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| Islamic Politics and the Problem of Universalism |
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By Joe Bord
bordjo77@hotmail.com
Joe Bord is a research fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, specialising in the intellectual history of liberalism
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If Islamic politics is to offer a sustainable and universal alternative, then it will have to open itself to non-Muslims too. Political Islam needs to address the common sense of pluralist societies. Joe Bord explores just what such an opening might require.
Irving Kristol once wrote that a neo-conservative was a 'liberal who had been mugged by reality'. It would be more accurate to say that a neo-con is a liberal who wants to mug reality for high ideals. Chief among these ideals is the claim to universality: the contention that market democracy guarantees civil equality and basic rights to all citizens regardless of confession or race. If political Islam cannot match this claim to universality then it will not succeed. The challenge reaches to the heart of the claim by Islamic activists that they propose an alternative public order. For if an Islamic state entails rule by Muslims over non-Muslims then all that is proposed is a doctrine of conquest that can never command stable consent.
Another way of putting the problem is to ask whether political Islam can only ever be for Muslims. Could one conceive of conditions in which non-Muslims would support an Islamic political programme, or consent to be governed under an Islamic constitution or international arrangement? The experience of non-Muslim minorities in countries that declare themselves to be Islamic (for example Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) has not been encouraging. Likewise, although historical Muslim societies were frequently more tolerant than their Christian rivals, a return to the humiliating way in which non-Muslim status was often enforced holds little attraction for contemporary neutrals who are able to espouse the alternative ideology of liberal democracy. If Islam is to offer a meaningful political programme, then it cannot wait for all its prospective citizens to convert or try to compel them to do so. The problem is hardly a new one: mechanisms of coexistence with other faiths (principally the 'People of the Book') were built into the foundations of Islam, exemplified by the early treaties made with the Arab Jewish tribes. 1
One can discern two basic approaches. These can be designated on the one hand as 'formal', and on the other hand 'hegemonic'. The difference can also be expressed in the distinction between a constitution that is Islamic and a culture that is islamicate (a term originally used by historians to describe the Islamic and Arabic-speaking milieu of the early caliphates and Andalusia during its 'golden age').2 I must here admit my own ambivalence as a westernised Jew over whether I would actually want either approach to succeed. I think that each would present gains and losses to human welfare. In many ways the sober, monotheistic and compassionate Islamic world-view is attractive, but liberal modernity has also brought inestimable advances in civil rights and living standards. Were it not for the current catastrophic conflict in the Middle East, I believe that philo-islamic feeling would be much greater among the Jewish community than it is at present. In any case, Islamic politics as a whole must be taken seriously as the only group of ideas offering a coherent alternative to global liberalism. It is necessary to engage with this alternative as rationally as possible. This requires a readiness to exercise political imagination and control prejudices.
The first 'formal' approach to political Islam concentrates on constitutional and legal structures. The shariah would become the law of the land, with an appointed deliberative status for the religious scholars and methods of shura or consultation. On its grandest level this model proposes the reintroduction of the caliphate. In its medieval or Ottoman form this is about as likely as the world revolution promised by communism. In fact the key intermediate feature of the formal model would be the introduction of Islamic law within the framework of existing states. There is no reason why this system should be totalitarian: on the contrary, one can conceive a pluralist scheme of checks and balances where most functions of government rely on elections. However, violent revolutions always end up destroying political utopias. Whether achieved through revolutionary or evolutionary methods, the tendency within any realised state towards exploitation and internecine strife would still be considerable. Lord Acton's dictum should echo in the ears of all would-be theocrats: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is naïve to suppose that under an Islamic order (any more than any other) the law would speak, and the law alone. Laws always have to be interpreted by human beings with emotions and interests. In Iran, perhaps the closest living example of this kind of system, the guardian clergy has been thoroughly suborned by factional politics. A realistic framework would presumably seek to protect the scholars from corruption by giving them a strictly advisory role. One could have, for example, an upper house with delaying powers similar to those of the present House of Lords composed of religious representatives.
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