding of Islam lies beyond the capacity of those who are not
schooled in Arabic and not deeply immersed in Islamic culture and society. Many
fervent proponents of the Islamic tradition take similar positions. Part of the
problem in both East and West is thus methodological and epistemological.
48. No genuinely independent, creative work
on the Islamic tradition can currently be done in the Arab world. The close
ties between nationalist and authoritarian governments bent on using Islam for
their own purposes or preoccupied with fending off militants, Islamist
movements for equally clear reasons, makes genuine scholarship impossible. The capacity of social science to generate
the liberating truth about Islam depends upon a political atmosphere conducive
to academic freedom and scientific discovery. Rethinking Islam depends upon the
freedom to think; it must be done under liberal auspices, and thus, for now at
least, it must be done in the liberal atmosphere of East or West.
49. Muslim world has shied from liberalism in
part because of misconceptions, generated and perpetuated in the West about the
relationship between secularism and liberalism.
Countries such as Turkey
attempted to implement a model of liberalism fashioned from a simplistic
reading of the Enlightenment. But liberalism depends upon a socio-religious
tradition and not, as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk seems to have thought, upon the
radical separation of politics and religion.
A revolution of mind is a pre-requisite as a prelude and accompaniment
to any possible political transformation.
ISRAR HASAN
FEB. 01, 2014
